Greater Texas Foundation announces a grant in the amount of $130,000 to The University of Texas at Austin to support research conducted by Dr. Lauren Schudde and Dr. Huriya Jabbar, both assistant professors and GTF Fellows. The research titled “’Tell Me What I Need to Do’: How Texas Community College Students Experience and Interpret Transfer Policies,” will inform policy and programmatic changes to increase the number of students who transfer successfully from two-year to four-year institutions.
Although 81 percent of Texas community college students intend to transfer, only 20 percent ever make it to a university. Even for those who do, credit loss is a barrier to degree attainment. In Texas, there are several mandated policies to smooth credit transfer, but little is known about how they operate at the institutional level and how they are interpreted by students.
Dr. Schudde and Dr. Jabbar will collect qualitative data on the struggles transfer-intending students face before, during, and after transfer. By highlighting the voices and perspectives of students, they will offer evidence on the implications of current transfer policies for students and provide suggestions to improve institutional and state policies related to the transfer of college credits.
