Abstract
Using data on over 41,000 students in one state who entered community college before transferring to a 4-year institution, this study examines the following question: Are community college students who earn an associate degree before transferring to a 4-year college more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree? Due to the causal nature surrounding this question we employ several strategies to minimize selection bias, including the use of propensity score matching. Analysis reveals large, positive apparent impacts of earning the transfer-oriented associate degrees (i.e., Associate in Arts and Associate in Science) on the probability of earning a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. We do not find any apparent impacts associated with earning one of the workforce-oriented degrees (i.e., Associate in Applied Science) that are awarded by programs typically designed for direct labor market entry. This is an important distinction, as all associate degrees are not equal in their potential impacts on future baccalaureate completion.
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Notes
Students also regularly “swirl” between these sectors, an issue not addressed in this paper.
Furthermore, optimal strategies may differ from state to state and even college to college depending on the policy regime.
There is not a guarantee, however, that transfer credits will count as anything other than general electives, and so students may have to repeat courses at the four-year college in order to satisfy requirements for specific majors.
Research confirms that appropriate calipers can substantially reduce bias. Although a review of the literature reveals a lack of consensus as to the most desirable caliper width, 0.25σ p is widely accepted as the recommended choice (Lunt 2014) based on Rosenbaum and Rubin’s (1985) article "Constructing a Control Group Using Multivariate Matched Sampling Methods that Incorporate the Propensity Score".
The system under study consists of approximately 60 community colleges and 20 universities.
Six years is considered to be the standard length of time for baccalaureate completion, as it is 150 % of the expected time to degree for first-time, full-time students.
It should be noted, however, that in some ways this seeming “limitation” can actually be considered an improvement upon earlier work that simply controls for credits earned (e.g., Crook et al. 2012). Controlling for credits alone constrains the effect of the associate degree to be the same for all levels of credits earned, which is difficult to justify. Restricting the sample as we do, however, allows us to appropriately generalize the impact of associate degree completion to a more similar group of students.
Less than one-third of the entire sample of transfer students attended a school that did not report degree completion to the NSC.
Students must select a program of study upon applying to the college and are therefore formally declared by the time the students begins his or her studies. Though AAS programs are not designed for college transfer, several 2- and 4-year institutions have developed bilateral agreements to facilitate transfer for AAS degree recipients. These special agreements, however, are neither supported nor enforced by the state.
Comparing the first two columns of Table 7 in Appendix provides a way of understanding how our restricted credit analysis sample is different from that of all transfer students. Students in our credit-restricted group were around the same age (perhaps slightly younger) but were more likely to be White, less likely to be Black, and more likely to have enrolled in developmental education than the larger sample of all transfer students. Surprisingly, students with 50–90 credits transferred after about the same number of terms as the sample of all students, about 17 terms or 5 years of study.
Although we focus on students entering into an AA/AS or AAS program in their first term, some students initially enroll in Associate of Fine Arts (AFA), certificate, or diploma programs. We do not present separate analyses for these students, in part, due to small sample sizes. For example, only 59 of the 98 transfer students who initially enrolled in an AFA program and earn 50–90 non-developmental community college credits obtained an AFA.
Although we only discuss 6-year outcomes, we also looked at the relationship between earning an associate degree and bachelor’s degree attainment within 4 and 5 years of entering the community college. Even after limiting the time of observation we generally find similar, though slightly attenuated, relationships to the 6-year outcomes presented here.
Though in theory there should not be AA/AS or AAS students in the 50–54 and 55–59 credit bins, our data have some students who fall into these credit ranges. There are several potential reasons that could explain this phenomenon. For example, (a) students may transfer credits into the state system from other colleges (credits that do not show up on their community college transcript), (b) we did not include final grades of IP (in progress) or O (Other) as passing, and (c) some students may not in fact be FTIC but we were unable to detect previous postsecondary enrollments using the National Student Clearinghouse.
Though we look at a student’s intended program of study in his or her first term, it is possible that students change majors during college.
After including GPA as an additional matching covariate, we observed significant differences in age (−0.5 years) and GPA (−0.04 points) among all students within the 50–90 credit range. Using the same matching algorithm on AAS program participants a statistically significant difference in age of 0.6 years remained. After matching, however, these biases were reduced by 74.2, 81.5, and 78.4 %, respectively. Additionally, when restricting our entire sample to students who earned 60–80 community college credits, regardless of initial program enrollment, the comparison group was significantly more likely to be female (2.4 %) and about 0.5 years older than their peers. The balance of these characteristics across groups, however, was significantly improved as evidenced by bias reductions of 53.5 and 64.7 %, respectively. No differences between comparison and control groups were observed when limiting our sample to students who transferred within the first three years of community college enrollment.
Detailed tables for these results are available upon request.
It should be noted, however, that the opportunity costs for AAS students may be very different than those potentially encountered by AA/AS students. Arguably. AAS students (and earners in particular) have valuable skill sets that can earn wages. As such, it may only be the weak AAS students, those who are unable to find employment, who transfer to four-year institutions. Such a scenario, while not necessarily at odds with a signaling hypothesis, could provide another explanation for the differences in transfer institution type uncovered here.
Similarly, Crook et al. (2012) argued that their findings reflected the CUNY articulation agreement.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this study was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The authors appreciate comments from Clive Belfield, Davis Jenkins, Shanna Smith Jaggars, Madeline Joy Trimble, Matthew Zeidenberg, Sung-Woo Cho, and others.
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Kopko, E.M., Crosta, P.M. Should Community College Students Earn an Associate Degree Before Transferring to a 4-Year Institution?. Res High Educ 57, 190–222 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9383-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9383-x