Fall transfer enrollment remains in decline in 2022, albeit at a slower rate than before, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Dr. Doug Shapiro
The Transfer and Progress Fall 2022 Report – released on Thursday– serves as a redesign of the research center’s two primary transfer reports, COVID 19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress and Tracking Transfer, to provide data regarding matters such as postsecondary participation and transfers and disparities in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report found that the declining fall transfer enrollment slowed down in 2022 (-4.7% in 2021 to -2.3% in 2022) but was still dropping faster than non-transfer enrollment in comparison (-4% in 2021 to -1.4% in 2022). An overall 6.9% decrease was observed for undergraduate transfer enrollment from 2020-2022. Yet, transfer enrollment still represents over 13% of non-freshmen undergraduate enrollment, the report authors wrote.
Undergraduate enrollment in general slowed its fall in 2022, going from -4.1% in 2021 to now -1.5%.
Upward transfers – where students transfer from two-year institutions to four-year schools – experienced the brunt of the drops, making up most of the Fall 2022 transfer enrollment decline, according to the report. This pattern makes it the only pathway to continue in decline in Fall 2022 (-7.5%), a total 14.5% decrease from 2020-2022.
The decline was also observed across institutions at all levels of selectiveness, the worst being for students transferring to highly selective institutions (-13.4%).
"Upward transfer has continued to decline pretty steadily at this point in every year since the pandemic at rates between 4-7%, so that's 2020, 2021, and 2022,” said Dr. Doug Shapiro, vice president of research and executive director of the NSC Research Center. “This suggests that baccalaureate degree attainment is beginning to appear increasingly out of reach for community college students, particularly those who enrolled in urban and suburban community colleges when we looked at different locations of community colleges, the declines were steeper in those locations and in the community colleges that have primarily transfer-focused programs for their students. So this is very concerning."
