March 27, 2025 • 51 mins
Learn how geographic distance shapes transfer outcomes, and what colleges can do about it. When we talk about student transfer success, conversations often focus on GPA, support services, or articulation agreements. But what if one of the biggest factors is something as simple—and as complex—as distance?
In this episode of the Student Success Podcast, Dr. Darla Cooper and Dr. Daisy Segovia from the research & planning nonprofit, the RP Group, unpack the findings of their latest research on how geographic distance from a public university significantly affects transfer outcomes for community college students. With over one million students tracked across six years, the data tells a powerful story—one that challenges assumptions and calls for policy, funding, and support changes to level the playing field for students in “university deserts.” While it's a study of California colleges, the methodology and findings can be applicable to all states dealing with this issue.
This episode—and the study behind it—reminds us that equity in higher education isn’t just about what’s taught in classrooms or offered in student centers. Sometimes, it’s about how far a student has to go just to get in the door.
0:00: Introduction to the "Why" of the Study
4:43: The Study on Geographic Barriers
11:15: Mapping University Deserts
17:42: Who Lives in University Deserts
27:20: Impact on Transfer Outcomes
38:09: Solutions and Policy Recommendations
For the full text transcript and detailed show notes, visit the episode page.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
AL (00:02):
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast.
If you work in higher ed andwant to learn ways to support
students, check out today'sepisode.
Daisy (00:11):
[Quote teaser] Geography affects college enrollment and
basically that research saysthat students who live farther
away from their college optionsare less likely to actually
attend college.
Darla (00:24):
[Quote teaser] I just don't like this idea of limiting
people's choices and justtelling them figure it out, move
right.
Move to where the program is,move to where the university is.
Just do an online program.
Pick one of the ones that areclose to you.
AL (00:43):
In today's Student Success Podcast episode, we're diving
into a crucial but oftenoverlooked factor in transfer
success distance.
We may think that the impact ofgeography is obvious, but Dr.
Darla Cooper, executiveDirector and Senior Researcher
Dr.
Daisy Segovia of the nonprofitorganization the Research and
Planning Group, bring data andstorytelling together to reveal
(01:06):
just how much location shapesstudent outcomes.
They also provide promisingrecommendations to address this
challenge.
Welcome, darla and Daisy.
Let's learn about this study.
Darla (01:17):
We were hoping just to give a little bit of background
as to why why this study, to whywhy this study.
And so years ago we did thethrough the gate study that
looked at transfer, specificallyhoning in on students who had
completed all or most of theirtransfer requirements but then
didn't transfer.
And you know, and looking atall of that, that was that study
(01:40):
.
One of the findings that cameout of it seemed to point to
distance from the nearest publicuniversity as possibly a
negative factor impactingstudents' likelihood of
continuing on to transfer.
And so we said I think we needto dig into this a little bit
more.
So we went and asked for moremoney from Ascendium.
(02:06):
Thank you always to Ascendiumfor funding that and I'll let
Daisy get into the details aboutthe questions and this is her
project.
She did all the heavy lifting,she's closer to it than anyone
and I love hearing her talkabout it.
Daisy (02:25):
Anyway, Our research questions was really I guess
they're broader researchquestions to see how distance
affects these college-goingdecisions.
And specifically what we werelooking into is this idea of
education deserts.
So if you're familiar with likekind of like the term food
desert, or is that an area thathas kind of like the term food
desert, whereas an area that haskind of like scarce kind of
(02:47):
healthy food around witheducation deserts?
Basically, these are areas thatdon't have a lot of options for
students to attend colleges, sothey don't have community
college options, they don't haveany universities nearby, and
the research that has taken alook into this has kind of used
two different things to definewhat an education desert is, and
(03:07):
that's first is the distance ofhow far away are these students
from their college goingoptions, and the second thing is
how broadly accessible theseuniversities are.
And so one kind of like acommon definition that's used
out in the research is an areais considered an education
desert if they have no publicuniversity within 25 miles of
(03:30):
their house that has at least an80% acceptance rate.
Now, with a lot of this research, that 80% acceptance rate, what
that kind of does is that anyarea where their only option is
a community college kind of getskicked out of a university
desert criteria because weaccept everyone, we have 100
(03:52):
percent acceptance rate Right.
And so we really wanted to seehow, taking this definition of
an education desert and kind ofusing it of using it not really
to say like do they havecommunity college and university
deserts, but to identify wherethey don't have specifically
like a four-year transfer optionfor our community college
(04:13):
deserts.
And so we had more specificresearch questions, kind of
based off of all of this is likewhere are these university
deserts in our Californiaeducation system and then who
are the students who areattending colleges in these
areas?
And then, more importantly,what is the relationship that
exists between attending acollege in a university desert
(04:36):
and then their ability totransfer to a four-year
university?
AL (04:42):
Let's unpack the.
Well, if you want to talk alittle bit about the methodology
, that's fine.
Or if you want to just hit homewith the findings.
Whatever you'd like to do, yeah.
Daisy (04:53):
So let's just kind of get the methodology out of the way.
So, similar to all the otherstudies that we kind of do that
looks into transfer, we followedfirst-time students who showed
some behavioral intent totransfer.
So basically, through the data,they look like they might be a
student who's intending totransfer.
(05:13):
For this study specifically, welooked at students who began
between 2012 and 2017, followedthose students for six years,
mapped where they went tocollege, mapped their proximity
to their nearest publicuniversity within California so
in our education system thatwould either be University of
(05:35):
California or Cal StateUniversity and then we saw how
they compared with each other asfar as their transfer behaviors
and their transfer rates.
So, all in all, for this studywe have a little over 1 million
students that we took a look atto see if we can find some kind
of relationship between thedistance and their transfer
(05:56):
outcomes.
AL (05:57):
That's a very small N.
I'm really disappointed in you.
Daisy (06:01):
Yeah, sorry, it's not billions, but millions is pretty
good yeah.
AL (06:06):
Yeah.
One million, that's awesome.
Okay, oh my gosh.
Six years worth of data withone million.
Anything else about the method.
Was there anything qualitative?
Did you talk to any students,or was this purely quantitative?
Daisy (06:24):
Not yet.
That's the desert, so it comesat the end.
But for this study specifically, we did quantitative research,
just looking at the data that wehave access to now, crunching
some numbers and seeing like,because it's really this is the
first dive into kind ofeducation deserts within
California and specifically withcommunity college students, and
(06:46):
so we kind of just wanted to,you know, put our toes in the
water and see like, is there arelationship that exists between
this distance and the transferoutcomes?
And then, as we'll talk about alittle bit later, that is
spurring additional spinoffsabout you know what we found and
and getting trying to get atsome more answers cool, all
(07:08):
right.
AL (07:08):
So thank you for that summary of the methodology.
So let's dig in.
What did you find?
Daisy (07:16):
yeah, so first let's talk about the mapping.
Um, if you kind of take a lookat our uh california education
system here, um, we have, like Isaid, two kind of take a look
at our California educationsystem, here we have, like I
said, two kind of big systems.
We have the University ofCalifornia they have nine
campuses throughout Californiaand then we have the California
State University campuses andthere are 23 of those.
(07:37):
So all in all, our studentshave 32 options for them to
transfer to.
And when you start mappingwhere these colleges are located
, surprisingly they're not allevenly spaced out out of
California.
So it's not, like we said,we're going to build a college
or university every so manymiles.
A lot of them are clusteredaround, specifically the coast.
(08:01):
So there's a lot kind of inNorthern California, like in the
Bay Area space, and there'sanother cluster down South in
Southern California, along likeLA, orange County and San Diego.
So we're already seeing thatthe decisions that were made
about where to put theseuniversities right might affect
(08:22):
students, because if you're kindof not living in these
proximities, if you're not alongthe coast, you know, kind of
thing, you might have feweroptions for you to transfer to.
So already seeing like somekind of results, some finding
there, because when you map itout there's kind of just
specific locations where theseuniversities tend to be located.
(08:46):
And then when you map ourcommunity colleges, we have 116,
115, if you don't count thecompletely online one.
You kind of see the samepattern where there's large
clusters around the coast upthere in the Bay Area and then
along Los Angeles, orange Countyand San Diego.
(09:06):
But one of the things with ourcommunity colleges is they tend
to be more spread out, so theytend to be more in like the
really far north of California,more in Central California and
more options like all kind ofalong the borders of like Oregon
, options like all kind of alongthe borders of like Oregon,
(09:28):
nevada and Arizona.
And so even though we do havemore options for students to
attend community collegesbecause it's to be more spread
out, for the most part they arealso kind of closely clustered
in those key areas.
So kind of to see first ifthere's like this relationship
between the distance and thetransfer rates.
We did this kind of and it'stoo bad that the listeners can't
(09:48):
see this really coolscatterplot that I made, but you
can look at the report.
It's in there we kind ofgraphed like the overall
transfer rate for every collegeand then how far away they were
to their nearest UC or CSU andwithin 25 miles.
Remember, like the researchsays, like that 25 miles is that
(10:10):
cutoff.
Within that 25 miles you're notreally seeing like a pattern or
relationship between thedistance and the transfer rates.
There's a lot of variabilitythere.
