How Political and Ecological Contexts Shape Community College Transfer

Abstract

Broad higher education contexts shape how community college students and postsecondary personnel approach transfer from community colleges to baccalaureate-granting institutions. We leverage the concept of strategic action fields, an organizational theory illuminating processes that play out as actors determine “who gets what” in an existing power structure, to understand the role of political-ecological contexts in “vertical” transfer. Drawing on interviews with administrators, transfer services personnel, and transfer-intending students at two Texas community college districts and with administrators, admissions staff, and transfer personnel at public universities throughout the state, we examine how institutional actors and students create, maintain, and respond to rules and norms in the community college transfer field. Our results suggest university administrators, faculty, and staff hold dominant positions in the field, setting the rules and norms for credit transfer and applicability. Students, who hold the least privilege, must invest time and energy to gather information about transfer pathways and policies as their primary means of meeting their educational aspirations. The complex structure of information—wherein each institution provides its own transfer resources, with little collaboration and minimal alignment—systematically disadvantages community college students. Although some community college personnel voice frustration that the field disadvantages transfer-intending community college students, they maintain the social order by continuing to implement and reinforce the rules and norms set by universities.

Community colleges educate one third of U.S. college students (Shapiro et al. 2017). The majority of community college entrants aim to transfer “vertically” to baccalaureate-granting institutions, but only a third do (Shapiro et al. 2017). Early theories from sociology argue that community colleges “cool out,” or manage, student ambitions, diverting those who might otherwise earn baccalaureates (Brint and Karabel 1989; Clark 1960). A counter-argument describes inadequate structures within community colleges, which lack supports to keep students on track toward degrees (Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins 2015; Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen, and Person 2007; Scott-Clayton 2011). Despite recent attention to community college structure, research aimed at understanding why so few community college entrants earn baccalaureates largely ignores the broader ecological contexts that shape transfer.

Community colleges are part of complex, loosely coupled higher education systems in which institutions operate independently and coordination across institutions is difficult (Gamoran and Dreeben 1986). Institutional staff follow agreed-upon rules, norms, and procedures, and students must navigate these rules to successfully transfer between institutions. We argue that understanding how community college students, community college staff, and university personnel interact requires examining the political-ecological contexts within which the interactions take place. To do so, we leverage the concept of strategic action fields (SAFs), an organizational theory that focuses on the processes through which actors determine “who gets what” in an existing power structure (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:3). We draw on data from interviews with various actors who negotiate and maintain the rules and norms of transfer in Texas, including transfer-intending students and administrators and staff at community colleges and public universities.

By developing a field-level perspective on transfer, we move beyond the typical organizational perspective prevalent in prior work, which is focused on the community college as a stand-alone institution. We interpret students’ actions and behaviors in response to the field, not just as a function of students’ backgrounds and interactions with community college staff. Rather than place responsibility for transfer outcomes on either students or community college actors, we show that individual actions are shaped by a broader set of rules and norms.

STRUCTURES AND SORTING PROCESSES AT THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Several theorists have attempted to explain low rates of vertical transfer among community college entrants. In his cooling-out hypothesis, Clark (1960:574) theorized that community college personnel impede students’ aspirations toward bachelor’s degrees by offering “substitute avenues” for success (i.e., terminal two-year degrees). Through this “management of ambitions,” Brint and Karabel (1989:7) argue, community colleges protect baccalaureate colleges from an influx of students. Yet contrary to theoretical arguments proposing that interactions with community college staff diminish students’ educational aspirations, recent empirical research suggests most community college students’ aspirations actually “hold steady” (Alexander, Bozick, and Entwisle 2008; Nielsen 2015). Despite having high aspirations, many students never transfer. A recent meta-analysis suggests that entering a community college rather than a baccalaureate-granting institution decreases a student’s probability of earning a bachelor’s degree by 23 percentage points (Schudde and Brown 2019). Structuralist theories of higher education reason that this result is driven not by purposeful diversion by staff but by a lack of support services, curricular structure, and clear guidance for students in dealing with bureaucratic hurdles and conflicting demands (Bailey et al. 2015; Rosenbaum et al. 2007; Scott-Clayton 2011).

Institutional Scaffolding and Student Information-Seeking Processes

There is a “hidden curriculum”—taken-for-granted, procedural knowledge—for transfer that is overseen by staff (Allen, Smith, and Muehleck 2014; Rosenbaum et al. 2007:63). Postsecondary staff decide whether, how, and when to provide vital information relevant to students’ educational goals (Allen et al. 2014; Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum 2003; Person, Rosenbaum, and Deil-Amen 2006). Transfer-intending students must navigate requirements for both their current college and their prospective destination institution. When colleges send mixed signals or neglect to provide information about transfer options and requirements, students may find it difficult to navigate seemingly shapeless transfer pathways (Rosenbaum et al. 2007; Schudde, Bradley, and Absher 2020).

Findings from studies across several states show that students—lacking sufficient staff support—struggle to find information about whether and how credits will transfer, and many are later surprised when credits fail to transfer or apply toward a degree (Allen et al. 2014; Davies and Dickmann 1998; GAO 2017; Herrera and Jain 2013; Jaggars, Fay, and Farakish 2019; Jain et al. 2011; Kadlec and Gupta 2014). Most college websites offer institutional and program-specific information, but many do not provide clear or consistent information about transfer (GAO 2017; Schudde, Bradley et al. 2020). This information barrier may have important repercussions, including failure to transfer and, among students who do transfer, credit loss and increased time to a baccalaureate (Monaghan and Attewell 2015; Xu et al. 2018).

