Transferring Institutions in Different Modalities: Lessons from Undergraduates Across Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The broad-scale challenges that higher education undertook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic changed a great deal about the student experience. Ongoing throughout several semesters, those changes may have affected the ways that transfer students experienced transition to the 4-year university setting, with implications for student retention. Interviews with students who transferred from community colleges to a large research university at three different pandemic stages—in 2019, 2020, and 2021—reveal that some aspects of the transfer experience remained consistent, while others changed. Notably, students experienced university-level coursework as academically challenging regardless of its mode of delivery and reported finding a diversity of academic and social options at the university. Transferring into online coursework helped reduce the shock associated with large-enrollment classes and navigating a large campus. Students reported fewer issues overall with course delivery when taking solely online coursework. The paper closes with recommendations to increase transfer student retention.