While the majority of community college students in the United States report a goal of attaining at least a bachelor’s degree, fewer than one in five students do so within six years of community college entry. Drawing on National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data tracking an entering community college cohort nationally, this session highlighted the variation that exists in institutional and statewide effectiveness in helping students to transfer and earn bachelor's degrees and surfaced some of the structural barriers these students encounter.

The Transfer Playbook, published in May 2016, documents the practices of pairs of sending and receiving institutions identified via NSC data as very successful in helping students to transfer and earn bachelor's degrees. Based on visits to more than a dozen of these highly effective institutions, findings from the Transfer Playbook were discussed.