California’s community colleges and four-year institutions have launched initiatives to streamline the transfer pathway and increase the number and diversity of transfer students. These efforts range from increasing outreach, to guaranteeing future transfer admission for eligible students, to expanding existing transfer programs to more colleges. In this section we highlight some of the ways that institutions are working to improve transfer in the state.
California State University Transfer Programs
Students can become eligible to transfer to a California State University (CSU) in two main ways. In general, upper-division transfers must have 60 semester units (or 90 quarter units) and an overall GPA of at least 2.0. Students must complete a set of general education courses outlined by the CSU General Education Requirements—Breadth guidelines, or the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC), the latter of which also satisfies lower-division requirements for transfer to a UC.
However, students can receive guaranteed admission to a CSU by obtaining an Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT). While it is generally not a requirement to earn an associate degree prior to transferring, the ADT pathway provides students with an opportunity to earn a credential on their path to a bachelor’s degree. The ADT also guarantees a spot at a CSU with only 60 units (about two years of full-time coursework) remaining to complete a bachelor’s degree in a major similar to students’ community college program of study. Currently, the ADT pathway contains 40 majors, including associate of arts degrees for transfer (AA-T) and associate of science degrees for transfer (AS-T), and requires 60 units (or 90 units in the quarter system), including an approved set of general education courses and at least 18 units in an approved set of major courses.
Although students are guaranteed a spot at a CSU, they are not necessarily guaranteed a spot at their choice of campus and may instead be redirected to a different CSU. For example, six campuses are fully impacted for 2023–24, which means they will likely have to turn away some applicants. Those eligible applicants would be admitted at other CSU campuses that are not impacted. Recent program changes have expanded the pool of ADT options to include nine private four-year institutions in California, as well as 37 Historically Black Colleges and Universities and four fully online universities across the nation.
Since the ADT program’s inception over 10 years ago, the number of ADT degrees awarded has grown dramatically, reaching over 74,000 in 2020–21 before declining to just over 70,000 in 2021–22. The ADT has become the premier pathway for transfer to a CSU, with over half of all transfer students entering with an ADT. Even so, a substantial share (about half) of ADT students do not enroll in CSU.
University of California Transfer Programs
The University of California has three major pathways for students attempting to transfer from California Community Colleges: Transfer Admission Guarantee, Transfer Pathways, and Pathways+.
The Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) is for students who know which UC they would like to attend. Students must take a campus-specific set of 30 (for the semester system) or 45 (quarter system) UC-transferable units that align with their intended program of study at a community college. Students must also maintain a minimum GPA, which can vary by campus and program. However, not all majors accept Transfer Admission Guarantees; for example, the popular computer science major does not accept TAG at Davis, Santa Cruz, and Irvine. In addition, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego do not accept TAG at all. About one-third of all transfer admits are via TAG, which means a majority of admits transfer without guaranteeing their spot at a UC.
Transfer Pathways do not guarantee admission but are a set of coursework that makes students eligible to be admitted into a program of study at any UC campus. Students can use an online tool to find the specific courses that make them eligible for entry into their major. Minimum GPAs again vary by campus, major, and how many students apply for transfer at each campus.
Finally, Pathways+ combines coursework aimed at specific majors with a TAG at a specific campus. This program allows students to be guaranteed entry at one campus while becoming eligible, and perhaps more competitive, for admission at other UC campuses.
The UC provides tools to ensure that students interested in transferring are able to determine whether courses at their community colleges will satisfy transfer requirements. The UC Transfer Admissions Planner is an online tool that helps students plan and track their coursework toward meeting the UC requirements for transfer. The CCC, CSU, and UC systems also provide a list of course articulation between each community college and each CSU or UC campus so students can determine if a prospective course would fulfill a requirement for transfer.
Improving Transfer at the Campus and Regional Levels
Individual campuses are also engaging in a number of efforts to improve the recruitment, enrollment, and success of transfer students. Here we highlight some campus and regional efforts and report on interviews with six representatives from four-year universities that have had success in recruiting and enrolling transfer students.
For example, UC Berkeley—among the most selective UC campuses for transfer—has launched a Transfer Student Center, which provides resources and support to transfer students. CSU Long Beach—a selective CSU—has implemented the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act (STAR) program, which guarantees admission to California community college students who complete certain requirements.
New regional efforts are also promising, especially those focused on improving representation of students from the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire. In its 2030 Capacity Plan, UC outlined goals to expand outreach efforts and increase transfer enrollment in these regions. With the help of state funding, UC Riverside has partnered with Growing Inland Achievement and the Riverside County Education Collaborative to improve educational outcomes in the Inland Empire, including through transfer. This includes plans to develop “a pilot transfer pipeline that would automatically matriculate students from 12th grade to a partner CCC and then to UCR through its Transfer Admission Guarantee program.” The Riverside Community College District is also working with UC Riverside to establish a dorm for Inland Empire transfers, an effort designed partly to address concerns about inclusion in the campus community.