Interventions that improve the information available to students may illuminate the hidden curriculum. Proactive or “intrusive” advising, with regular check-ins to assess progress and describe transfer options, may overcome informational barriers (Bettinger and Baker 2014). Some community colleges offer specialized transfer services, including specific advising, centers, and events, but the availability and quality varies (Bailey et al. 2016; Hodara et al. 2017). Four-year colleges cannot fill the void in transfer-specific advising because many lack the necessary resources (GAO 2017) or are reluctant to collaborate unless they rely on transfer enrollments to offset attrition (Dowd, Cheslock, and Melguizo 2008). Research on transfer-receptive universities indicates that university contacts are essential for students to navigate the transfer process and ensure continuity after transfer (Dowd et al. 2008; LaViolet et al. 2018).

When institutions fail to provide adequate or consistent transfer information, students must seek it out—whether from “trusted others” such as friends and family members (Metzger, Flanagin, and Zwarun 2003:281) or from various websites—and determine which sources seem most credible. Noninstitutional contacts can help students navigate bureaucratic hurdles and gather information that “facilitates action” toward their educational aspirations (Coleman 1988:104), but only if students have this social capital (Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum 2003).

The structuralist perspective highlights how community colleges can create and improve support services for students, but it has not examined institutional transfer at the field level, where actors from multiple organizations, including community college advisors, university admissions personnel, and other staff, interact with each other and with students. In the case of transfer, students and transfer-related personnel interact within a much broader context: a complex higher education system where institutions are tenuously linked and individual colleges defend their autonomy (Logue 2017; Perna and Finney 2014). State contexts—and stakeholders’ interests—determine colleges’ missions, the programs they offer, how they are funded, and what we expect of them (Dougherty 1994).

Transfer processes are complicated by these broader structures. Tensions arise as individual colleges pursue their own goals and enact their own procedures for transfer with little regard for other institutions or the needs of students (Bailey et al. 2016; Logue 2017; Perna and Finney 2014). Advisors and students are left to navigate the complicated information structures that result. Transfer rules and regulations can shape the occupational identities of those who operate within them (Dowd 2010). Examining that context and how students and staff interact with each other within this landscape can offer insights into the challenges community college students face in attaining their educational goals.

Community College Transfer as an SAF

To better understand the transfer landscape, we use the concept of SAFs, which describes how actors develop and enact common understandings about the purpose, rules, and relationships within a field (Fligstein and McAdam 2011). Unlike other institutional theories that examine mesolevel social orders,¹ SAFs foreground politics—focusing on the processes of determining “who gets what”—that are shaped by actors’ relative power within the field, their understanding of other actors’ roles, and their perceptions of the rules of the field (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:3). SAFs merge institutional theory with theories on social movements, incorporating greater agency of actors and their collective action into field theory (Fligstein and McAdam 2012).

Fligstein and McAdam (2011) outline four components of SAFs. Actors (1) agree about what is happening in the field and what is at stake, (2) have varying power and are aware of their position relative to others, (3) operate under a shared set of rules and know which actions are available and appropriate for each role, and (4) interpret others’ moves from their own perspective, position, and role. The final component distinguishes SAFs from other field theories.

Actors within an SAF assume different roles. Incumbents have “disproportionate influence,” and their views are reflected in the SAF’s priorities (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:5). Governance units are regulatory units within the field (as opposed to external government agencies) comprising actors who ensure its “smooth functioning” and “compliance with field rules,” thereby preserving the incumbents’ power (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:6; Goldstone and Useem 2012). Actors positioned below incumbents and governance units in the hierarchy are dominated. They have minimal power, and the actions available to them are dictated by the incumbents’ rules, although some dominated individuals take on the role of challenger. Challengers are aware of the “dominant logic” of the incumbents but envision an alternative social order (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:6). Although they typically comply—albeit reluctantly—with the expectations of their role, they can take action toward establishing an alternative field. Fligstein and McAdam (2011) pay little attention to other dominated actors because they theorize about social change within, rather than maintenance of, a field. Our work elaborates on their theory by highlighting other roles enacted by dominated actors.

Roles come with varied advantages, but actors within an SAF, including less powerful actors, can work to improve their positions (Fligstein and McAdam 2011). A field seemingly in stasis still experiences “constant jockeying,” “low-level contention,” and “incremental change”; there is a tenuous balance between individuals with power and “less powerful actors … looking to marginally improve their positions” (Fligstein and McAdam 2012:12). SAFs are a useful lens for understanding how institutional actors across levels of the higher education system work together to determine credit-transfer policies and disseminate information as well as the role students must inhabit to navigate complex and constantly shifting transfer requirements.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

To examine the political and ecological structure of community college transfer, we asked the following questions:

1. How do institutional actors and students interact to create, maintain, and respond to rules and norms in the field of community college transfer?

2. What are the consequences of these rules and norms for students?

STUDY CONTEXT

Texas has 80 two-year and 39 four-year public institutions, many with their own chancellors, presidents, and governing boards (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board [THECB] 2016). THECB, a public agency established with the goal of coordinating all these institutions, has regulatory powers, but its authority does not supersede that of institutional governing boards. The state’s geographic, demographic, and institutional diversity, coupled with a state culture that prioritizes local control, also presents challenges to coordination (Perna and Finney 2014). The push and pull among the coordinating board, the legislature, and the individual systems and institutions creates ongoing tension.

To smooth the transfer of credits across institutions, the state has several mandated policies. The core curriculum policy mandates that core (i.e., general education) credits automatically transfer across Texas’s public postsecondary institutions, although the credits do not have to count toward majors because programs determine their own degree requirements (THECB 2014). Like 20 other states, Texas relies on informal bilateral transfer agreements, which are interinstitutional agreements outlining transfer requirements, leaving students and advisors to navigate specific agreements between colleges and programs (Jenkins, Kadlec, and Votruba 2014). Ideally, the agreements, which are “encouraged, but not required” (THECB 2014), describe how coursework from the origin college applies toward a degree at the destination institution; but there are no standards or requirements for these agreements. Thus, the availability of a transfer agreement for a particular four-year institution and program depends on which college and program students transfer from, and the quality of these agreements varies widely (Bailey et al. 2016).

