The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1 - 216

mately 90% offer learning communities to
ﬁrst-year students, just one-ﬁfth offer them to
sophomores (Barefoot, Grifﬁn, & Koch, 2012).

As for sophomore transitions,

Wilder (1993) identiﬁed two types of sophomores: those who "decline" or "slump" and
those who "maintain" their academic momentum. The fact that many sophomores become
academically less engaged and fail to maximize
their learning may be partially due to the fact
that campuses miss opportunities to stimulate
them through initiatives such as seminars and
learning communities.

support transfer student success,

TRANSFER STUDENT TRANSITION

to transfer students by examining graduation
rates, time to graduation, and the number of
credits earned and found that transfer students
underperformed in each of those areas. Yet
recent research on students who transferred
from two- to four-year institutions is much
more promising, particularly for students who
earn an associate's degree before they transfer
(Shapiro et al., 2013).

The transitions that transfer students experience can take many forms, and they are becoming increasingly varied as the pathways
to and through higher education diversify
(Tinto, 2012). For example, some of the more
common transfer transitions include students
transferring from community colleges to fouryear institutions (vertical transfer), transferring from one four-year to another four-year
institution (lateral transfer), transferring from
online to traditional brick and mortar institutions, and possibly a combination of these
circumstances. At the same time, transfer
students are growing in number, and at many
institutions they represent a sizable percentage of the student population (National Center
for Education Statistics [NCES], 2008). Estimated to make up approximately 20% of the
student composition of four-year institutions
(NCES, 2008), this population often fails to
be a priority (Henscheid, 2008). Historically,
transfer student college completion rates have
lagged behind those of native students. For
example, in 2011, the Texas Higher Education
Coordinating Board compared native students

216

there are a number of programs to
but unfortunately empirical
evidence to demonstrate program
effectiveness is meager.

Unlike that for sophomore students in transition, there is a growing and weighty amount
of literature on transfer students. While this
lends itself to a better understanding of the
transfer student and his/her experiences on
many fronts, there is still much that is not understood. As for sophomore transitions, there
are a number of programs to support transfer
student success, but unfortunately empirical
evidence to demonstrate program effectiveness is meager (Foote et al., 2013; Hoover,
2010). Even in the case of grant-supported
national initiatives, which assist community college transfer students in graduating
from four-year institutions (e.g., Completion
By Design and Complete College America),
measuring the success of the programmatic
practices appears to be focused on statistics

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1

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