The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium is working with multiple organizations and educational institutions to improve transfer, including leading an effort to adapt the CCC–CSU Associate Degree for Transfer, thereby allowing that guarantee to extend to UC Merced. The campus is also collaborating with Merced College through its Merced Promise program to develop and provide essential tools, resources, and opportunities for prospective transfer students and, as highlighted in UC’s 2030 Capacity Plan, is creating 2+2 major (two years in community colleges and two years at the university) mapping with 14 community colleges in the Central Valley to streamline transfer pathways.
The university officials we interviewed are heavily engaged with their local community colleges, usually through work with community college transfer centers and advisors; they also work directly with local community college students. They see their scope as statewide, however, and some universities engage with all 116 community colleges; one reported receiving applications from every community college in the state. Many campus leaders relayed the importance of engaging their whole campus in successful recruitment and retention efforts, with events focused on prospective students and their families, peer-to-peer advising and support, as well as transfer access and transfer success.
Four-year universities also rely on engagement with prospective students through programs like Umoja, Puente, and MESA—educational programs that support historically underrepresented student groups as they make their way through community college and that in many cases continue programs students started in high school. At UC, these programs fit under Student Academic Preparation and Educational Partnerships (SAPEP), which aim to reduce disparities in college access across the state. UC notes that over 24,000 community college students were served by these three programs in 2020.
All universities mentioned the challenges brought on by the pandemic, which shrank the pool of community college students considerably and led to changes in how and where outreach and recruiting could happen. Many officials felt students who have had most or even all of their community college experience online have been harder to reach through traditional recruiting efforts. However, campuses also adopted new strategies and found virtually connecting with students to be beneficial. Beyond COVID, there are some longstanding challenges to the receiving end of transfer. In particular, course articulation between community colleges and university requirements, especially for new or online courses, can be a barrier for students trying to qualify for transfer at specific campuses or in specific majors.
California Community College Initiatives
The implementation of AB 705 in fall 2019 transformed how students were placed into math and English courses and how remediation was administered at community colleges across the state; the law aimed to get students more efficiently to a certificate, degree, or transfer. Indeed, after implementing the policy, more students began enrolling in and completing transfer-level English and math, paving the way for quicker transfer for more students (Cuellar Mejia, Rodriguez, and Johnson 2020). Promisingly, even during COVID-19, access to transfer-level English and math courses remained high (Cuellar Mejia et al. 2022; Cuellar Mejia et al. 2021).
Still, equity gaps in transfer-level course completion remained and implementation was uneven across the system. Assembly Bill 1705 was signed into law by Governor Newson in September 2022 to support a comprehensive and equitable implementation of AB 705. In short, this bill explicitly requires community colleges not only to place students directly into transfer-level English and math courses but also to ensure that students actually enroll and are supported in those courses. To support full implementation of AB 1705, the legislature appropriated $64 million (one-time funding) in the 2022 Budget Act. These funds will assist colleges in developing corequisite support models, providing professional development and technical assistance, aligning concurrent student support services, and developing innovative course sequences (Lowe 2023).
More broadly, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office launched its Guided Pathways initiative in 2017, a student-centered and equity-focused framework that allows colleges to “forge clear paths for students and remove systemic obstacles to their success.” In short, Guided Pathways focuses on helping students choose and enter programs of study, clarifying and mapping pathways to students’ end goal, keeping students on their paths, and ensuring they are learning by removing barriers and providing necessary supports and resources. Currently, every college is implementing Guided Pathways, supported by systemwide resources and technical assistance partnerships. This framework has proven to be a foundational piece of the system’s efforts to make transfer pathways more accessible.
Dual enrollment, which provides opportunities for high school students to take college courses, has been steadily increasing in California and can play an important role in Guided Pathways because it allows high school students to explore college degree programs early (Rodriguez and Gao 2021; Rodriguez et al. 2023). Early results suggest that dual enrollment participants enroll in two- and four-year colleges at relatively high rates, though more work is needed to address current issues such as racial/ethnic equity gaps in access, non-transferrable course offerings despite the implementation of AB 705, and a lack of qualified and sufficient staffing. Nevertheless, dual enrollment provides an important pathway for students to access college-level courses early, and in turn, streamline opportunities to transfer once enrolled full time in community college.
Creating a Single Transfer Pathway
As mentioned in the introduction, recent efforts to create a single pathway for transfer have come from the UC, CSU, and CCC working together to implement the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act (AB 928), a 2021 law meant to align transfer requirements between UC and CSU. The act requires the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates to establish one lower-division general education pathway, of no more than 34 units, that meets admission requirements for both the California State University and University of California systems. This pathway, the Cal-GETC, should be the only pathway used to determine eligibility starting with the fall term of the 2025–26 academic year.