METHODS

To explore how institutional and student actors navigate community college transfer in Texas, we draw on data from interviews with students and staff members, along with field notes and documents we collected from the community colleges. We focus on two community college systems—Central Community College (CCC) and Fernando Community College System (FCCS) (we use pseudonyms for colleges and students)—in the same geographic region of Texas and their primary destination universities (see the online supplement for descriptions of the colleges).

Data

To understand the state and institutional contexts, we interviewed advisors and administrators at the sampled community colleges and admissions staff and administrators at common destination public universities. To understand how students navigate the transfer field, we interviewed students at the community colleges who said they intended to transfer within a year. We recorded and transcribed our interviews, which ranged from 30 to 90 minutes, and followed semistructured interview protocols. See Tables S1 and S2 in the online supplement for a list of interviewees.

Staff.

We recruited staff in spring 2016 via email after searching college websites and contacting advising, admissions, and student services offices to identify personnel working on transfer-related issues. We identified additional staff based on recommendations of interviewees. We recruited staff from nine common transfer destinations, with varying admission selectivity, for the two community college districts. Overall, we interviewed 12 staff members in the two community college districts—5 advisors, 4 advising-team leads, and 3 upper-level administrators—and 14 staff members from destination universities, including 5 admissions personnel (3 administrators, 2 recruiters), 4 transfer-support staff in student affairs, and 5 student affairs administrators.

We asked staff about how state policies and institutional partnerships influenced transfer processes, the structure of transfer services at their institutions, and the transfer information students received and the barriers they faced. We also collected institutional documents shared during interviews and located online, including transfer agreements, transfer guides, and faculty-council notes. We attended transfer events and observed interactions between staff and students. This additional evidence served to triangulate interviewees’ responses with institutional practices. Combining insights from staff interviews, documents, and observations, we were able to understand the broader ecosystem in which transfer processes and policies are rooted, the rules and norms of the transfer field, and how actors in the field interact.

Students.

We interviewed community college students in fall 2015 and fall 2016 and obtained their transfer status in fall 2017 (two years after the initial interview). We recruited students through email correspondence, flyers, and tabling at workshops. Our initial sample included students at CCC and FCCS in fall 2015 who intended to transfer in the next 12 months (n = 100). We conducted follow-up interviews with all students in the sample who were available and willing to participate in fall 2016 (n = 57). In this study, we draw on data from the subsample of 57 students with two years of interviews; this offered insights into students’ long-term strategies for approaching and researching transfer. Because recruitment focused on students with short-term transfer intentions, we did not expect our sample to be representative of the full population of college-goers. Comparing the transfer rates of our analytic sample with recent cohorts of college entrants at these institutions, students in our sample are about 10 percentage points more likely to transfer within three years, confirming our hypothesis that the students were positively selected.

Table S3 in the online supplement describes the student sample. In our analytic sample, 70 percent of students identified as women. Sixty percent identified as Hispanic. Fifty-eight percent of students identified as white, 23 percent as black, 5 percent as American Indian/Alaska Native, 4 percent as Asian, and 11 percent as other (all six of these students identified as Hispanic). The mean age was 27, 63 percent of students were first-generation college students, and 35 percent had dependent children.

We asked students about their educational goals, what information sources they used when learning about transfer, where and how they obtained information about potential destination institutions, and their use of community college support services. In our year 2 interviews, all 57 students still intended to transfer. In year 3, we were able to reach all but 2 students in our analytic sample (n = 55) to determine whether they transferred. Those for whom we have no information (n = 2) were captured as not transferring.

Data Analysis

We coded data in the qualitative software program Dedoose using a hybrid method (Miles and Huberman 1994). We first developed general descriptive codes informed by the literature. During a second round of coding, we created subcategories inductively. Five members of the research team coded transcripts after reaching agreement about the application of codes.

We initially coded the staff transcripts for broad themes, including staff members’ perceptions of the structure of the state’s public higher education system and their institutions, institutional partnerships, how the college provides information about transfer to students, knowledge and perceptions of state transfer policies, and institutional goals and priorities. We wrote memos and met to discuss emerging findings. As we analyzed our data, we found it departed from prior frames in the community college literature, which primarily focuses on student experiences and support structures within institutions. We sought a theoretical framework that could help us understand the interinstitutional dynamics we observed and used SAF to reanalyze our data. To address research question 1, we developed matrices (Miles and Huberman 1994), applying SAF to our first round of coding. We captured whether institutional actors fit the constructs of incumbents, governance units, or challengers; their perceptions of other actors in the field; and their descriptions of the standards and norms that students and staff must follow related to transfer.

We similarly coded the student transcripts into broad codes about their approach to transfer and access to various resources in the transfer process. We developed individual memos that capture students’ trajectories during the two years of the study. Using our identified themes, we categorized students based on their information-gathering approaches, or how they collected and navigated transfer information. We also assessed whether they had obtained sufficient information to meet their transfer goals—their information tracks—by comparing student responses about transfer information they had or sought and expectations for credit transfer with documents provided by colleges about transfer policies. We identified three information tracks: sufficiently informed (adequate information to lead to stated transfer goal), underinformed (lacking information), and misinformed or misguided (had information that did not align with transfer goals). We acknowledge that these categories capture only a snapshot of students’ quality of information.

TRANSFER FIELD OVERVIEW: ROLES, RULES, AND ACTIONS THAT MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO

Research question 1 asks how institutional and student actors interact with each other to create, maintain, and respond to rules in the transfer field. Figure 1 illustrates how community college actors, including staff and students, sit within a broader field. Transfer-intending students interact with their institutions to understand and navigate the rules and norms of transfer, but these rules are determined by interactions between community college administrators, faculty, and advisors and other institutional actors, including their counterparts at baccalaureate-granting universities. Universities set the standards not just for admission but also for how credits transfer and apply and for which information is provided to other actors in the field. Across the field, actors expected students to be responsible for seeking information about transfer options and requirements, and they expected community college staff to help students navigate that information.

