Western Governors: A Pandemic-Era Transfer Success Story

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently commissioned a special report, Bucking the Trend: How Some Institutions Grew Their Transfer Enrollment Amid a Pandemic, that offers insights into how some colleges were able to grow their transfer enrollment in 2020-2021 even as numbers were declining nationally. 

In the spring of 2020, when many brick-and-mortar colleges were scrambling to adapt to remote learning, online mega-universities like Western Governors University kept doing what they’d always done — and thrived.

While most of higher education experienced a decline in transfer student enrollment in the academic year that followed the shift to remote learning, Western Governors grew its transfer student population by 18% in the fall and 14% in the spring.

From a sample of roughly 400 colleges with double-digit increases in overall transfer enrollment, the Research Center identified a dozen that showed an unusual growth in upward transfer enrollment during the fall 2020 and/or the spring 2021 compared to their pre-pandemic enrollment trends.

Read the case study about Western Governors and other successful institutions in Bucking the Trend: How Some Institutions Grew Their Transfer Enrollment Amid a Pandemic, which was funded by support from Ascendium Education Group and ECMC Foundation.

Additional Resources:

• ​COVID-19: Transfer, Mobility, and Progress
• Contact the Research Center