AB 928, also established an Intersegmental Implementation Committee to facilitate coordination for the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) and focus on improving student transfer outcomes. This committee includes representatives from the California Community Colleges system, public and private universities, as well as the academic senates and student associations of each segment. By December 31, 2023, the committee is required to provide the legislature with recommendations on how to improve the scale-up of the ADT and streamline transfer across segments for students. Where ADTs for major pathways exist, the law requires the community colleges to place students who declare a goal of transfer on their mandatory education plans on the ADT pathway (unless the student decides to opt out). Colleges should offer this route by August 1, 2024.
Promisingly, AB 1111 was also signed into law in 2021, requiring the implementation of a common-course numbering system across the California community colleges on or before July 1, 2024. The system will work in conjunction with AB 928 to ensure clarity of necessary coursework, maximize credit mobility, and streamline transfer by assigning the same course number to comparable courses across all colleges.
UC does not participate in the ADT program but does consider it a supplemental factor that can positively affect a student in the transfer admissions process. Efforts to encourage UC to adopt the ADT program have been met with resistance by UC. In our interviews, UC representatives expressed concern that the lower-division courses of ADT degrees do not always align with UC major preparation requirements. However, there has been some progress. For example, UC Merced has been working with the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium since 2018 to increase the effective use of ADTs by pre-approving them to fulfill lower-division requirements for transfer, identifying the specific upper-division courses required for students once admitted to UC Merced, and aligning these with the ADT to show a four-year sequence.
At a state budget hearing in March 2023, UC proposed a new transfer program guaranteeing admission to students who meet the new Cal-GETC requirements. Details on the plan are sparse, but the UC proposal included a guarantee of admission if students maintain a specified GPA and complete certain lower-division preparation courses. Students are not guaranteed their campus of choice, however, and may be redirected to UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, or UC Merced.
Dual Admission
Dual admission is a promising approach for improving the transfer pathway. In a dual admission program, students who apply to and enroll in a community college would be conditionally accepted to a state university. The program could also be designed to include those who first apply to a state university but are not admitted; private colleges could participate as well.
A recent report by the Recovery with Equity Taskforce identified dual admission as one way to create “clear, easy-to-navigate pathways into and through postsecondary education.” Through dual admission, students would gain more certainty and clarity as they develop their academic plans, and the program could lower or eliminate application burdens. It also offers a less-costly route to a bachelor’s degree, given the lower costs of attending a community college for most students.
California already has a strong foundation for developing a dual admission program. Both the TAG (UC) and ADT (CSU) programs mentioned above reflect guarantees of admission, but neither admit at the time of enrollment in community college. In a dual admission program, UC or CSU would offer admission to entering, transfer-intending community college students with the stipulation that students complete their first two years at a community college and pending the completion of certain requirements.
UC has recently launched a three-year dual admission pilot program that would apply strictly to high school seniors who applied for freshman admission to a UC campus for the fall 2023, 2024, or 2025 terms, but were not admitted. Such students must be graduating from a California high school, have a UC GPA of at least 3.0, and have missed one or more A–G requirements. Those students would be offered conditional admission to a specific UC campus, contingent on enrolling at a California community college and completing specified transfer courses. Currently, the program is restricted to only campuses participating in the Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) program, effectively excluding UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego. All California resident students and undocumented and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students who have attended a California high school and qualify for AB 540 benefits (an exemption from nonresident tuition) are eligible for the program. The UC system expected that about 3,700 students would receive letters inviting them to participate in the program starting fall 2023.
CSU’s dual admission program, the Transfer Success Pathway (TSP), is similarly being offered for the first time to California’s high school graduating class of 2023. TSP is open to first-time, first-year state community college students who: (1) were not CSU-eligible at the time of high school graduation, (2) were CSU-eligible but chose not to attend due to personal or financial reasons, or (3) were CSU-eligible but the application to their campus of choice was redirected to another campus, and they did not enroll. Eligible students can enter into an agreement with a specific CSU campus, specifying an intended major, and must then complete an ADT or established set of transfer courses at a California community college within three years. All CSU campuses are participating in the program, with each campus determining which programs will offer TSP agreements.
The California State University has launched the CSU Transfer Planner, a digital portal that simplifies the transfer process and connects new California Community College students to their future CSU campus of choice early in their educational journey. The CSU Transfer Planner allows eligible students, CSU staff, and community college counselors to work jointly to support students on the transfer pathway. Within the planner, students will be able to determine their Transfer Success Pathway eligibility, research CSU campuses and degree programs, track transferable units, and enter into a Transfer Success Pathway enrollment agreement with the university of their choice.
Both UC and CSU’s dual admission policies are in their early stages, so it remains to be seen how many students are affected and whether these students eventually enroll in a four-year college.