Figure 1.

Community college transfer field.

Note: The processes of how community college students navigate transfer are situated within a broad context. Community college actors, including administrators, advisors, and students, interact with actors from other institutions. Those interactions shape the rules and norms for transfer and, ultimately, the experiences of transfer-intending community college students.

Roles and Actions of Privileged Positions

Institutional actors hold various roles in the field. Table 1 describes the roles and actions available based on actors’ positions. Incumbents, a role typically held by university administrators and faculty, have the most power to shape the field, setting the standards for admission to programs, determining curricula and how credits transfer and apply, and facilitating (or thwarting) the development of transfer agreements. Incumbents at flagship universities hold the greatest advantage, although those at less-prestigious universities similarly benefit from their positions.

Table 1.

Roles and Actions of Actors within the Community College Transfer Field.

Power	Position/Role	Postsecondary Appointment/Affiliation	Goal	Actions Taken
	Incumbent	Administrator or faculty at flagship or other selective university	Preserve integrity of the degree; maintain institution’s standards	Block or ignore efforts to create transfer agreements/guides; resist equating courses across institutions
	Governance unit	University admissions representatives, particularly at most selective universities	Preserve institutional selectivity; maintain rules and norms of incumbents	Create transfer agreements/guides that adhere to state policy; refer students to posted information or community college agents
	Dominated
	Challenger	Administrators at community colleges and some less selective universities	Improve clarity of transfer norms/rules; propose alternatives for institutional and state policies	Create detailed transfer agreements/guides; connect with multiple actors in the field
	Implementer	Community college advisors and students	Adhere to rules/norms; view following rules/norms as means to improve transfer success	Provide or collect information about rules/norms, depending on position

Note: Positions at the top hold the most power in the field; those at the bottom hold the least. Actors in dominated positions can take the role of either challenger or implementer based on their power and their goals for engaging with field rules and norms.

Several staff described the powerful position of university faculty and administrators regarding credit transfer and applicability. Mitch, a student affairs administrator who oversaw transfer programs at one of the flagships, explained that decisions about credit transfer and application toward a major are “delegated to the department heads because the department owns the major.” Rachel, an upper-level administrator at FCCS, described difficulty in getting faculty to agree on which community college courses should apply toward a given major. Faculty become “very territorial and very passionate,” but, she complained, that passion was directed toward “quality assurance for the perceived integrity of the degree program” rather than ensuring “students can graduate at the end of it all.”

To maintain curricular autonomy, university administrators at state flagships fought against state policies. Faculty councils at both flagships unanimously voted to oppose the coordinating board’s expansion of Fields of Study, a policy mandating that approved premajor coursework must apply toward a degree at public institutions, out of concern the state was standardizing lower-division coursework. They passed a resolution that the “current interpretation of the Fields of Study requirements threatens the authority and responsibility of higher education faculty to design curriculum.” The faculty council at the University of Texas at Austin elaborated their concerns about “unintended consequences related to preparedness, certification, and accreditation.” Faculty representatives argued that students who completed parallel coursework at other state institutions would be less prepared than students who took their own courses.

The incumbents at flagships also failed to create transfer agreements with other institutions. Many of the less-selective universities in the state responded to pressure from the coordinating board to create transfer agreements across two-year and four-year colleges, but university personnel found ways to create symbolic transfer agreements without sacrificing control over curricula or standards. Kelsey, an administrator at an emerging research university, noted that administrators knew the symbolic transfer agreements would “never get to the level where they actually impact students.” These “sister-city agreements” were a gesture of goodwill toward community colleges that also cemented current rules and norms:

We’re gonna be nice to you, you’re gonna be nice to us. We’re gonna obey state laws going back and forth, so … we’ll honor the core curriculum transferability, we’ll accept your students if they meet our admission requirements. But in truth, there isn’t a lot of meat beyond what’s already expected in those documents. And students never see them. Nor would they understand them if they saw them.

According to Kelsey and several other administrators, going beyond these generic agreements to build program-to-program transfer protocols was difficult because it required faculty incumbents to collaborate. The process involved a “swirling around of some emotion and some frustrations” because faculty were territorial about their courses and protective of their own interests. Ultimately, that dynamic contributed to an environment with few program-to-program agreements.

Governance units, composed mainly of university admissions personnel, made up the second position of privilege. Again, selective universities held the most power, but even admissions representatives at less selective universities typically had more power than did community college staff. Chris, an admissions administrator at a flagship university, described the school’s preference for providing “self-guiding tools to make it simpler for students” without a “guaranteed form of admission.” Rather than create transfer agreements, the university offered major-specific transfer guides that broadly outlined the lower-division coursework for each major. Another admissions administrator, Kevin, justified this approach, arguing that there is “absolutely no way that a student following the guide could take courses that they don’t need,” while acknowledging that the coursework “will be good [here], but not for programs not aligned directly with ours.” This configuration pressured students to decide early on to follow transfer guides from selective universities over other potential destinations. Yet for many students, doing so would be impractical, given the low rates of admission at flagships. By establishing these norms, the flagships reinforced their role in the field, signaling that institutions that want to lower the burden on transfer students can align their curricula with the state’s most selective universities. Community colleges that do not conform heighten the risk that incumbent faculty will refuse to recognize their credits; less selective universities that do not conform place undue burden on students who may eventually transfer to their institutions and lose credits.

