ESCAPING THE TRANSFER TRAP.

• Author: McCarthy, Mary Alice

WANT MORE STUDENTS TO GET BACHELORS DEGREES? LET COMMUNITY COLLEGES AWARD THEM.

Sitting in her office at Microsoft headquarters, just outside Seattle, Melissa Curry still can't believe her luck. Seven years ago, her life seemed to be headed for disaster. First, she was laid off from a good-paying job as a dealer at Great American Casino. Next, the state suspended her gaming license over outstanding speeding tickets. Suddenly, she was unemployed and barred from working in another casino. In her early thirties, raising a son on her own, and with no college degree, Curry knew she was in grave danger of falling into poverty.

Like many adults seeking a path to a new career, Curry enrolled in a nearby community college, Green River College. Still, as a Native American woman whose parents didn't go to college, the odds appeared to be against her. Fewer than 10 percent of bachelor's degrees in computer science are awarded to women of color, and fewer than 15 percent of students who enroll in community college go on to complete a bachelor's degree within six years. And yet, four years later, Curry graduated from Green River with a bachelor's in software development and a job lined up at Microsoft, where she is now a program manager.

Curry worked hard to get where she is. But she also had the good fortune of living in one of only two states that make it easy to get a bachelor's degree--a prerequisite to a good-paying job in the tech sector--from community college. A consistent finding in higher education research is that students are more likely to complete a bachelor's degree when they can do it all at one institution. But for the vast majority of people who start at community college, that's not an option; the only way to complete a bachelor's is by transferring to a four-year university. And it's the transfer process that leaves many students behind. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, less than a third of community college students who enrolled in 2010 transferred to a four-year institution, and of those, only 42 percent completed their degree within six years--just 13 percent of the original group. Transfer and graduation rates are especially low for African American, Native American, Hispanic, and low-income students, who are significantly more likely to attend community college than white middle--and higher-income students. Studies of community college transfer consistently show disproportionately low odds of earning a bachelor's degree for minority students, especially African Americans and Hispanics, a phenomenon that researchers call the "racial transfer gap."

Curry doubts that she would have continued her education if she could not have stayed at Green River. Figuring out where and how to transfer would have been too time consuming, and no option would have been as convenient. She also knew that she would lose the support of the faculty, advisers, and peers who helped her succeed during her first two years. "If I hadn't been at Green...