EdPolicyWorks Speaker Series: Rachel Baker
Cross-system simultaneous enrollment as a means of increasing community college transfer: The effects of an intervention to increase cross-enrollment in California
- - EDT
- Holloway Hall (Bavaro 116)
Abstract
The California Community College system is the largest system of postsecondary education in the United States, serving just under 2 million students, a large portion of whom come from traditionally underserved groups (CCCO, 2022). These community colleges provide an open-access entry point to higher education with pathways that lead to eventual transfer. However, despite extensive articulation agreements and transfer guarantees, less than 20% of community college students transfer to one of the two California Public University systems (CCCCO, 2022; PPIC, 2022).
To promote transfer between community colleges and state universities, California enacted legislation in 1994 to allow students enrolled in any of the three systems of public higher education to take one class per semester at a college in another system without formal admission and at no additional cost (CA Senate Bill 1914). The cross-enrollment policy was intended to make colleges “more learner centered than institution centered” and to expand opportunities for transfer (CA Senate Bill 1914). However, participation in cross-enrollment in California remains low. Recent work has identified several reasons that contribute this low uptake.
In this study we seek to improve rates of cross-enrollment between three Southern California Community Colleges and a public four-year university using California’s existing cross-enrollment policy. To do so, we implemented a randomized control trial in which treatment students were offered an intervention tailored to address financial, information, and value barriers that had been previously identified as key to the low-uptake of cross-enrollment opportunities. We find small, but significant, effects of the intervention on applying and registering to cross-enroll.
Speaker Bio
Rachel Baker is an associate professor in the Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Baker studies issues in access to and success in higher education with a focus on students in broad-access institutions.
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