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Getting from Here to There: The Role of Geography in Community College Students’ Transfer Decisions

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Abstract

Community colleges have received renewed attention from policymakers seeking to increase college attendance and completion rates because they provide open access to postsecondary education for historically marginalized students. Yet, transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions are low. Inequities in opportunity that are shaped by geography and compounded throughout childhood may restrict higher education opportunities for low-income, first-generation college students. Most studies examining how geography constrains college choice focus on high school students’ initial decisions about higher education, not community college students. We analyze the spatial distribution of community college students’ “choice sets,” the 4-year institutions that they are considering transferring to. Using qualitative interviews and geospatial analysis, we examine how these spatial patterns compare between two community-college systems in Central Texas. We find that students’ choice sets are geographically constrained, but that for many students, these zones are geographically large, suggesting that interventions and targeted outreach from universities could help students identify and select from greater range of options. Our findings have important implications for college access and completion among first-generation college students, and for policies that seek to interrupt patterns of inequity tied to location.

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Notes

  1. If a student ranked an online university (Capella, Midwestern or Western Governors University), that rank option could not be mapped. No students in CC A ranked an online university. In CC B, four rankings in total were not mapped due to them corresponding to an online institution.

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  1. Educational Policy and Planning, Department of Educational Administration, The University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, D5400, Austin, TX, 78751, USA

    Huriya Jabbar, Joanna Sánchez & Eliza Epstein

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  1. Huriya Jabbar
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Jabbar, H., Sánchez, J. & Epstein, E. Getting from Here to There: The Role of Geography in Community College Students’ Transfer Decisions. Urban Rev 49, 746–776 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0420-2

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