Roles and Actions of Dominated Positions

Prior research on SAFs acknowledges that some dominated actors—challengers—envision an alternative to the social order and either begrudgingly enact their role in the field or take steps to change the social order (Fligstein and McAdam 2011, 2012), yet there has been little focus on variation among dominated roles. In the transfer field, the most prevalent dominated role is one we call implementers; this position is held by institutional and student actors who were obligated to abide by the rules and often failed to question the status quo. We add this class of dominated actors, extending the theory. Although they share similar goals, institutional implementers have more power than student implementers. Next, we describe the goals of and actions available to challengers and implementers in the transfer field.

Challengers.

Challengers were most often community college administrators who voiced concerns over problems students faced in transferring credits and navigating misaligned degree requirements across universities. These administrators built a regional collaborative partnership across public institutions to develop transfer agreements, publicly post information for students, and adhere to the state’s common course numbering system, which would make it easier for students to understand lower-division course alignment across institutions. Val, vice president of student services at CCC, believed the partnership “held a lot of promise to build aligned curricula” and reduce credit loss. However, she noted that university administrators opposed a common course numbering system, saying, “I don’t know if the will is there” and “it’s going to take legislative action.” The regional collaborative has not yet achieved its stated vision.

Occasionally, student affairs administrators at less selective universities were also challengers, working with community colleges to develop transparent information for students and advocating for policy changes, like common course numbers. Challengers wanted students’ positions to improve, but they primarily provided information to students rather than pushing against the status quo. For example, Margo, a recruiter at a regional comprehensive university, described issues with the “transferability of courses”:

If their transcript says “core complete” and they’ve met each of their component areas, they’re done with their core—but … the transcript has to reflect that. There’s students that are like, “Oh, I have to take another class, okay, I’ll take it.” And there’s other students like, “Wait a minute, I don’t have to take that other class. I’ve already met it at the community college, why is it not [counting here]?” They question it, and some students don’t. You can imagine how many students in the world have taken classes that they don’t need because of that.

Margo recognized that her university did not always give students credit for core courses unless their transcripts said “core complete,” despite the state policy that each core course must transfer even if a student is not core complete. To counter what she perceived as unfair practices of credit transfer, she urged students to have their transcripts marked to avoid additional posttransfer core courses.

Staff implementers.

A handful of community college and university actors served as challengers, but most community college advising staff were implementers: They accepted the field as it was and believed it was primarily the students’ role to inform themselves. The “advisor’s job” was to “remind and promote [information] about transfer opportunities” and to “organize and present all of the universities’ requirements” (Alicia, CCC). Camila, an FCCS advisor, explained, “We’re working on a list of all of the universities’ requirements. … The deadline, the financial aid FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] code, their application requirements. … Their minimum credits. Their maximum credits of transfer.” When students come in, advising is “very prescriptive in outlook. … Really, it’s the transfer guide that’s determining what students must take” (Tim, CCC). But given the array of requirements and variation in programs, advisors acknowledged they often could not keep up with this task. Nina, an advising team lead at CCC, lamented the difficulty of transfer advising: “Community college advisors are expected to know everything about every [university], and really that’s impossible.”

Many advisors placed the responsibility for navigating transfer on students. Yet staff acknowledged that if students did not ask about transfer directly, they would not receive information. Celeste, an advisor at FCCS, explained that “a lot of them come in” and “they have not educated themselves,” noting that students were often unaware of the various transfer options and how to evaluate them. Although many advisors acknowledged the complexity of the transfer landscape, including varied transfer pathways (hundreds of combinations of universities and majors) and holes in publicly posted transfer information (including a lack of transfer guides in many majors), several believed that students were not taking advantage of available information.

Camila at FCCS said students must “research, research, research” to identify appropriate programs, examining “the tuition, the program, how many transfer credits they allow.” Because information posted publicly was often flawed, community college advisors encouraged students to meet with university representatives who “have the most knowledge” (Camila, FCCS). At the same time, institutional implementers described students struggling to connect with university staff. Some universities had norms of “not advising nonstudents” (Tim, CCC) and would send all inquiries back to general admissions recruiters, who often could not tell students how credits would count toward a given degree.

Student implementers.

Staff and students agreed on the norm that students bear the primary responsibility for gathering transfer information. One student, Bridget, described her role:

You just have to be proactive on your own and seek out the information, rather than just waiting for someone to spoon-feed you. I know it’s a lot of information but I think whenever there’s a discussion of transfer, it should be encouraged that the student at the very least compare the coursework and then see what coursework—if it’s parallel—can be done prior to transfer. That would save the student time, a lot of money, I’m sure.

In attempting to reach that goal, Bridget needed to collect information on her own and determine how credits would transfer.

Another student, Maya, described the tension between doing her own research and taking advice from community college staff:

I met with the counselor early summer, but she didn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t find out on my own. I obsess. I will print the things, and put them next to each other, and kind of check-mark them. I need to see the progress. All they do is go on and look at the same screen I was looking at. I asked questions, to make sure: “Are you sure this is the class, not this?”

Maya relied primarily on her own research and saw her advisor as an additional check. She believed her role was to continuously fact-check information to improve her chances of transferring. Implementing the rules of the field required gathering information that can be difficult to find or interpret. We observed some variation in how students enacted their role: Some were more likely to seek out information from various sources, and others leaned more heavily on one or two sources. Students’ varied approaches appeared to have consequences for transfer outcomes.

Consequences for Students

The decentralized nature of the higher education system and the variation in transfer information provided across institutions places the burden on students to familiarize themselves with transfer options. Student implementers could gain advantage in the field by gathering information about transferring to compare and contrast different options, which burdened them with an additional layer of responsibility beyond focusing on coursework and academic performance. Students’ different approaches to handling their role as implementers had implications for their success: students ended up with information of varying quality. We use illustrative examples of students to describe implementation approaches—the way students sought and managed transfer information—before outlining the implications for the quality of transfer information they gathered and whether they transferred.

