Learn how to use the Transfer dashboard to understand the number of students who transferred to a 4-year institution who could earn an associate degree retroactively.
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Transfer
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP transfer dashboard to understand the number of students who transferred to a 4-year institution who could earn an associate degree retroactively. The transfer dashboard contains a wealth of information like:
- institutional transfer out rates for up to 8 years after a student's first enrollment at your institution,
- the percentage of transfer out students who earned a credential prior to transferring,
- the types of institutions students transferred to
- and the credential earned by those students after they transferred.
US postsecondary institutions are interested in ways to increase credential completion for their students. One way is by identifying transfer out students who have already earned sufficient credits for an associate degree.
Another way is through reverse transfer. Reverse transfer seeks to award associate degrees to transfer out students who do not have sufficient credit at an institution by allowing students to combine credits earned at 2-year and 4-year institutions.
Let's use this dashboard to answer this question: What proportion of our students earned sufficient credits to complete an associate degree prior to transferring to four-year institutions?
Navigate to the transfer institution level dashboard. We are in interested in understanding the number of credits that students earn prior to transferring to 4-year institutions and whether they have earned sufficient credits to complete an associate degree. Before we begin, let's set our filters. First, let's leave the transferred within filter set at greater than zero to 2 years. Next, let's set the destination institution type filter to 4 year institutions. Then let's set the earned credit milestone filter to students who have earned 24 or more credits prior to transfer.
Now our dashboard is filtered to only include students who spent up to two years at our institution, earned more than 24 credits, then transferred to 4-year institutions. Now let's scroll down to view the stacked bar chart. For the 2020-21 cohort, we find that 34% of students earned an associate degree prior to transferring out while 65% of students left our institution without earning a credential. That's 1,070 students who could potentially earn an associate degree from our institution retroactively.
Now let's learn more about those students who transferred out of our institution, specifically the number of credits they earned at our institution prior to transferring. To do that, we need to apply a dimension. Click on edit, which opens chart settings. Select earned credit milestone from the dimension dropdown and click apply settings.
Now our line chart shows three lines: students who earned 24 to 30 credits, students who earned 30 to 60 credits and students who earned 60 to 90 credits. The largest group of students earned 30 to 60 credits at our institution prior to transferring.
Let's explore these three groups of students a little deeper. First, let's look at those students who earned between 60 and 90 credits at our institution. To do that, let's change the earned credit milestone filter to more than 60 to 90. Now our dashboard shows those students who earned 60 to 90 credits prior to transferring out of our institution to a 4-year institution.
Let's scroll down to the stacked bar chart and review the most recent cohort. Here, we find that 32% of that cohort or 104 students transferred out of our institution without earning an associate degree even though they had earned sufficient credits to complete that degree.
Now let's change the earned credit milestone filter to more than 30 to 60. Reviewing the most recent cohort, we find that 69% did not complete an associate degree prior to transferring out. That represents 711 students. Of course, some of these students may not have sufficient credits for an associate degree now, but through a process called reverse transfer we may be able to award an associate degree if they reverse transfer some of the credits earned at another institution back to our institution.
And finally, let's look at the students who earned 24 to 30 credits at our institution prior to transferring to a 4-year institution. Changing the earned credit milestone filter, we find that 85% of that cohort or 255 students left before earning an associate degree. The credits earned at our institution are not sufficient to award an associate degree, but through reverse transfer with their four-year destination institution we may still be able to award them an associate degree.
What did we learn through this exploration? We found 815 students who transferred to 4-year institutions might have already satisfied the requirements for an associate degree at our institution. We also learned that another 255 students might be eligible for an associate degree if they reverse transfer credits. This data can be used to provide a powerful service to our students and our institution, which is awarding degrees that students may not know they have earned or could earn with minimal work.
We encourage you to explore your institution's PDP dashboards to find opportunities to better serve and support your students. Thank you for joining us.