The Transfer Playbook, a product of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s teacher’s College, is a practical guide to designing and implementing practices that will “help community college and four-year college partners realize the promise of the transfer process. The playbook is based on the practices of six sets of community colleges and universities that, together, serve transfer students well. Using student data from the National Student Clearinghouse, pairs of institutions that have higher than expected rates of bachelor’s degree attainment for transfer students given their student demographics and institutional characteristics were selected. The first three sections describe essential practices underlying three strategies: (1) Prioritize Transfer; (2) Create Clear Programmatic Pathways with Aligned High-Quality Instruction; and (3) Provide Tailored Transfer Student Advising. Recognizing that there is still room for even the best current practice to improve, the fourth section of the playbook includes a discussion of “next frontiers” of practice; these are practices that even the high-performing community colleges and universities profiled here have only begun to work on in their continuing efforts to improve outcomes for their students. With that grounding, the fifth section lists activities for community colleges and four-year colleges to undertake in order to implement the strategies. The playbook concludes with a synthesis of practitioners’ perspectives on the benefits and challenges associated with state transfer articulation policies. The Appendix describes the selection methodology and research design in greater detail.”
For more on the Transfer Playbook including additional summary information, useful infographics, and the full-text of the report visit: http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/transfer-playbook-essential-practices.html