Information-seeking approaches.

We identified four themes that describe students’ responses to their role as implementers through their information-seeking approaches. Several students curated resources, seeking transfer information from a variety of sources and comparing, contrasting, and synthesizing to identify trustworthy insights (n = 34). Students described the need to “be strategic” about vetting transfer information, often in response to misinformation from advising staff. They gathered information from community college advisors, university contacts, and online sources but weighed it differently as they accumulated insights. Sam, a first-generation college student intent on earning a baccalaureate in engineering, described his experiences with CCC advising staff:

The counselors here are really hit or miss. The first counselor I talked to, I was like, “And this is what I want to do. I want to go to [this university]. I want to transfer into Electrical Engineering.” She just set me up: “Here is our general engineering plan.” She had me in chemistry and stuff like that. Then, I was wondering about it, so I started researching the university’s website. I found their transfer process. They have a PDF of everything they want you to take, and a lot of her advice wasn’t on that. So I was going to waste time taking classes I don’t need.

After realizing that different engineering majors have different requirements, Sam decided “triangulation” was necessary to identify accurate transfer information to meet his goals. Armed with degree plans from his preferred university, he started to interact with CCC advisors differently, using them, along with information from university admissions staff, to confirm he was on track with his coursework. Rather than rely on any one staff member, he “paid close attention to information [he] heard from more than one source”—an indication that the information was accurate.

Hesitant advisees (n = 12) also worked to find their own information about transfer procedures and requirements. Unlike resource curators, hesitant advisees who found their community college advisors unhelpful or inaccurate eschewed advisors when seeking out transfer information. One student, Steven, described lackluster experiences with advisors at CCC:

There is nobody I have found that is my guru or something—an advisor that I am just like, “I have to go to the person!” I am sure there are plenty of great advisors. But I have had one at [this campus] that I wasn’t too satisfied with. So I probably won’t go back.

Steven preferred to talk to colleagues or friends, and he visited an advisor only when “critical,” for example, to have an advising bar removed:

Honestly, I get better information from a colleague, or associate, or I don’t know, a contemporary, peer. I don’t know the right word, but she’s at [the university] already. She transferred about a year ago, I think. Maybe it was a little bit more than a year ago, but she works with me, and so I ask her questions about stuff like [credit transfer] because the CCC counselors, they don’t really know what they’re talking about as far as what transfers, and I don’t know. … It’s like you got to kind of be in the know, and that’s just something that I’ve developed over time and experience. … Most of my information I get from peers, the Internet sometimes, researching stuff … so I guess in a way I’ve just kind of had to figure it out on my own with a little bit of help here and there.

System trusters (n = 7), unlike hesitant advisees, put a lot of faith in advising staff to lead them through transfer rules and requirements. In many cases, they received a transfer or degree plan and adhered to it, sometimes despite their own uncertainty. These students had clear expectations for advisors and did not seem to encounter advisors who violated these norms. Carmen, a first-generation college student and mother of two, described the advisors at CCC as “really good about helping you decide where to go.” She elaborated: “I’m going with them because they’ve got my information. They know my work ethic. I think they’ll help me find the best school for me.” Carmen relied on the information they provided without doing additional research. Other students similarly followed the plan laid out by their advisors. Hannah, an FCCS student who wanted to transfer in business, said her advisor provided the information she requested, such as transfer guides—”she gave me a scope of what my focus needed to be.” Although Hannah was satisfied with her advisor, she also realized that her advisor never provided information beyond what she explicitly requested:

I pretty much just asked about [two local universities]. She gave me what I asked for on [one of them]. … I guess I should have asked her opinion on various other universities. I didn’t really get research on pursuing a degree at [others], so I’m just sticking with [the one she gave me]. … I guess I should have asked her opinion on others.

Hannah narrowed her scope because her advisor gave her information about one university. At the same time, she put the responsibility on herself to explicitly ask about transfer options. She said, “I could get her feedback on determining the best option for me. I should ask.”

Some student implementers lacked clear goals for transfer regarding either major or destination institution and did not seek additional information despite transfer aspirations. Disconnected students (n = 4) haphazardly received information from staff or peers without seeking it out. These students seemed largely unaware of the transfer field or their position in it. Disconnected students were easily swayed by transfer information that came their way, but they struggled to move forward. They experienced minimal intervention from community college staff, who expected them to do their own research. Benito, an FCCS student, described how he learned about transfer options: “I saw a spokesperson for A&M, the people who go out to the schools and try to get people to transfer.” After talking with a recruiter visiting FCCS, Benito became interested in transferring, but he had no information about how the program aligned with his current program. Initially he said, “I haven’t really done all that [looked at websites or talked to an advisor]. It should be pretty easy. But I haven’t really looked online or anything.” When he met with an FCCS advisor, the meeting was “just to see what classes [I was] going to take the following semester.” Operating with only the initial information from the recruiter, Benito felt overwhelmed about figuring out the details. He ultimately decided attempting to transfer seemed “like too much right now.” No community college actors brought up transfer, and he did not explicitly ask for information.

Information quality and transfer outcomes.

Figure 2 illustrates how the information-gathering approaches used by student implementers had consequences for the quality of information gathered and, ultimately, transfer outcomes. The diagram shows the flow of students from each information-gathering approach (left-hand nodes) to information track (i.e., the quality of their transfer information [middle nodes]) to whether they transferred by the latest follow-up in the third year of the study (right-hand nodes). The gray area represents the number of students in a given category; a thicker gray pathway indicates more students.

Figure 2.

Information-gathering approach, information quality, and transfer outcomes.

Note: The graph shows the number of student implementers using each information-gathering approach (left-hand nodes), and the flow of students from each approach into an information track (middle nodes) and vertical transfer (right-hand nodes indicate whether students transferred by the fall of their third academic year in the study). The gray area represents the number of students in a given category; a thicker gray pathway indicates more students in that category.