They go like below 20%, somehave rates that are higher than
50%, but there's just like a bigkind of cluster of transfer
rates within that 25 miles.
But interestingly, once you getto that 25 mile marker you
(10:35):
start to see the transfer ratesgoing down a little bit low, or
they start going downessentially, and so at that 25
mile mark there was no collegethat had a transfer rate that
was above 40%.
And then the farther they gotaway from the distance, the
lower that transfer rate got.
(10:55):
And then once you kind ofcontinue on the distance, we saw
kind of another significantdrop in transfer rates when they
hit that 80 mile mark.
So we're seeing kind of similarfindings from the research that
already exists that that 25miles seems to be like the
important kind of cutoff.
But then we're also seeing kindof maybe the secondary kind of
(11:15):
cutoff with that 80 miles.
And so when we initially werelooking at you know how to
define a university desertwithin California, you know,
like I said, they usually uselike the broad access kind of
definition.
And so we looked to see likewhat the acceptance rates were
of these universities and kindof saw that when we were in
(11:36):
court we incorporated theseacceptance rates into our
university education desert.
It kind of put a large chunk ofour colleges in that definition
.
So about 42% would have beenconsidered a university desert
if we considered that acceptancerate.
And then we had some that eventhough they had no broad access
(11:58):
university nearby, they hadseveral limited access ones.
So maybe some colleges that hadlower transfer rates or lower
acceptance rates, but there arestill several of them around
them, right.
And so once we took that out oftheir definition of a
university desert, we saw apattern that made more sense.
And so even some colleges thathad really high transfer rates
(12:22):
only had some few options.
And so we decided to not usethe broad access part of that
definition and just solelyidentify a university desert
based off how far away thatcollege was from their nearest
UC or CSU, so just using thatkind of 25 mile marker.
AL (12:44):
Did you find one or two that were drastically impacted?
Daisy (12:48):
Yeah.
So if you take a look at thatscatterplot you'll see once you
get at that past that 80 miles,the transfer rates tend to kind
of like trying to really startto drop.
But there are two colleges thatare like the furthest away.
One college is slightly lessthan I think.
It was like 168 miles away andthe other one's over 200 miles
(13:11):
away and those two colleges hadreally drastically different
transfer rates.
One had below 10% and the otherone had above 30%.
So I'll talk about that alittle bit later once we kind of
start diving into these results.
But we want to keep that inmind, just like when we were
looking at this, like oh, why isthis one dot or one college
(13:33):
like an outlier, even thoughit's the furthest college away
from their nearest Californiaoption?
AL (13:41):
And, by the way, I have show notes, so send me the
scatterplot and I'll add that sopeople can follow through the
show notes.
Daisy (13:49):
Yeah, awesome.
So, based off of this kind of,when we discussed like what
would be the best approach todefine the university desert in
California, we came up with thiskind of double tier system of
what would be considered auniversity desert, and so that
(14:10):
first tier is going to be thecolleges that are the farthest
away from their nearestCalifornia option, and these are
going to be the colleges thatare the farthest away from their
nearest California option, andthese are going to be the
colleges that are at least 80miles away from a UC or CSU.
And then those that are a tiertwo university desert are going
to be at least 25 miles away,but less than 80 miles away from
(14:34):
their USC.
So we split up kind of theseuniversity desert into these two
tiers, just to kind of reallyemphasize that farther distance
really does make an impact.
And then everyone else is notconsidered to be a university
desert college and these are theones that have any option of UC
or CSU within the 25 miles.
(14:55):
So let's talk about who fallsinto each of these tiers.
So in our first tier remember,these are going to be the ones
that are the furthest away atleast 80 miles.
These ended up having sevendifferent colleges that were 87
to 211 miles away from thenearest California University.
(15:16):
In our sample this comprisedabout 18,000 students, a little
bit more than that.
And kind of what's interestingabout these colleges is that
almost all of them, so six outof the seven, are located in
areas that we consider to berural, so smaller kind of places
(15:36):
, farther away from things, andthat.
And if you look at when youstart mapping these in
California, you see that theseare all the colleges that are
along the border of California,so they are up against Oregon,
up against Nevada and up againstArizona and then the Mexico
border.
So these are all kind of thefarther away colleges.
(15:58):
In our tier two, universitydesert category, 22 colleges
fell into this tier.
They were 27 to 78 miles awayfrom the nearest California
university and in our samplethis is about 139,000 students.
But this one there's a littlebit more of variability in like
(16:20):
what kind of locations they werelocated in.
So 36% were in cities, 27% werein suburbs and the rest were in
either a rural area or a town.
But when you map these on theCalifornia map you see what I
call the middle-ish ofCalifornia, right, so they're
not along the borders and notalong the coast.
(16:41):
They're just kind of like thislittle line that goes down the
middle of California.
But again you're seeing kind oflike they're far away from the
coast, so they're a distancefrom their nearest university
options, and then everyone elseis not a university desert, so
they were the ones that werelocated within the Clit Coast
mostly.
(17:02):
So when we take a look to seewho are the students that are
being served by these universitydesert colleges, we see some
kind of like key things thatI'll kind of point out.
Well, number one is there iskind of like a difference in the
demographic makeup of thestudents who are being served by
these colleges.
So one of the key things islike more Latine students were
(17:25):
in tier one and tier twocompared to the non-university
deserts.
There were significantly fewerAsian students that were
attending the university desertcolleges, especially in tier one
.
And even though our NativeAmerican students usually
comprise a very small percentagewhen you take account of the
(17:45):
whole student population, if youlook at just Native American
students by themselves as awhole, 28% of them were located
within a tier one universitydesert, so the farthest away
from our universities.
So we're already seeing thatthere's a difference of who are
going to these communitycolleges in the university
(18:07):
deserts, meaning that theseperhaps are students that are
going to be more impacted bywhatever relationship the
distance is having on thesetransfer outcomes.
We we also saw that there weremore first-generation students
in this tier one and tier twocompared to the non-university
education desert, and morelow-income students, as well as
(18:30):
more students that are involvedin programs such as like EOPS.
So, all in all, just to kind ofdrive the point that the
students that are attendingthese colleges do tend to look
demographically differently thanstudents that have closer
options nearby, and so when westart to take a look to see if
this is affecting their transferoutcomes, one of the first
(18:51):
things we took a look at becausewe're not just really
interested, like if they make itthrough the gate, right, we
want to see how this affectstheir journey to that gate, and
so we had this concept from ourfirst study called the transfer
continuum, which kind of justcategorizes the different steps
that a student has to go throughto get to that gate, and
there's five different steps forthis, the first one being that
(19:15):
the student just seems likethey're a transfer explorer, and
so these are students that arekind of accumulating units.
They have between 12 to 44transferable units under their
belt, but they haven't quitemade any more progress beyond
that.
If a student moves on to thenext step, which is what we
considered a momentum student,they have a little bit more
(19:36):
units.
They have 45, between 45 and 59units and they have at least a
2.0 GPA.
So they're kind of maintaininga good GPA to start meeting
those transfer requirements.
And then the students that arenear the gate are the students
that have more than 60 units.
So usually there's more than isrequired to, you know, get
those transfers requirementsdone and they have that
(19:59):
two-point GPA, but they'remissing either their English or
their math requirement.
So almost there, very close,just need that English or math.
And then the next group arethose students that are at the
gate.
So they're at the gate, notquite through it.
They have all their transferrequirements or they've gotten
an ADT, so an associate's degreefor transfer, meaning that they
(20:20):
could ideally transfer but justnot through the gate yet.
And then those who are transferachievers are the ones that
made it through the gate andhave transferred to a university
.
And so, thinking of this Chinatransfer continuing, we're also
just kind of curious, like ifit's not just affecting the
final outcome but if it'saffecting their journey along
(20:40):
the way.
And what we saw is that, yes,the distance is affecting not
just the outcomes but thejourney within.
And specifically we saw that alarger proportion of those tier
one students did not make itpast the explorer stage.
So they are kind of stayingwithin, just accumulating units
but not maintaining the GPA orgetting their English, you know,
(21:04):
moving on to the other steps.
And then what we saw is thatthose who were past that
explorer stage were more likelyto stop at the gate.
So if they didn't get stuck atthe explore stage, then they
were getting stuck at the gate.
And again, we saw kind of thiscorrelation of, like, the
(21:24):
farther away that they were froma university, the lower their
transfer rate.
So once we looked at that, whoactually made it to to to
university?
Tier one had the lowesttransfer rate at 28%.
Tier 2 had a 33% transfer rateand those that were not in a
university desert had thehighest transfer rate at 36%.
(21:45):
So we're kind of seeing thisalmost linear relationship
between the distance and theirtransfer outcomes.
And then again, because wewanted to see, like you know, we
saw that there were differentdemographic makeup of the
students who are attending thesecolleges.
So we did see a difference.
When we looked at gender, theirethnic and racial makeup, as
(22:09):
well as whether they wereinvolved in any kind of other
special population.
We saw that for male studentsthey seemed to be more impacted
by distance.
Those that were for thefurthest way had the lower
transfer outcomes compared tothe male students that were
closer.
