Amid growing concerns about rising tuition costs, some institutions offer partnership pathways for students to transfer from a local community college, which is typically lower in price, to a four-year college for their bachelor’s degree.
Amanda Yodice from Islip, New York, did exactly that to save thousands of dollars in college costs.
The now 24-year-old attended Suffolk County Community College for an associate degree, then transferred to New York University for her junior and senior years through NYU’s Community College Transfer Opportunity Program. The NYU program meets up to 50 percent of financial need to students with a 3.5 GPA or higher who complete at least 30 consecutive credits at one of 14 participating New York community colleges.
“Your first two years of college are mainly liberal arts courses, so they’re kind of the same anywhere else. So if you just took those in a community college, then you can go to a [four-year] school and hone in and take the courses that you really want to take,” says Yodice, who graduated from NYU in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in media, culture and communications and now works at a public relations agency in New York.
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Under NYU’s agreement with Suffolk County Community College, most of Yodice’s credits were accepted.
“It was a really seamless transfer,” Yodice says.
Transfer pathways, often developed by private and public institutions, are intended to help students transfer from a two- to a four-year college without losing valuable credits earned at the associate level.
The option to attend community college first is becoming more popular among students and parents who are hoping to extend their resources in the face of rising four-year college tuition prices. In fact, the number of community college students from middle-income backgrounds — annual household incomes of $65,000 and higher — increased by more than 4 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
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While most four-year colleges and universities admit transfer students, not all institutions provide a set pathway for community college students. Transferring can have financial implications if credits are lost in the transfer — especially if the school doesn’t have an agreement partnership in place with a particular two-year college.
Here’s what prospective students should know about community college transfer pathways to reduce college costs.
Some transfer pathway agreements are administered through a state university system. The University of California, which enrolls more than 200,000 undergraduates across nine campuses, announced last month that California community college students will be guaranteed admission into a UC school if they meet certain course requirements; the agreement applies to students who enroll in a community college in fall 2019.
This is good news for students eyeing the community college route to UC, since this path can cost thousands of dollars less.
Says Claire Doan, a University of California spokesperson: “Every community college transfer student following a UC Transfer Pathway and meeting the GPA requirement set by the faculty, but not selected to the campuses to which he/she applied, would be entered into a systemwide transfer guarantee pool. That pool ensures that the student would be offered a place at another UC campus that has space in the student’s major or related program of study.”
Currently only six UC schools offer a guaranteed transfer pathway through the Transfer Admission Guarantee program, known as TAG. These schools include UC–Davis, UC–Irvine, UC–Merced, UC–Riverside, UC–Santa Barbara and UC–Santa Cruz.
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UC–Davis senior Aubreanna Zachary says she limited her student loan borrowing to less than $7,000 because of the TAG agreement, which enabled her to transfer nearly all her credits from Solano Community College as a communications major. “My house is 20 minutes away from Davis, so I saved costs on living, too,” she says.
Other state university systems also provide transfer pathways. Arizona State University, a large National University with more than 40,000 undergraduates, offers the ASU Pathways Program and the Transfer Admission Guarantee to Arizona community college students. ASU also extends its guaranteed admission program beyond state lines, partnering with with community colleges in California, Illinois and Washington.
Community colleges often partner with nearby private and public schools. Four-year transfer schools accept 60 credits on average from community colleges, says Nancy Lee Sanchez, executive director of the Kaplan Educational Foundation.
To bridge the gap between the first two years of college earned at the two-year institution level, many community colleges forge bachelor’s degree pathways with local colleges and universities.
“At Bucks County Community College, we have negotiated a wide variety of agreements, many of which guarantee the transfer of our graduates to a bachelor’s degree-granting institution, ensure that all of their credits transfer seamlessly and offer dedicated scholarships for the remaining two years of full-time study at their chosen destination,” says Jody Seutter, the director of advising and transfer services at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania.
Many of Bucks County Community College transfer agreements are with public and private colleges in the state, including Rosemont College, Bloomsburg University, Indiana University of PA and Temple University.
When community college students attempt to transfer outside a school’s transfer pathway, it can be more costly and involve more time in school.
For example, Yodice received an acceptance letter from the University of Michigan in addition to her offer from NYU, which has a transfer agreement with her community college.
“The University of Michigan wasn’t going to accept all my credits, so it would have taken me three years to graduate from there and at NYU — two years,” she says. “It would have been astronomically more expensive to complete an extra year there.”
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How Students Can Cut Costs With Community College Pathways originally appeared on usnews.com