Based on our coded interview data, and comparing student information to institutional documents and state policies, we identified three “tracks” that represent the quality of students’ transfer information by the second interview: sufficiently informed, informed but misaligned with goals, and underinformed. Students who we designate as sufficiently informed (n = 38) described relevant transfer information aligned with their goals, were aware of options to fulfill those goals, and found actionable information without glaring inconsistencies or misinformation. Students who we categorize as informed but misguided (n = 23) also described transfer information they collected, but it included clear inconsistencies or inaccuracies they had not noticed or resolved. Finally, students who we classify as underinformed (n = 7) lacked sufficient information to achieve transfer goals; they did not describe using a transfer guide or reported they had no information related to transferring into a desired program.

As shown in Figure 2, we categorize most resource curators (79 percent) as sufficiently informed. Because of competing requirements across degree programs at a given community college and various universities, collecting information from multiple sources was vital to being sufficiently informed to pursue transfer. Resource curators appeared to gain advantage in the field, working within the constraints of their weaker role. Yet they were not guaranteed success. The remainder of resource curators (21 percent) were informed but misguided. Because the norms in the field placed the burden on student implementers to identify correct transfer information and weed out misinformation, even students who invested time and energy into resource curation sometimes missed key insights.

Hesitant advisees were dispersed across all three information tracks. We identified 58 percent as having sufficient information to achieve transfer goals through self-advising. The remaining hesitant students were primarily underinformed (33 percent); one student was informed but misguided. Hesitant advisees were most successful when they found actors to rely on within the field—often university admissions staff—rather than only external actors. Hesitant advisees who were underinformed or informed but misguided failed to identify trustworthy and useful sources of transfer information. They largely relied on noninstitutional actors (people outside the field) who were not familiar with the field’s rules and norms, so they struggled to gather accurate transfer information.

System trusters typically followed the steps laid out by their advisors. If advisors were familiar with students’ specific goals and well-versed in various transfer pathways, students could receive sufficient information to transfer. This was the case for four of our seven trusters. The remainder were underinformed (n = 2) or informed but misguided (n = 1). Because they exerted less agency in the process than resource curators and hesitant advisees, trusters risked being underinformed if advisors provided plans that did not align with the majors and degrees they aspired to pursue. Trusters were unlikely to check requirements against college websites or to reach out to four-year staff. One student said she had “pretty much accomplished everything” on her degree plan, but as we probed, it became clear she was following a plan that did not align with her desired transfer program. Despite her confidence in the plan her advisor gave her (which was for a technical associate’s degree, not for transfer to an academic program), the bulk of the credits would not transfer.

Disconnected students—those who were some-what unsure of their transfer goals and less assertive in collecting transfer information—were equally likely to end up underinformed or informed but misguided. These students received information from different sources for various pathways but lacked clear goals and adequate advising, so they often had insufficient information. Because these students were disconnected from institutional actors, they appeared unaware of the rules of the field and ultimately lacked quality transfer information.

Figure 2 also suggests a relationship between quality of transfer information and transferring by the third year of the study. Among students who were not sufficiently informed (n = 19), one fifth of students transferred (n = 4). All four students who seemed to lack sufficient information but transferred were resource curators or hesitant advisees who collected a lot of information and struggled to make sense of it. They managed to achieve their transfer goals, but they faced consequences of misinformation, including loss of credits at transfer. In comparison, among the students we interpreted as having sufficient information (n = 38), more than half had transferred by their third academic year in the study (n = 21). Seventeen students who appeared sufficiently informed had yet to transfer.

Even students who acted strategically to gain power in the field experienced failure. Although gathering and curating sufficient information improved students’ probability of transfer, 45 percent of students with sufficient information nevertheless failed to transfer by the study’s third year. External life events—such as family obligations or the need to work for pay full-time—thwarted some students’ plans. Claudia, an FCCS student who was working full-time and helping to raise her granddaughter, explained interrupting her schooling: “I work 45 hours a week and the baby and my home life and, and, and, and. … There’s just too much. I couldn’t do it.” She still aimed to transfer, but she concluded it would take longer than she anticipated.

DISCUSSION

In this study, we interviewed personnel at Texas community colleges and universities, as well as transfer-intending students, to examine shared rules and norms related to community college transfer and how various actors produce, enforce, challenge, and comply with them. We followed transfer-intending community college students for three years, observing the consequences of field rules and norms for their behavior and transfer success. Drawing on the concept of SAFs (Fligstein and McAdam 2011, 2012), we argue that the challenges of transfer are best understood by examining the power dynamics of various actors, why they hold their positions in the field, and what actions are available to them based on their positions.

We find that university actors hold the greatest advantage as incumbents and governance units. They determine how courses count toward a bachelor’s degree, and their curricular influence trickles down throughout the state. Community college staff are typically dominated actors, often enacting field rules (implementers), although some question dominant practices and norms while reluctantly reinforcing the status quo (challengers). Despite the shared understanding that many community college students aim to transfer to a university, the general purpose of the transfer field is not to facilitate transfer but to maintain the standards set by universities.

As implementers, community college advisors and students occupied weak positions and had difficulty performing expected actions. In a field wherein university actors control information dissemination and determine how credits apply toward bachelor’s programs, finding and vetting transfer information was at times so difficult that even community college staff were unsure whether they had accurate information. The understanding among community college and university personnel was that students could not rely on community college advising alone to be sufficiently informed about transfer. Many students and staff reported that the structure of the higher education system required resource curation.

