Transcript Managing "Transfer Shock"

Managing
“Transfer Shock”
Community Colleges vs.
Baccalaureate Institutions
What does the research show?
Panelist insights
COMMUNITY
COLLEGES
BACCALAUREATE
INSTITUTIONS
 Many older students
 Many students part-time
 Most students 18-22
 Most students full-time
 Mainly geared to commuters
 Geared to full-time students
 Most students live on campus years 1-2
 Faculty focus on teaching
 Faculty focus on teaching, research &
publication
 Class size usually 25-40
 Taught by full/part-time faculty
 Lecture courses can be 200+
 Often taught by teaching assistants
 2013 CC tuition: $4,000
 2013 UW tuition: $11,000
Martorana & Williams (1954) compared a group of transfers and a
group of native students at the State College of Washington (now called
WSU).
They were equated on a number of factors, such as sex, major-subject
area, high school attended, & year in college.
They found that the transfer students had a problem of adjustment
which actually affects their academic effectiveness during the semester
just after transfer.
As this adjustment is made, the differences between mean GPAs of the
transfer & non-transfer groups become ‘negligible' (Bird, 1956).
In 1965, Hills used the term “transfer shock” to
describe the tendency of transfer students to
experience a temporary dip in GPA during the
first semesters at the new institution. He also
found that a subsequent GPA recovery, even
above average recovery, was also common.
Gold (1971), Nolan & Hall (1978) & Webb (1971) found that transfer
students generally earned grades .2 to .3 points lower than their GPA
before transfer.
Nolan and Hall also noted that transfer students’ grades regain the level
of native students after the first semester.
Students who began at a community college and subsequently
transferred exhibited a correlation between grades at the community
college and their subsequent grades at four year schools (Fernandez et
al. 1985).
Students transferring from two-year
environments report that the classroom
environment feels less supportive
and less interactive, therefore
hindering academic success.
(Townsend,1995)
Cejda (1998) found that transfer
students in math & science
majors experience a statistically
significant decline in GPA.
The older the transfer student, the longer it
takes to graduate.
Yet the overall results showed that the older
the transfer student, the better the final
cumulative GPA at time of graduation.
(Moumouris, 1997)
Transfer Shock = Culture Shock?
“Transplant Shock”
Questions for Panelists:
How did you experience transfer shock?
How has your university experience differed from your
community college experience?
What did you learn about yourself when you transferred?
What do you wish that you had known before transferring?