My Day

Sara Goldrick-Rab, UW-Madison, has reported in this month's Sociology of Education on college transfer students using the latest numbers from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (students who graduated from high school in 1992 are followed through 2000).  She found that first-generation charactistics were even more telling than socio-economic when understanding why a college student -- enrolled first at a 4-year institution -- would transfer to a community college and then drop out.  Goldrick-Rab says she was surprised to find that money was not the key issue for this cohort and she recommends that 4-year institutions offer advising for those students who.  Check out the summary of her report (and the intriguing comments) at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/17/transfer  

Interestingly, academic advisors and faculty have been saying to our at-risk students for years to "reverse" transfer to LTI- LCC-BCTC-whatever... but we have no idea if this is good advising.  Are we saying to our students that they need to "drop down" in the hopes that they don't "drop out"? Are we promoting the "swirling" enrollments that every support staff member dreads?  The latest statistics on transfers into UK are not good on this possibility.  This kind of advising is endemic, however.  How can we raise the faculty and staff's awareness of this problem?