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.
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's degree retroactively.
As a quick reminder, the Transfer dashboard contains a wealth of information like:
- institutional transfer-out rates for up to eight 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.
U.S. postsecondary institutions are interested in ways to increase credential completion for their students. One way is to identify 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's 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.
So, let’s use this dashboard to answer this question: What proportion of students earned sufficient credits to complete an associate's degree prior to transferring to 4-year institutions?
As a reminder, the results in this tutorial are only for demonstration purposes.
On the Home Page for the PDP dashboards, one of the Outcomes-Over-Time metrics is the Transfer dashboard. Clicking this icon takes us to the dashboard.
We’re interested in understanding the amount of credits that students earn prior to transferring to 4-year institutions. And whether they have earned sufficient credits to complete an associate's degree.
Before we begin, let’s set our filters.
First, let’s leave the Transferred Within filter at “greater than zero to two years”.
Next, let’s set the “Destination Institution Type” filter to 4-Year Institutions.
Then let’s filter the data to students who have earned 24 or more credits prior to transfer. Click “Earned Credit Milestone”, deselect “All”, and select “more than 24 to 30, More than 30 to 60, More than 60 to 90, and “More than 90”, then click “Apply”.
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.
Hovering over the 2017-18 data point, we find that 2,711 students are in this cohort.
Next, let’s find the proportion of those students who earned an associate's degree from our institution prior to transferring. To find that, we need to look at the lower right stacked bar chart. The 2017-18 bar chart shows that 43% of that cohort earned an associate's degree prior to transferring out, while 57% left without a credential. That’s 1,190 students who could potentially earn an associate degree at our institution retroactively.
Next, let’s learn more about the number of credits these transfer-out students earned at our institution. To do that, let’s apply a dimension. Click “Select Dimension” and select “Earned Credit Milestone”. 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 and hovering over the 2017-18 data point tells us that there are 1,437 students in that category. Hovering over the 2017-18 data point for students earning 60 to 90 credits, we find that there are 354 students in that category and hovering over the data point for those who earned 24 to 30 credits, we find there are 296 students in that category.
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” global filter to “more than 60 to 90”.
Looking at the lower right stacked bar chart, we learn that 20% of that cohort, which includes 72 students, did not earn an associate's degree prior to leaving our institution even though they had earned sufficient credits to complete an associate's degree.
Next, let’s change the “Earned Credit Milestone” global filter to “more than 30 to 60”.
The lower right stacked bar chart tells us that 59% of this cohort did not complete an associate's degree prior to transferring out. That represents 851 students.
Of course, some of these students may not have sufficient credits for an associate's degree now, but through a process called “reverse transfer”, we may be able to award an associate's 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 90% of that cohort, or 265 students, left before earning an associate's degree.
The credits earned at our institution are not sufficient to award an associate's degree, but through Reverse Transfer with their 4-year institution, we may still be able to award them an associate's degree.
What did we learn through this exploration? Approximately 900 students who transferred to 4-year institutions might have already satisfied the requirements for an associate degree at our institution. We also learned that approximately 300 students might be eligible for an associate's 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.