Actors in SAFs operate under a shared set of rules that indicate which actions are “possible” and “legitimate” for different actors based on their roles (Fligstein and McAdam 2011:6). Student implementers were often confused about what to expect of advisors. They scrambled to make sense of transfer information after receiving inaccurate or incomplete information from advising staff. Some students noticed that advisors’ motives conflicted with their own, particularly when it came to encouraging students to complete the state’s core curriculum or an associate’s degree prior to transfer.² When it became clear that not all advisors used tactics that students perceived as legitimate or appropriate—that is, providing tailored and accurate advice based on students’ interests—some students (hesitant advisees) refrained from interacting with advisors, turning instead to friends, institutional websites, or occasionally, university recruiters. Noninstitutional information channels, for students with that social capital, can help students navigate bureaucratic hurdles (Coleman 1988; Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum 2003).

Successful resource curators also relied on resources outside of the community college. These students analyzed information from several sources to identify common themes. In this way, resource curators, despite their limited power, sought to improve their positions in the field (Fligstein and McAdam 2011). Students who primarily trusted their advisors to provide transfer information reinforced the authority of their advisors, who, even if begrudgingly, worked to reify existing norms and values that focused more on preserving university authority than on fostering student success. System trusters who were given incorrect information by staff were less likely to gain sufficient transfer information. They did not seek outside information; it is possible they lacked the social capital to do so.

Some students, particularly those disconnected from the field, failed to perform actions expected of their position. These students were unclear about the rules and norms of the field, which left them more susceptible to being misinformed or underinformed and less likely to transfer.

Because our sample focused on community college students intending to transfer within one year, the observed magnitudes of different information-gathering approaches are likely not representative of all community college entrants. However, the challenges students faced navigating transfer information within this positively selected sample underscore the burden placed on community college students. Even resource curators who were sufficiently informed about transfer options described frustrations with their role. The hurdles community college students face in gathering information are compounded by competing external financial and familial obligations (Rosenbaum et al. 2007). The rules of the field thus have the potential to compound the disadvantages faced by the most marginalized students in the system.

IMPLICATIONS

Our results support research documenting structural challenges within community colleges, and they also illustrate how the existing social order in higher education complicates students’ ability to navigate transfer. These field-level dynamics offer some insights into what we might expect from large-scale community college reforms. The broader postsecondary environment, in which public institutions fail to establish and elucidate transfer pathways, creates unique challenges and requires students to curate information from various sources. The guided pathways movement, which focuses largely on community colleges, may be ineffective at improving baccalaureate attainment if it adheres to the current rules and norms of the field. Fields are constantly shifting and unsettled (Fligstein and McAdam 2011): The positions, shared meanings, and rules can break down. The guided pathways movement aims at least partially to disrupt the status quo. However, if only community colleges undergo reform, then the most powerful players in the transfer field—incumbents at universities—will still play under the original rules. This leaves intermediaries; community college advisors and administrators; and the weakest actors, transfer-intending students, in the same dominated position. Interventions that focus on informational reforms, such as “nudges” and intrusive advising, inspired by behavioral science (Bettinger and Baker 2014; Castleman 2015), may be palatable to actors at various positions in the field; yet our work suggests they are unlikely to shift the social order since they provide information without altering the status quo.

Government intervention, in which university actors are compelled to enact new policies, such as developing and enacting a shared curriculum for lower-division coursework by broad major fields, could shift the social order. Goldstone and Useem (2012) argue that sometimes incumbents rather than challengers launch change efforts. “Transfer-receptive” universities, which rely on transfer students to maintain their enrollment numbers (Dowd et al. 2008; LaViolet et al. 2018), often have less power in setting field rules and norms and are more receptive to broad reforms. Similar to many elite universities, flagship schools do not accept many transfer students (Dowd et al. 2008); their role in the transfer field is disproportionate to their role in admitting transfer students. However, if transfer-receptive universities work with the state to push transfer reforms, it might shift the field’s power dynamics.

Our findings have important implications for future research. First, we illuminate the roles of dominated actors in an SAF and highlight how the theory applies to a field in stasis. Second, although extant sociological literature has hypothesized that staff purposefully “cool out” student aspirations (Brint and Karabel 1989; Clark 1960) or face heavy demands and resource constraints that limit their ability to structure students’ educational experiences (Rosenbaum et al. 2007), prior literature does not, to our knowledge, highlight how and why college personnel share misinformation with community college students. Future research should continue to interrogate these processes, including the role of faculty in community college transfer. Our results suggest that through their power over curricula, faculty shape rules for credit transfer, contributing to varied requirements across institutions. We also see potential for future research to elaborate on heterogeneity in the roles of incumbents, given the power imbalances we observed between flagship and less selective universities.

Overall, our findings suggest a story more nuanced than the structural argument. By considering the relative power of actors, we see that community college advisors struggle to navigate complex transfer information shaped by more powerful university actors, and they sometimes provide inaccurate and incomplete advice to students. Students believe their role is to curate a large volume of transfer information to attain their goals. Ultimately, the transfer field, which follows the priorities and rules of university actors, disadvantages transfer-intending community college students, expecting them to navigate bureaucratic hurdles. These political and ecological contexts are probably partially responsible for the low attainment of transfer aspirations by community college entrants.

As the world faces unprecedented shifts due to COVID-19, the dynamics we describe may have pressing implications for an increased proportion of U.S. residents. In the face of an economic downturn, broad-access institutions like community colleges may experience increased enrollment and decreased state support, similar to the situation during and after the Great Recession (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). If so, transfer agreements will become even more important. It is also possible that postsecondary institutions may make considerable changes to advising and curricula in response to new demands and constraints during the pandemic; those changes could shift the social order, but we expect the current power dynamics will be persistent and difficult to shift even in a population health crisis.

Biographies

Lauren Schudde is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of educational policies and practices on college student outcomes, with a primary interest in how higher education can be better leveraged to ameliorate socio-economic inequality in the United States.

Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the social and political dimensions of market-based reforms and privatization in education.

Catherine Hartman is a postdoctoral research associate at the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on community college student engagement and student transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions.