StudentTracker Helps Shasta County Increase Enrollment by 46% at Top Colleges Graduates Attend
Transfer enrollment is making a comeback, surpassing 2020 figures. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s fall 2024 Transfer Enrollment and Pathways report reveals that transfer enrollment, which comprises 13% of non-freshmen undergraduates, grew for the third straight year.
The ability to transfer between institutions provides students with greater flexibility in their postsecondary educational pathways. The Transfer Enrollment and Pathways report, which replaces the previous Transfer and Progress report series, finds that college transfer enrollment is now 7.9% greater than in the fall of 2020.
"The growth in transfers this fall is a further indication that students are adjusting postsecondary goals in response to changing education and labor market conditions," said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “That’s good news, especially for those who are able to return from stopouts by finding colleges that better meet their needs.”
Nearly 500,000 students transferred from a two-year to a four-year institution this past fall, a number that is now comparable to fall 2020 (-2,300, -0.5%). Although this remains the most common pathway for transfer students, the share of all transfer students that move from a two-year to a four-year institution declined 3.5 percentage points from fall 2020 to fall 2024.
Additional report highlights include:
Community College Transfer Enrollment: This past fall, 390,000 students transferred into a community college, an increase of 13.5% from the fall of 2020. However, total community college enrollment still has not recovered from pandemic declines (-52,300, -1.5% from fall 2020).
Continuing Transfer Students: The fall of 2024 saw the second straight year of enrollment growth for continuing transfer students — those who were enrolled at a different institution in the spring or summer term immediately prior.
View the complete Transfer Enrollment and Pathways report.
"The growth in transfers this fall is a further indication that students are adjusting postsecondary goals in response to changing education and labor market conditions. That’s good news, especially for those who are able to return from stopouts by finding colleges that better meet their needs."
Doug Shapiro
Executive Director, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center
Additional Resources:
StudentTracker Helps Shasta County Increase Enrollment by 46% at Top Colleges Graduates Attend
Watch On-Demand: “How Shasta Reduced Barriers to College Enrollment Success”
The National Student Clearinghouse offers live webinars where you can learn and ask questions about our services. While our staff hosts many of our webinars, we also welcome clients to share their own use cases.
Tara Schwerdt, School Counseling Coordinator at Shasta County Office of Education, and James Crandall, Regional Director – Data Strategies at North State Together, participated in a webinar about how StudentTracker for High Schools helped them reduce barriers to student enrollment success.
A Collaborative Effort
The Shasta County Office of Education wanted to strengthen the postsecondary culture in the county. In 2020, StudentTracker’s Top 25 Postsecondary Institutions First Attended Report revealed the postsecondary trends among Shasta students — which colleges they were attending and their persistence rates. As a rural county, they were able to confirm Shasta College topped the list, so that was their starting point.
The Shasta County Office of Education partnered with North State Together, combining their additional data to identify students who had not completed certain activities required to enroll successfully at Shasta College. With this information, school counselors were able to hold tier 2 intervention workshops to help students overcome barriers to successful enrollment (e.g., did not complete orientation, entered school email vs. personal email).
Yields Results
Two years after starting the collaborative project, enrollment for the cohort grew 46% at the top postsecondary colleges that Shasta County graduates attend. This includes Shasta College, University of California, Davis and California State University, Chico.
“Because we’re having more connected conversations about a postsecondary plan in general and really making sure that our students are getting all of the things done that they need, it’s building a culture of postsecondary awareness for our students,” said Schwerdt.
This year, their collaborative efforts were recognized by the California School Boards Association with a Golden Bell Award.
Learn more about Shasta County’s StudentTracker use. Register to watch “How Shasta Reduced Barriers to College Enrollment Success” on demand.
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“Because we’re having more connected conversations about a postsecondary plan in general and really making sure that our students are getting all of the things done that they need, it’s building a culture of postsecondary awareness for our students.”
Tara Schwerdt
School Counseling Coordinator, Shasta County Office of Education