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Objective/Research Question: This research explores how community college students, who are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and aspire to vertical transfer in STEM make choices about majors and transfer destinations. The question is important to advancing equity in STEM, which continues to perpetuate disparities in attainment for minoritized, first-generation, and financially disadvantaged students, who disproportionately enter higher education in community colleges. Methods: Using a longitudinal, qualitative research design, the study relied on semi-structured interviewing to generate in-depth evidence about student experiences. Results: Findings showed that career goals were uniformly influential to students, yet career information was unevenly available or comprehensible during community college. Students’ choices about what to major in and where to transfer were iterative and intertwined, with these choices deeply connected to students’ families and lifetime priorities. Delays in student decision-making tended to have less to do with uncertain individual preferences than to lack of information about a specific STEM major and its alignment with possible future degrees, transfer destinations, and career pathways, as well as contingencies associated with the transfer admission process. Conclusions/Contributions: This research demonstrated STEM-specific nuance in how underrepresented community college students navigate major, career, and transfer destination decision-making as well as the influence of family and location-based priorities in student choices. Future research should investigate how to best provide directional support for students’ major and transfer destination decisions, including major-to-career awareness and the academic and personal dimensions of transfer.
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Opening the Black Box of Vertical Transfer Admission: The Experiences of Community College Students in STEM Majors
Better understanding of how students achieve vertical transfer is vital for advancing equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors. Among the many sources of barriers, delays, and complexities demonstrated in previous research as influencing vertical transfer outcomes, the transfer admission process has been generally neglected. Using a longitudinal, qualitative design, and drawing on transfer capital and field theories, this study investigated how community college students who are underrepresented in STEM fields successfully navigated admission to a four-year institution in a STEM major. Results indicated that students experienced transfer admission as risky and uncertain. They accrued transfer capital over time, in the form of knowledge about transfer admission and strategies to bolster their competitiveness, including regulating their coursework intensity and actively managing their GPAs. Although these forms of transfer capital helped students succeed in transferring, some strategies could backfire, causing unintended negative consequences, such as time-to-completion delays, excess credit accumulation, or disadvantages in securing admission. Results supported the contention that the transfer admission process is a pivotal, yet largely neglected aspect of student experience in STEM vertical pathways. Conclusions provide suggestions for further research and implications for institutional practice.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1761185
- PAR ID:
- 10412765
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Community College Journal of Research and Practice
- ISSN:
- 1066-8926
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 25
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2022.2135041