But for female students we sawthat they were kind of similar
(22:32):
throughout the three differentcategories, so they don't seem
to be as impacted as malestudents.
We also saw that there weredifferences in transfer rates
for first-generation students,low-income students and EOPS
students, where their transferoutcomes were exacerbated by the
distance again.
So Tier 1 had lower.
The students in Tier 1, if theywere first-gen, had lower
(22:53):
transfer rates thanfirst-generation students in
Tier 2, and then non-transfer.
We also saw performance gaps inthe transfer rates that were
evident among our ethnic andracial groups and again the
differences were exacerbated bythis distance.
And so, for example,specifically for Tier 1 students
, they experienced the largerkind of disparities across many
(23:17):
of their ethnic and racialgroups.
So for our Asian students, theyexperience the larger kind of
disparities across many of theirethnic nation groups.
So for our Asian students, forexample, those in tier ones,
their transfer rates wereconsiderably lower than those in
even tier two and thenon-university deserts.
We also saw the same kind ofpattern for our Black and
African American students,native American students and the
other kind of racial groups.
So we're seeing that thisdistance we're seeing those kind
(23:40):
of usual kind ofdisproportionate impacted
students is even exacerbated bythat distance.
So kind of what we wanted to seenext is okay, we know that some
students are not making itthrough the gate as much as
other students, but does itimpact where they go?
And so we kind of we took a lookto see where their transfer
(24:01):
journeys took them and we sawdifferences again of where
students are going.
For the most part we saw thatmost students, or just overall,
are going to the CSU system,which is not surprising.
Considering they have morecampuses, they tend to take more
of our students.
So this was true across all ofour three groups, but those in
the tier one were slightly lowerthan the other two groups.
(24:24):
But one of the things thatreally stood out was that those
were that were in the tier ones.
There were tier one studentstransferred out of state at a
rate almost double as a studentin the other tiers.
So the tier one studentstransferred out of state at a
rate almost double as thestudents in the other tiers.
So the Tier 1 studentstransferred out of state at a
38% rate, whereas those in Tier2 was only 20, and those that
(24:45):
were not in HHU deserts wereonly at 16%.
So again we're seeing not justdifferences in who gets to
transfer, but where theytransfer to and, specifically,
if they even stay withinCalifornia.
AL (24:59):
So can we hypothesize that Tier 1, that significantly
larger percentage that go out ofstate, is because they've been
in these little towns all theirlives and the closest California
university is still fartheraway, so might as well just go
beyond California.
(25:19):
Is that what we can hypothesize, you think?
Daisy (25:22):
I think that's definitely a good hypothesis and if you
take a look at you know we couldactually see where the student
ended up going, and we areworking on creating a map that's
going to show all of that.
But let me go back to thatexample of those two colleges
that were furthest away.
So what we saw when we startedto take a closer look into this
(25:44):
is we saw that the proximity ofthose out-of-state options
helped kind of mitigate thoselower transfer rates.
And so those two colleges ofthe furthest away College of the
Siskiyous was 211 miles awayfrom their nearest California
option, which was Cal StateHumboldt, and they had a 32
percent transfer rate.
But they were only 40 milesaway from their nearest
(26:07):
out-of-state option, which wasSouthern Oregon University.
If your option in California isto travel 200 miles, which I'm
sure you cannot do, like as astudent if you want to stay home
, drive back and forth 200 miles, right, but you could go to
Oregon and only drive that 40miles, 45-minute drive according
(26:30):
to Google Maps.
So, yeah, we saw that a lot ofthe students from College of the
Siskiyous were going toSouthern Oregon University
because that is a closer option.
And when we looked at the othercollege, which is the second
furthest away, which is PaloVerde College, it was 166 miles
away from their closestCalifornia option and they only
(26:54):
had an 8% transfer rate.
But when you took a look attheir out-of-state options,
their nearest out-of-stateoption was even further away
than their nearest Californiaoption.
So their nearest option was inNevada.
It was 189 miles away.
So that would still be like athree-hour drive.
(27:15):
So they don't have any optionswithin California.
They don't have any optionsoutside of California.
So it's no surprise that theirtransfer rate is so much lower
just because these students havenowhere to transfer.
If they don't want to, you know, get up and fly somewhere.
Essentially, what we're reallyseeing here is that, yes,
transfer, the distance reallydoes matter for students, not
(27:39):
just for their opportunities totransfer, but where they end up
getting to transfer.
You know that sort of thing.
When we calculated how manymiles a student kind of traveled
on average, those in the firsttier not surprisingly had to
travel more than 400 miles tothe nearest transfer option, or
actually did travel more than400 options, which is, you know,
(28:02):
a lot higher than those in tiertwo and in tier one.
So just kind of reinforcingwhat kind of the previous
research that says is that, like, if it's nearby, that is a
viable option, you're probablymore likely to want to go there.
It's logistically probablyeasier to go there.
You know that sort of thing,and so, yes, like you can
(28:24):
hypothesize that they have thosekind of out-of-state options
too.
Darla (28:28):
Your question brought up something different for me, al,
which was another findingrelated to the out-of-state
transfer, which was anotherfinding related to the
out-of-state transfers.
When we looked at it by race,ethnicity, there were certain
groups in those universitydeserts that were more likely to
go out of state and that wasour African-American, our
(28:49):
Pacific Islander and our NativeAmerican students, I mean like
way more likely from those areasin our state to leave the state
.
So I thought that was aninteresting finding and kind of
speaks maybe a little bit moreto what you're saying about
wanting to leave wherever theyare and wanting to try something
(29:12):
different and obviously havingthe means to do that.
Because that's the other piece.
You other piece of all of thisis it's not just I don't want to
, it's I literally can't.
I have a home here, I have afamily here, I have a job here,
my community is here.
This idea of place boundednessI mean that term makes it sound
(29:32):
like you have no choice and alot of our students don't.
We've talked to a few studentsjust more anecdotally in
conversation so far and theytalk about like I don't have the
means to move.
It costs money to move.
It also costs more to live inthese other parts of the state.
Right, when you're moving froma rural area to an urban area,
(29:54):
there's a cost of livingadjustment that has to happen,
and so all of these factors arecoming into play, but it's so
fascinating, you know.
Just looking at all of this.
AL (30:06):
Yeah, in fact I was talking to a college president the other
day because she was happy thatthey got more money for
scholarships to foundation and Isaid can I be honest with you
for scholarships to foundation?
And I said, can I be honestwith you?
These scholarships oftenactually are not helpful because
they offset financial aid, like.
So financial aid is like, oh,you got something, all right,
(30:29):
now we're gonna take somethingaway then and it doesn't really
help the student.
But what would help a studentbecause I was out out-of-state
transfer, was I really neededmoney that summer when I was
moving?
If you're going to give me ascholarship or give me money of
some sort, I'd need that helpfor that transition and we're
(30:49):
kind of getting in implicationsfor recommendations and practice
and solutions.
But because you've done such awonderful job quantifying the
impact of geographical distance,you know that could be
something that practitioners dowith the data.
Right is we need to allocatemore scholarship, more funding
(31:09):
to help them transition, asopposed to while they're still
in right.
So again, I might be jumping alittle bit.
Thank you for sharing that,Darla.
That that is fascinating,especially if.
What if?
Again, I'm just guessing,hypothesizing, what if for a
very long time in thosecommunities.
These, these student groupsthat you discussed, uh mentioned
, have, I don't know, maybe theyhaven't felt a sense of
(31:31):
belonging.
They had to find it out ofstate.
So very interesting interesting.
Daisy (31:38):
Okay, yeah, just to Darla's point.
You know there's a lot of costof living adjusting that needs
to be done not just in the costfinancially but the cost
culturally.
You know some of these studentsare coming from towns that
probably have a population thatare smaller than the student
population at like a university,Right, and so that could also
(31:58):
be a culture shock and I thinkyou know kind of hypothesizing
of like you know they need thatfinancial means to help them get
there but also some otheradditional support to help them
adjust to that environment, tobe, you know, away from what
they know, probably differentlifestyle, that sort of thing.
So there's a lot of things thatcan kind of speak to how we can
(32:24):
help students get that.
But all in all, I think ourfindings answer the question of
does distance matter?
Yes, it does Distance matters.
It affects students, their youknow, their options of where
they can go and that's affectingtheir transfer outcomes.
(32:45):
And so we're really seeing that.
You know that 25 miles seems tobe still an important marker.
That was kind of the minimum ittook to affect our transfer
rates.
We even saw that our studentsthat were in these university
desert colleges didn't progressas far in our transfer continuum
(33:05):
.
So it's not just affectingtheir final outcome, it's
affecting their journey alongtheir way as well.
And that we're just kind ofgenerally seeing the further
away that a college is, thelower their transfer rate is.
But if you kind of have thatout-of-state option or another
nearby option, it can mitigatesome of those lower transfer
rates.
(33:26):
And particularly we're seeingthat some students are being
more affected by this distancethan others.
You know, some of theseperformance gaps were
exacerbated by this distance,especially for our Latine, our
first-gen and our low-incomestudents.
So it's really critical that weuncover the factors that are
impeding what is getting in theway of our students' progress,
(33:48):
you know, toward their goal oftransfer.
And so these findings justreally underscore, like, this
urgent need that we need toaddress the influence of
distance on our educationalopportunities.
Because I think when we havethese conversations about, like,
what are our barriers for ourstudents' success, distance is
(34:08):
not part of that conversation.
You know it's usually likemoney is a big aspect.
You know academic support,those type of things, but when
you really think about it, ifyou are requiring one student to
cross the street, and there itis, and you're requiring another
(34:29):
student to go the entire lengthof California to get to a
college.
Those two students don't havethe same opportunities and those
two students are going to needdifferent types of support.
AL (34:41):
In your initial research, when you're looking at more
broadly, nationally, that thisis an issue, and then you dug
deeper into California which, bythe way, there's a lot of
listeners who are outside ofCalifornia and I'm sure if they
were to do a similar study, theyprobably, I would guess, find
similar findings.
So if you're out therelistening, I hope you do this
(35:08):
for your state too.
But when you were finding outabout this national phenomenon,
were you already seeing somesolutions that were in place,
such as?
I've seen four-yearuniversities have a presence at
a community college, somethingthat's prevalent, that works.
Is that something we should berecommending?
As long as it's affordable,right?
We don't want some $80,000 ayear private university trying
(35:32):
to go on our community collegecampuses and have massive debt.
So have you seen that?
Darla (35:38):
What we can't say is we don't know about effect yet, but
we do, in our report, offersome of the things that you're
talking about.
I mean that would actually be areally good study you need to
write that down, davey of theimpact of having, because I know
when we were doing this studyyou know we're doing going
around doing presentations andsomeone would say, oh well, that
(35:59):
college has a center nearby,meaning that there's some
university, public university,that has a center nearby which
is helping, you know, with theirtransfer rate.
But the flip side of that ismost university centers, at
least the ones that I've seen,they're not comprehensive
universities.
There's a limited number ofmajors that you can pursue and
(36:21):
finish your degree solely atthat center.
So you know, good for you, ifthe major you want, the career
you want to pursue, matcheswhat's available at the center
that's close to you.
But what if it doesn't?
Then you know then what happens.
So I mean university centerswas one of the options.
(36:42):
We talked about Baccalaureatedegree programs at the community
college that will be regionallybased.
Right, they're looking.
As part of my understanding I'mnot an expert on this, but part
of my understanding is whenthey're applying for this, they
are looking at their ownregional needs, these community
colleges that are trying tobring bachelor's degree programs
(37:04):
to their campuses.
So they're looking at thecareer landscape, they're
looking at industry in theirlocal area.
They're not trying to producebachelor's degrees just for the
sake of producing bachelor'sdegrees.
They're trying to improve theircommunity, meet community needs
of producing bachelor's degrees.
They're trying to improve theircommunity, meet community needs
.
So if that's the case, we needmore of that.
(37:26):
We need more of thoseopportunities that fit that
community's need.
The first thing, actually, thatmost people kind of bring up as
a solution is distance ed, whichthat's reasonable.
There's a lot of online degreeprograms out there where you're
able to complete an entiredegree.
But to tell a student who livesin one of these desert areas,
you must, you know, you can doan online degree like in a
(37:48):
flippant kind of way.
Well, I find that disrespectful.
Online learning is not foreveryone.
Again, it depends on theprogram, it depends on the cost,
as you just mentioned.
Some programs don't lendthemselves to online learning.
You need in-person labexperience or something along
those lines.
And then just some peopleprefer to learn differently,
(38:10):
right, they prefer not to learnin an online place.
So, again, I just don't likethis idea of limiting people's
choices and just telling themfigure it out, move right.
Move to where the program is,move to where the university is.
Just do an online program, pickone of the ones that are close
to you.
You know that the center closeto you offers.
(38:33):
I think that's the message towhere it's just not equitable
and that's really one of ourmain points is the system is set
up to where you have to figureit out.
The burden is on the student togo to the education, instead of
us figuring out ways to providethe education to where the
(38:54):
students are.
And that's really the point,one of the biggest points.
This is an equity issue,especially if you go back to
what Daisy shared about who isliving in these areas of the
state, who is beingdisadvantaged by these distances
.
They are students who havehistorically been disadvantaged
(39:16):
in our education system,historically minoritized and
underserved in our system.
Daisy (39:22):
Well, I think you kind of hit on most of them.
One of the things we also kindof found from presenting these
because we did go across thestate and nationally to present
these findings know, across thestate and nationally to present
these findings One of the thingsthat just kind of pops out of
my mind is that those that youknow had, maybe you know, better
(39:46):
transfer outcomes were likewell, we have a relationship
with this university, we haveagreement with this out-of-state
to not charge students, youknow, out-of-state tuition,
those sort of things.
So I think really strengtheningthose partnerships with
universities I think would be akey solution to, you know,
tackle this so that we can justkind of ensure that there's like
(40:08):
a smoother transfer between thepathways from our community
colleges to these universities,whether they be in-state or
out-of-state, and then,especially for those colleges in
that tier one that are alongthose borders, those
out-of-state partnerships arereally going to be important.
And just kind of thinking about, like the policies that exist,
(40:34):
thinking about how some of thoserules may be disadvantaging
those students that have to goout of state.
And so if you go out of state,you're not taking California
money with you to help pay forthat college right.
So they have to find the meansto, you know, go out of state,
and sometimes that means payinghigher tuition.
You know that sometimes thatmeans paying for travel that
(40:55):
sort of thing, and so there'salready you know sometimes that
means paying for travel thatsort of thing, and so there's
already, you know, a policy outthere that lets students that go
to um historically blackinstitutions to take the
california money with them tothose things that we can.
So we could think of somethingparallel to that where we can
allow some students to taketheir money out of state, um, to
help them kind of meet thoseneeds if California can't meet
(41:17):
their needs.
I think one of the other keythings that you kind of
mentioned, Al, is like yes, wedid it specifically for
California, but we did thedistance from the community
colleges to the university.
There could be kind of miniuniversity deserts within a
(41:38):
specific area.
So I think it's important forindividual colleges and
individual institutions to kindof try to replicate these
findings at their local levelsto see if they can kind of find
similar things.
They can find a maybe pinpointto which students are farther
away from them Are they evengetting those students to their
(41:58):
college and just to kind ofexamine, like what the transfer
movement looks like for theirstudents and if that kind of
reveals any kind ofcollaboration opportunities or
opportunities to provide thosestudents more support.
AL (42:14):
So small colleges, community colleges, are already
underfunded in so many ways.
They rely on a lot of grants,federal grants, and we know
what's happening there thesedays, and in California and in
many other states they havemoved toward a different student
funding formula that looks atcompletion as one variable.
(42:35):
Does a study like this, couldit help impact, influence that
formula?
Because then these institutionsin these deserts, if you will,
will be at a disadvantagefinancially with completion.
So is there a way to weightsomehow this formula for these
(42:57):
institutions, given that decadesago they were kind of set up to
fail in many respects?
When it comes to having a newfunding formula right, it's not
just about butts in seats, andI'm not against the new funding
formula per se actually I likeit for the most part, but we
also want it to be fair.
Darla (43:19):
Any thoughts on maybe perhaps this can help influence
policy we actually wrote aboutthat as well at the
student-centered funding formula, and you know we didn't do the
math, but we're just.
You know the exact math but,like you, we can hypothesize
that everything we're sayingmeans that certain colleges are
(43:42):
being disadvantaged becausethey're not going to have higher
transfer rates, at least notanytime soon, and that equates
to dollars in the formula.
Now there could be some thatargue that they get their money
because they have higher Pellpercentages, something like that
, but it's like well, that's so.
Those two things aren't thesame.
(44:06):
Just because I can make it upover here, me, having a higher
panel has whole otherimplications that have nothing
to do with transfer in somerespects.
So I think there absolutely isan argument for needing to take
a look, and that was part of our.
Bigger note is that and Daisymentioned it earlier you've got
(44:28):
to take distance into accountWith all these policies.
It is a variable that affectsstudents and their options,
their true ability to benefit atthe same rate as students who
have multiple choices, the samerate as students who have
(44:51):
multiple choices.
And then, daisy, I don't knowif you want to talk about this.
Another finding that was reallyinteresting is that we just, or
even just repeat it, about howwe did look at acceptance rate,
because that comes up theuniversity's acceptance rate and
so, like you, can live acrossthe street from the university,
but if they only take 10% of thepeople, then is that really
accessible to you?
AL (45:10):
I'll be remiss if I didn't mention Dr.
Kevin Walthers at Allan Hancock, because he is such an advocate
for this.
I think his college, thatcollege, has that issue right.
It's.
It's not far from cal poly, sanluis obispo, which is, I mean,
I don't know if you can call ita broad access institution.
And then Santa Barbara UC.
(45:31):
Santa Barbara isn't exactlyacross the street, but you know
it's the nearest UC, but that'snot a broad access institution.
And so some of the things thatI know he's been fighting for,
and other presidents, is whatyou mentioned earlier the
baccalaureate at the communitycollege, what I find ironic.
Do you remember like, oh, thisis like 15, 18 years ago, the
(45:54):
CSUs were making an argument andthey were using words like
equity when the UCs were balkingagainst them having doctorates?
Right, and they have somedoctorates now.
And now the CSU are saying noto community colleges having a
baccalaureate and not eventhinking about that.
(46:17):
We can accommodate them.
There's a sufficient number ofstudents.
We're not taking any studentsaway, right?
Just the irony there, huh?
Darla (46:26):
Dr Walthers is on our advisory committee.
We didn't mention that up front, but this project and a lot of
our larger projects, we recruitpeople who you know kind of with
an interest, with experience inthe area.
We had one for African AmericanTransfer, tipping Point, we had
one for Through the Gate, wehad one for Student Support
(46:47):
Redefined and Student SupportRedefined was the first one, and
after that experience it was sohelpful we said we have to have
these advisory committees andonce again we had one for our
Geographic Barriers Project andI, like you, I've been hearing
him for years before as well,and so he was probably first on
my list to reach out to to saywould you like to be a part of
(47:08):
this project?
And so he was probably first onmy list to reach out to to say
would you like to be a part ofthis project?
And so he's been very vocal inour advisory committee.
Obviously, you know I just sawan article he often will send me
an article that he has written,alan Hancock is interesting
because and they, they arereally there's nothing close.
(47:29):
They are really there's nothingclose.
Forget broad access or otherwisebeing where they're located.
Again, like you mentioned,you've got Cal Poly very hard to
get into, you see, santaBarbara also hard to get into.
So the broadest access collegenearest them is all the way at
CSU, channel Islands, which is,I I think, 100 miles away or
(47:52):
something along those lines.
That's not reasonable to justtell a student that's it, that's
your choice.
You don't necessarily think ofSanta Maria, where Alan Hancock
is located, as a desert andespecially he's like well, cal
Poly is right there, it's gotSanta Barbara, although I
wouldn't want to do that, santaBarbara, santa Maria, I've done
(48:14):
it.
I wouldn't recommend that as aregular commute.
They're just in this.
Those students just don't havethe options that may look like
they have.
And so we, you know, beendefinitely trying to not just
look at, obviously, how thosestudents are affected.
But there are others throughoutthe state who you know.
(48:34):
There's some where you hearthat name and if you happen to
know where that college isbecause that's the other thing,
people don't know where thesecolleges even are when they hear
the name but if you happen toknow there's some you hear and
you go oh, yeah, okay, thatmakes sense.
Desert is not going to be auniversity you know, anywhere
around there.
But there are others, like theAlan Hancocks, where it might
(48:55):
not initially come to your mindas a university desert, but it
is because of circumstances likewe've just been discussing.
AL (49:04):
Thank you so much for doing this study, because to some will
be like, well, no brainer, uh,distance maybe, yeah, but but
you quantified it, you gave it astory.
There's students, real livesbehind this and and, like in so
many cases, it's usually ourhistorically most
disproportionately impactedstudents that are right that we
(49:25):
have to think about here.
So thank, thank you forquantifying it.
We did summarize with someideas right, recommendation,
practices.
Anything else, or maybe yournext step right might be
something qualitative.
We can wrap up with that.
Daisy (49:39):
Yeah, so one of the things about this study as all
studies do is it really justspurred more questions, right.
And so now we can, I think,definitively say that just
distance does matter.
But then there are a lot ofother questions that are
remaining, such as like what isdriving students' decisions to
transfer or not, and, especiallysince we saw those differences
(50:02):
among the different studentgroups, just like what is
driving the decisions for somegroups and not others?
And then what is specificallyabout that distance is really
preventing them fromtransferring, you know, and how
do we help them overcome thesebarriers, and what resources do
we need to get to these studentsto help them along their
journeys?
And so, yes, we have.
(50:22):
Our next step is our next study,Al, as you foreshadowed earlier
today, we're doing morequalitative work this time
around.
So we're going to be goingspecifically to you know, those
rural colleges that are like thefurthest away, and talking to
you know, practitioners,administrators, to students
(50:43):
there, to the faculty there, toreally talk about what, how they
help their students transfer,what are the decisions that
students are using to decide totransfer or not transfer, and
what it is that we can do tohelp them so we can really tie
down how we can help students,and so hopefully I'm really
excited about this next step ofthis new spinoff of our research
(51:07):
, that we'll actually get totalk to some of these different
people and hopefully get somemore answers and probably spur
more questions, but at least getsome additional answers for now
.
AL (51:20):
Thank you both so much for participating in the Student
Success Podcast.
Daisy (51:24):
Yes, thank you very much for having us.
Darla (51:26):
Thank you Al.
AL (51:28):
Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast.
You can subscribe to the showand newsletter on the Continuous
Learning Institute link belowand, of course, on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube orwherever you get your podcasts
you.
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast.
If you work in higher ed andwant to learn ways to support
students, check out today'sepisode.
Daisy (00:11):
[Quote teaser] Geography affects college enrollment and
basically that research saysthat students who live farther
away from their college optionsare less likely to actually
attend college.
Darla (00:24):
[Quote teaser] I just don't like this idea of limiting
people's choices and justtelling them figure it out, move
right.
Move to where the program is,move to where the university is.
Just do an online program.
Pick one of the ones that areclose to you.
AL (00:43):
In today's Student Success Podcast episode, we're diving
into a crucial but oftenoverlooked factor in transfer
success distance.
We may think that the impact ofgeography is obvious, but Dr.
Darla Cooper, executiveDirector and Senior Researcher
Dr.
Daisy Segovia of the nonprofitorganization the Research and
Planning Group, bring data andstorytelling together to reveal
(01:06):
just how much location shapesstudent outcomes.
They also provide promisingrecommendations to address this
challenge.
Welcome, darla and Daisy.
Let's learn about this study.
Darla (01:17):
We were hoping just to give a little bit of background
as to why why this study, to whywhy this study.
And so years ago we did thethrough the gate study that
looked at transfer, specificallyhoning in on students who had
completed all or most of theirtransfer requirements but then
didn't transfer.
And you know, and looking atall of that, that was that study
(01:40):
.
One of the findings that cameout of it seemed to point to
distance from the nearest publicuniversity as possibly a
negative factor impactingstudents' likelihood of
continuing on to transfer.
And so we said I think we needto dig into this a little bit
more.
So we went and asked for moremoney from Ascendium.
(02:06):
Thank you always to Ascendiumfor funding that and I'll let
Daisy get into the details aboutthe questions and this is her
project.
She did all the heavy lifting,she's closer to it than anyone
and I love hearing her talkabout it.
Daisy (02:25):
Anyway, Our research questions was really I guess
they're broader researchquestions to see how distance
affects these college-goingdecisions.
And specifically what we werelooking into is this idea of
education deserts.
So if you're familiar with likekind of like the term food
desert, or is that an area thathas kind of like the term food
desert, whereas an area that haskind of like scarce kind of
(02:47):
healthy food around witheducation deserts?
Basically, these are areas thatdon't have a lot of options for
students to attend colleges, sothey don't have community
college options, they don't haveany universities nearby, and
the research that has taken alook into this has kind of used
two different things to definewhat an education desert is, and
(03:07):
that's first is the distance ofhow far away are these students
from their college goingoptions, and the second thing is
how broadly accessible theseuniversities are.
And so one kind of like acommon definition that's used
out in the research is an areais considered an education
desert if they have no publicuniversity within 25 miles of
(03:30):
their house that has at least an80% acceptance rate.
Now, with a lot of this research, that 80% acceptance rate, what
that kind of does is that anyarea where their only option is
a community college kind of getskicked out of a university
desert criteria because weaccept everyone, we have 100
(03:52):
percent acceptance rate Right.
And so we really wanted to seehow, taking this definition of
an education desert and kind ofusing it of using it not really
to say like do they havecommunity college and university
deserts, but to identify wherethey don't have specifically
like a four-year transfer optionfor our community college
(04:13):
deserts.
And so we had more specificresearch questions, kind of
based off of all of this is likewhere are these university
deserts in our Californiaeducation system and then who
are the students who areattending colleges in these
areas?
And then, more importantly,what is the relationship that
exists between attending acollege in a university desert
(04:36):
and then their ability totransfer to a four-year
university?
AL (04:42):
Let's unpack the.
Well, if you want to talk alittle bit about the methodology
, that's fine.
Or if you want to just hit homewith the findings.
Whatever you'd like to do, yeah.
Daisy (04:53):
So let's just kind of get the methodology out of the way.
So, similar to all the otherstudies that we kind of do that
looks into transfer, we followedfirst-time students who showed
some behavioral intent totransfer.
So basically, through the data,they look like they might be a
student who's intending totransfer.
(05:13):
For this study specifically, welooked at students who began
between 2012 and 2017, followedthose students for six years,
mapped where they went tocollege, mapped their proximity
to their nearest publicuniversity within California so
in our education system thatwould either be University of
(05:35):
California or Cal StateUniversity and then we saw how
they compared with each other asfar as their transfer behaviors
and their transfer rates.
So, all in all, for this studywe have a little over 1 million
students that we took a look atto see if we can find some kind
of relationship between thedistance and their transfer
(05:56):
outcomes.
AL (05:57):
That's a very small N.
I'm really disappointed in you.
Daisy (06:01):
Yeah, sorry, it's not billions, but millions is pretty
good yeah.
AL (06:06):
Yeah.
One million, that's awesome.
Okay, oh my gosh.
Six years worth of data withone million.
Anything else about the method.
Was there anything qualitative?
Did you talk to any students,or was this purely quantitative?
Daisy (06:24):
Not yet.
That's the desert, so it comesat the end.
But for this study specifically, we did quantitative research,
just looking at the data that wehave access to now, crunching
some numbers and seeing like,because it's really this is the
first dive into kind ofeducation deserts within
California and specifically withcommunity college students, and
(06:46):
so we kind of just wanted to,you know, put our toes in the
water and see like, is there arelationship that exists between
this distance and the transferoutcomes?
And then, as we'll talk about alittle bit later, that is
spurring additional spinoffsabout you know what we found and
and getting trying to get atsome more answers cool, all
(07:08):
right.
AL (07:08):
So thank you for that summary of the methodology.
So let's dig in.
What did you find?
Daisy (07:16):
yeah, so first let's talk about the mapping.
Um, if you kind of take a lookat our uh california education
system here, um, we have, like Isaid, two kind of take a look
at our California educationsystem, here we have, like I
said, two kind of big systems.
We have the University ofCalifornia they have nine
campuses throughout Californiaand then we have the California
State University campuses andthere are 23 of those.
(07:37):
So all in all, our studentshave 32 options for them to
transfer to.
And when you start mappingwhere these colleges are located
, surprisingly they're not allevenly spaced out out of
California.
So it's not, like we said,we're going to build a college
or university every so manymiles.
A lot of them are clusteredaround, specifically the coast.
(08:01):
So there's a lot kind of inNorthern California, like in the
Bay Area space, and there'sanother cluster down South in
Southern California, along likeLA, orange County and San Diego.
So we're already seeing thatthe decisions that were made
about where to put theseuniversities right might affect
(08:22):
students, because if you're kindof not living in these
proximities, if you're not alongthe coast, you know, kind of
thing, you might have feweroptions for you to transfer to.
So already seeing like somekind of results, some finding
there, because when you map itout there's kind of just
specific locations where theseuniversities tend to be located.
(08:46):
And then when you map ourcommunity colleges, we have 116,
115, if you don't count thecompletely online one.
You kind of see the samepattern where there's large
clusters around the coast upthere in the Bay Area and then
along Los Angeles, orange Countyand San Diego.
(09:06):
But one of the things with ourcommunity colleges is they tend
to be more spread out, so theytend to be more in like the
really far north of California,more in Central California and
more options like all kind ofalong the borders of like Oregon
, options like all kind of alongthe borders of like Oregon,
(09:28):
nevada and Arizona.
And so even though we do havemore options for students to
attend community collegesbecause it's to be more spread
out, for the most part they arealso kind of closely clustered
in those key areas.
So kind of to see first ifthere's like this relationship
between the distance and thetransfer rates.
We did this kind of and it'stoo bad that the listeners can't
(09:48):
see this really coolscatterplot that I made, but you
can look at the report.
It's in there we kind ofgraphed like the overall
transfer rate for every collegeand then how far away they were
to their nearest UC or CSU andwithin 25 miles.
Remember, like the researchsays, like that 25 miles is that
(10:10):
cutoff.
Within that 25 miles you're notreally seeing like a pattern or
relationship between thedistance and the transfer rates.
There's a lot of variabilitythere.
They go like below 20%, somehave rates that are higher than
50%, but there's just like a bigkind of cluster of transfer
rates within that 25 miles.
But interestingly, once you getto that 25 mile marker you
(10:35):
start to see the transfer ratesgoing down a little bit low, or
they start going downessentially, and so at that 25
mile mark there was no collegethat had a transfer rate that
was above 40%.
And then the farther they gotaway from the distance, the
lower that transfer rate got.
(10:55):
And then once you kind ofcontinue on the distance, we saw
kind of another significantdrop in transfer rates when they
hit that 80 mile mark.
So we're seeing kind of similarfindings from the research that
already exists that that 25miles seems to be like the
important kind of cutoff.
But then we're also seeing kindof maybe the secondary kind of
(11:15):
cutoff with that 80 miles.
And so when we initially werelooking at you know how to
define a university desertwithin California, you know,
like I said, they usually uselike the broad access kind of
definition.
And so we looked to see likewhat the acceptance rates were
of these universities and kindof saw that when we were in
(11:36):
court we incorporated theseacceptance rates into our
university education desert.
It kind of put a large chunk ofour colleges in that definition
.
So about 42% would have beenconsidered a university desert
if we considered that acceptancerate.
And then we had some that eventhough they had no broad access
(11:58):
university nearby, they hadseveral limited access ones.
So maybe some colleges that hadlower transfer rates or lower
acceptance rates, but there arestill several of them around
them, right.
And so once we took that out oftheir definition of a
university desert, we saw apattern that made more sense.
And so even some colleges thathad really high transfer rates
(12:22):
only had some few options.
And so we decided to not usethe broad access part of that
definition and just solelyidentify a university desert
based off how far away thatcollege was from their nearest
UC or CSU, so just using thatkind of 25 mile marker.
AL (12:44):
Did you find one or two that were drastically impacted?
Daisy (12:48):
Yeah.
So if you take a look at thatscatterplot you'll see once you
get at that past that 80 miles,the transfer rates tend to kind
of like trying to really startto drop.
But there are two colleges thatare like the furthest away.
One college is slightly lessthan I think.
It was like 168 miles away andthe other one's over 200 miles
(13:11):
away and those two colleges hadreally drastically different
transfer rates.
One had below 10% and the otherone had above 30%.
So I'll talk about that alittle bit later once we kind of
start diving into these results.
But we want to keep that inmind, just like when we were
looking at this, like oh, why isthis one dot or one college
(13:33):
like an outlier, even thoughit's the furthest college away
from their nearest Californiaoption?
AL (13:41):
And, by the way, I have show notes, so send me the
scatterplot and I'll add that sopeople can follow through the
show notes.
Daisy (13:49):
Yeah, awesome.
So, based off of this kind of,when we discussed like what
would be the best approach todefine the university desert in
California, we came up with thiskind of double tier system of
what would be considered auniversity desert, and so that
(14:10):
first tier is going to be thecolleges that are the farthest
away from their nearestCalifornia option, and these are
going to be the colleges thatare the farthest away from their
nearest California option, andthese are going to be the
colleges that are at least 80miles away from a UC or CSU.
And then those that are a tiertwo university desert are going
to be at least 25 miles away,but less than 80 miles away from
(14:34):
their USC.
So we split up kind of theseuniversity desert into these two
tiers, just to kind of reallyemphasize that farther distance
really does make an impact.
And then everyone else is notconsidered to be a university
desert college and these are theones that have any option of UC
or CSU within the 25 miles.
(14:55):
So let's talk about who fallsinto each of these tiers.
So in our first tier remember,these are going to be the ones
that are the furthest away atleast 80 miles.
These ended up having sevendifferent colleges that were 87
to 211 miles away from thenearest California University.
(15:16):
In our sample this comprisedabout 18,000 students, a little
bit more than that.
And kind of what's interestingabout these colleges is that
almost all of them, so six outof the seven, are located in
areas that we consider to berural, so smaller kind of places
(15:36):
, farther away from things, andthat.
And if you look at when youstart mapping these in
California, you see that theseare all the colleges that are
along the border of California,so they are up against Oregon,
up against Nevada and up againstArizona and then the Mexico
border.
So these are all kind of thefarther away colleges.
(15:58):
In our tier two, universitydesert category, 22 colleges
fell into this tier.
They were 27 to 78 miles awayfrom the nearest California
university and in our samplethis is about 139,000 students.
But this one there's a littlebit more of variability in like
(16:20):
what kind of locations they werelocated in.
So 36% were in cities, 27% werein suburbs and the rest were in
either a rural area or a town.
But when you map these on theCalifornia map you see what I
call the middle-ish ofCalifornia, right, so they're
not along the borders and notalong the coast.
(16:41):
They're just kind of like thislittle line that goes down the
middle of California.
But again you're seeing kind oflike they're far away from the
coast, so they're a distancefrom their nearest university
options, and then everyone elseis not a university desert, so
they were the ones that werelocated within the Clit Coast
mostly.
(17:02):
So when we take a look to seewho are the students that are
being served by these universitydesert colleges, we see some
kind of like key things thatI'll kind of point out.
Well, number one is there iskind of like a difference in the
demographic makeup of thestudents who are being served by
these colleges.
So one of the key things islike more Latine students were
(17:25):
in tier one and tier twocompared to the non-university
deserts.
There were significantly fewerAsian students that were
attending the university desertcolleges, especially in tier one
.
And even though our NativeAmerican students usually
comprise a very small percentagewhen you take account of the
(17:45):
whole student population, if youlook at just Native American
students by themselves as awhole, 28% of them were located
within a tier one universitydesert, so the farthest away
from our universities.
So we're already seeing thatthere's a difference of who are
going to these communitycolleges in the university
(18:07):
deserts, meaning that theseperhaps are students that are
going to be more impacted bywhatever relationship the
distance is having on thesetransfer outcomes.
We we also saw that there weremore first-generation students
in this tier one and tier twocompared to the non-university
education desert, and morelow-income students, as well as
(18:30):
more students that are involvedin programs such as like EOPS.
So, all in all, just to kind ofdrive the point that the
students that are attendingthese colleges do tend to look
demographically differently thanstudents that have closer
options nearby, and so when westart to take a look to see if
this is affecting their transferoutcomes, one of the first
(18:51):
things we took a look at becausewe're not just really
interested, like if they make itthrough the gate, right, we
want to see how this affectstheir journey to that gate, and
so we had this concept from ourfirst study called the transfer
continuum, which kind of justcategorizes the different steps
that a student has to go throughto get to that gate, and
there's five different steps forthis, the first one being that
(19:15):
the student just seems likethey're a transfer explorer, and
so these are students that arekind of accumulating units.
They have between 12 to 44transferable units under their
belt, but they haven't quitemade any more progress beyond
that.
If a student moves on to thenext step, which is what we
considered a momentum student,they have a little bit more
(19:36):
units.
They have 45, between 45 and 59units and they have at least a
2.0 GPA.
So they're kind of maintaininga good GPA to start meeting
those transfer requirements.
And then the students that arenear the gate are the students
that have more than 60 units.
So usually there's more than isrequired to, you know, get
those transfers requirementsdone and they have that
(19:59):
two-point GPA, but they'remissing either their English or
their math requirement.
So almost there, very close,just need that English or math.
And then the next group arethose students that are at the
gate.
So they're at the gate, notquite through it.
They have all their transferrequirements or they've gotten
an ADT, so an associate's degreefor transfer, meaning that they
(20:20):
could ideally transfer but justnot through the gate yet.
And then those who are transferachievers are the ones that
made it through the gate andhave transferred to a university
.
And so, thinking of this Chinatransfer continuing, we're also
just kind of curious, like ifit's not just affecting the
final outcome but if it'saffecting their journey along
(20:40):
the way.
And what we saw is that, yes,the distance is affecting not
just the outcomes but thejourney within.
And specifically we saw that alarger proportion of those tier
one students did not make itpast the explorer stage.
So they are kind of stayingwithin, just accumulating units
but not maintaining the GPA orgetting their English, you know,
(21:04):
moving on to the other steps.
And then what we saw is thatthose who were past that
explorer stage were more likelyto stop at the gate.
So if they didn't get stuck atthe explore stage, then they
were getting stuck at the gate.
And again, we saw kind of thiscorrelation of, like, the
(21:24):
farther away that they were froma university, the lower their
transfer rate.
So once we looked at that, whoactually made it to to to
university?
Tier one had the lowesttransfer rate at 28%.
Tier 2 had a 33% transfer rateand those that were not in a
university desert had thehighest transfer rate at 36%.
(21:45):
So we're kind of seeing thisalmost linear relationship
between the distance and theirtransfer outcomes.
And then again, because wewanted to see, like you know, we
saw that there were differentdemographic makeup of the
students who are attending thesecolleges.
So we did see a difference.
When we looked at gender, theirethnic and racial makeup, as
(22:09):
well as whether they wereinvolved in any kind of other
special population.
We saw that for male studentsthey seemed to be more impacted
by distance.
Those that were for thefurthest way had the lower
transfer outcomes compared tothe male students that were
closer.
But for female students we sawthat they were kind of similar
(22:32):
throughout the three differentcategories, so they don't seem
to be as impacted as malestudents.
We also saw that there weredifferences in transfer rates
for first-generation students,low-income students and EOPS
students, where their transferoutcomes were exacerbated by the
distance again.
So Tier 1 had lower.
The students in Tier 1, if theywere first-gen, had lower
(22:53):
transfer rates thanfirst-generation students in
Tier 2, and then non-transfer.
We also saw performance gaps inthe transfer rates that were
evident among our ethnic andracial groups and again the
differences were exacerbated bythis distance.
And so, for example,specifically for Tier 1 students
, they experienced the largerkind of disparities across many
(23:17):
of their ethnic and racialgroups.
So for our Asian students, theyexperience the larger kind of
disparities across many of theirethnic nation groups.
So for our Asian students, forexample, those in tier ones,
their transfer rates wereconsiderably lower than those in
even tier two and thenon-university deserts.
We also saw the same kind ofpattern for our Black and
African American students,native American students and the
other kind of racial groups.
So we're seeing that thisdistance we're seeing those kind
(23:40):
of usual kind ofdisproportionate impacted
students is even exacerbated bythat distance.
So kind of what we wanted to seenext is okay, we know that some
students are not making itthrough the gate as much as
other students, but does itimpact where they go?
And so we kind of we took a lookto see where their transfer
(24:01):
journeys took them and we sawdifferences again of where
students are going.
For the most part we saw thatmost students, or just overall,
are going to the CSU system,which is not surprising.
Considering they have morecampuses, they tend to take more
of our students.
So this was true across all ofour three groups, but those in
the tier one were slightly lowerthan the other two groups.
(24:24):
But one of the things thatreally stood out was that those
were that were in the tier ones.
There were tier one studentstransferred out of state at a
rate almost double as a studentin the other tiers.
So the tier one studentstransferred out of state at a
rate almost double as thestudents in the other tiers.
So the Tier 1 studentstransferred out of state at a
38% rate, whereas those in Tier2 was only 20, and those that
(24:45):
were not in HHU deserts wereonly at 16%.
So again we're seeing not justdifferences in who gets to
transfer, but where theytransfer to and, specifically,
if they even stay withinCalifornia.
AL (24:59):
So can we hypothesize that Tier 1, that significantly
larger percentage that go out ofstate, is because they've been
in these little towns all theirlives and the closest California
university is still fartheraway, so might as well just go
beyond California.
(25:19):
Is that what we can hypothesize, you think?
Daisy (25:22):
I think that's definitely a good hypothesis and if you
take a look at you know we couldactually see where the student
ended up going, and we areworking on creating a map that's
going to show all of that.
But let me go back to thatexample of those two colleges
that were furthest away.
So what we saw when we startedto take a closer look into this
(25:44):
is we saw that the proximity ofthose out-of-state options
helped kind of mitigate thoselower transfer rates.
And so those two colleges ofthe furthest away College of the
Siskiyous was 211 miles awayfrom their nearest California
option, which was Cal StateHumboldt, and they had a 32
percent transfer rate.
But they were only 40 milesaway from their nearest
(26:07):
out-of-state option, which wasSouthern Oregon University.
If your option in California isto travel 200 miles, which I'm
sure you cannot do, like as astudent if you want to stay home
, drive back and forth 200 miles, right, but you could go to
Oregon and only drive that 40miles, 45-minute drive according
(26:30):
to Google Maps.
So, yeah, we saw that a lot ofthe students from College of the
Siskiyous were going toSouthern Oregon University
because that is a closer option.
And when we looked at the othercollege, which is the second
furthest away, which is PaloVerde College, it was 166 miles
away from their closestCalifornia option and they only
(26:54):
had an 8% transfer rate.
But when you took a look attheir out-of-state options,
their nearest out-of-stateoption was even further away
than their nearest Californiaoption.
So their nearest option was inNevada.
It was 189 miles away.
So that would still be like athree-hour drive.
(27:15):
So they don't have any optionswithin California.
They don't have any optionsoutside of California.
So it's no surprise that theirtransfer rate is so much lower
just because these students havenowhere to transfer.
If they don't want to, you know, get up and fly somewhere.
Essentially, what we're reallyseeing here is that, yes,
transfer, the distance reallydoes matter for students, not
(27:39):
just for their opportunities totransfer, but where they end up
getting to transfer.
You know that sort of thing.
When we calculated how manymiles a student kind of traveled
on average, those in the firsttier not surprisingly had to
travel more than 400 miles tothe nearest transfer option, or
actually did travel more than400 options, which is, you know,
(28:02):
a lot higher than those in tiertwo and in tier one.
So just kind of reinforcingwhat kind of the previous
research that says is that, like, if it's nearby, that is a
viable option, you're probablymore likely to want to go there.
It's logistically probablyeasier to go there.
You know that sort of thing,and so, yes, like you can
(28:24):
hypothesize that they have thosekind of out-of-state options
too.
Darla (28:28):
Your question brought up something different for me, al,
which was another findingrelated to the out-of-state
transfer, which was anotherfinding related to the
out-of-state transfers.
When we looked at it by race,ethnicity, there were certain
groups in those universitydeserts that were more likely to
go out of state and that wasour African-American, our
(28:49):
Pacific Islander and our NativeAmerican students, I mean like
way more likely from those areasin our state to leave the state
.
So I thought that was aninteresting finding and kind of
speaks maybe a little bit moreto what you're saying about
wanting to leave wherever theyare and wanting to try something
(29:12):
different and obviously havingthe means to do that.
Because that's the other piece.
You other piece of all of thisis it's not just I don't want to
, it's I literally can't.
I have a home here, I have afamily here, I have a job here,
my community is here.
This idea of place boundednessI mean that term makes it sound
(29:32):
like you have no choice and alot of our students don't.
We've talked to a few studentsjust more anecdotally in
conversation so far and theytalk about like I don't have the
means to move.
It costs money to move.
It also costs more to live inthese other parts of the state.
Right, when you're moving froma rural area to an urban area,
(29:54):
there's a cost of livingadjustment that has to happen,
and so all of these factors arecoming into play, but it's so
fascinating, you know.
Just looking at all of this.
AL (30:06):
Yeah, in fact I was talking to a college president the other
day because she was happy thatthey got more money for
scholarships to foundation and Isaid can I be honest with you
for scholarships to foundation?
And I said, can I be honestwith you?
These scholarships oftenactually are not helpful because
they offset financial aid, like.
So financial aid is like, oh,you got something, all right,
(30:29):
now we're gonna take somethingaway then and it doesn't really
help the student.
But what would help a studentbecause I was out out-of-state
transfer, was I really neededmoney that summer when I was
moving?
If you're going to give me ascholarship or give me money of
some sort, I'd need that helpfor that transition and we're
(30:49):
kind of getting in implicationsfor recommendations and practice
and solutions.
But because you've done such awonderful job quantifying the
impact of geographical distance,you know that could be
something that practitioners dowith the data.
Right is we need to allocatemore scholarship, more funding
(31:09):
to help them transition, asopposed to while they're still
in right.
So again, I might be jumping alittle bit.
Thank you for sharing that,Darla.
That that is fascinating,especially if.
What if?
Again, I'm just guessing,hypothesizing, what if for a
very long time in thosecommunities.
These, these student groupsthat you discussed, uh mentioned
, have, I don't know, maybe theyhaven't felt a sense of
(31:31):
belonging.
They had to find it out ofstate.
So very interesting interesting.
Daisy (31:38):
Okay, yeah, just to Darla's point.
You know there's a lot of costof living adjusting that needs
to be done not just in the costfinancially but the cost
culturally.
You know some of these studentsare coming from towns that
probably have a population thatare smaller than the student
population at like a university,Right, and so that could also
(31:58):
be a culture shock and I thinkyou know kind of hypothesizing
of like you know they need thatfinancial means to help them get
there but also some otheradditional support to help them
adjust to that environment, tobe, you know, away from what
they know, probably differentlifestyle, that sort of thing.
So there's a lot of things thatcan kind of speak to how we can
(32:24):
help students get that.
But all in all, I think ourfindings answer the question of
does distance matter?
Yes, it does Distance matters.
It affects students, their youknow, their options of where
they can go and that's affectingtheir transfer outcomes.
(32:45):
And so we're really seeing that.
You know that 25 miles seems tobe still an important marker.
That was kind of the minimum ittook to affect our transfer
rates.
We even saw that our studentsthat were in these university
desert colleges didn't progressas far in our transfer continuum
(33:05):
.
So it's not just affectingtheir final outcome, it's
affecting their journey alongtheir way as well.
And that we're just kind ofgenerally seeing the further
away that a college is, thelower their transfer rate is.
But if you kind of have thatout-of-state option or another
nearby option, it can mitigatesome of those lower transfer
rates.
(33:26):
And particularly we're seeingthat some students are being
more affected by this distancethan others.
You know, some of theseperformance gaps were
exacerbated by this distance,especially for our Latine, our
first-gen and our low-incomestudents.
So it's really critical that weuncover the factors that are
impeding what is getting in theway of our students' progress,
(33:48):
you know, toward their goal oftransfer.
And so these findings justreally underscore, like, this
urgent need that we need toaddress the influence of
distance on our educationalopportunities.
Because I think when we havethese conversations about, like,
what are our barriers for ourstudents' success, distance is
(34:08):
not part of that conversation.
You know it's usually likemoney is a big aspect.
You know academic support,those type of things, but when
you really think about it, ifyou are requiring one student to
cross the street, and there itis, and you're requiring another
(34:29):
student to go the entire lengthof California to get to a
college.
Those two students don't havethe same opportunities and those
two students are going to needdifferent types of support.
AL (34:41):
In your initial research, when you're looking at more
broadly, nationally, that thisis an issue, and then you dug
deeper into California which, bythe way, there's a lot of
listeners who are outside ofCalifornia and I'm sure if they
were to do a similar study, theyprobably, I would guess, find
similar findings.
So if you're out therelistening, I hope you do this
(35:08):
for your state too.
But when you were finding outabout this national phenomenon,
were you already seeing somesolutions that were in place,
such as?
I've seen four-yearuniversities have a presence at
a community college, somethingthat's prevalent, that works.
Is that something we should berecommending?
As long as it's affordable,right?
We don't want some $80,000 ayear private university trying
(35:32):
to go on our community collegecampuses and have massive debt.
So have you seen that?
Darla (35:38):
What we can't say is we don't know about effect yet, but
we do, in our report, offersome of the things that you're
talking about.
I mean that would actually be areally good study you need to
write that down, davey of theimpact of having, because I know
when we were doing this studyyou know we're doing going
around doing presentations andsomeone would say, oh well, that
(35:59):
college has a center nearby,meaning that there's some
university, public university,that has a center nearby which
is helping, you know, with theirtransfer rate.
But the flip side of that ismost university centers, at
least the ones that I've seen,they're not comprehensive
universities.
There's a limited number ofmajors that you can pursue and
(36:21):
finish your degree solely atthat center.
So you know, good for you, ifthe major you want, the career
you want to pursue, matcheswhat's available at the center
that's close to you.
But what if it doesn't?
Then you know then what happens.
So I mean university centerswas one of the options.
(36:42):
We talked about Baccalaureatedegree programs at the community
college that will be regionallybased.
Right, they're looking.
As part of my understanding I'mnot an expert on this, but part
of my understanding is whenthey're applying for this, they
are looking at their ownregional needs, these community
colleges that are trying tobring bachelor's degree programs
(37:04):
to their campuses.
So they're looking at thecareer landscape, they're
looking at industry in theirlocal area.
They're not trying to producebachelor's degrees just for the
sake of producing bachelor'sdegrees.
They're trying to improve theircommunity, meet community needs
of producing bachelor's degrees.
They're trying to improve theircommunity, meet community needs
.
So if that's the case, we needmore of that.
(37:26):
We need more of thoseopportunities that fit that
community's need.
The first thing, actually, thatmost people kind of bring up as
a solution is distance ed, whichthat's reasonable.
There's a lot of online degreeprograms out there where you're
able to complete an entiredegree.
But to tell a student who livesin one of these desert areas,
you must, you know, you can doan online degree like in a
(37:48):
flippant kind of way.
Well, I find that disrespectful.
Online learning is not foreveryone.
Again, it depends on theprogram, it depends on the cost,
as you just mentioned.
Some programs don't lendthemselves to online learning.
You need in-person labexperience or something along
those lines.
And then just some peopleprefer to learn differently,
(38:10):
right, they prefer not to learnin an online place.
So, again, I just don't likethis idea of limiting people's
choices and just telling themfigure it out, move right.
Move to where the program is,move to where the university is.
Just do an online program, pickone of the ones that are close
to you.
You know that the center closeto you offers.
(38:33):
I think that's the message towhere it's just not equitable
and that's really one of ourmain points is the system is set
up to where you have to figureit out.
The burden is on the student togo to the education, instead of
us figuring out ways to providethe education to where the
(38:54):
students are.
And that's really the point,one of the biggest points.
This is an equity issue,especially if you go back to
what Daisy shared about who isliving in these areas of the
state, who is beingdisadvantaged by these distances
.
They are students who havehistorically been disadvantaged
(39:16):
in our education system,historically minoritized and
underserved in our system.
Daisy (39:22):
Well, I think you kind of hit on most of them.
One of the things we also kindof found from presenting these
because we did go across thestate and nationally to present
these findings know, across thestate and nationally to present
these findings One of the thingsthat just kind of pops out of
my mind is that those that youknow had, maybe you know, better
(39:46):
transfer outcomes were likewell, we have a relationship
with this university, we haveagreement with this out-of-state
to not charge students, youknow, out-of-state tuition,
those sort of things.
So I think really strengtheningthose partnerships with
universities I think would be akey solution to, you know,
tackle this so that we can justkind of ensure that there's like
(40:08):
a smoother transfer between thepathways from our community
colleges to these universities,whether they be in-state or
out-of-state, and then,especially for those colleges in
that tier one that are alongthose borders, those
out-of-state partnerships arereally going to be important.
And just kind of thinking about, like the policies that exist,
(40:34):
thinking about how some of thoserules may be disadvantaging
those students that have to goout of state.
And so if you go out of state,you're not taking California
money with you to help pay forthat college right.
So they have to find the meansto, you know, go out of state,
and sometimes that means payinghigher tuition.
You know that sometimes thatmeans paying for travel that
(40:55):
sort of thing, and so there'salready you know sometimes that
means paying for travel thatsort of thing, and so there's
already, you know, a policy outthere that lets students that go
to um historically blackinstitutions to take the
california money with them tothose things that we can.
So we could think of somethingparallel to that where we can
allow some students to taketheir money out of state, um, to
help them kind of meet thoseneeds if California can't meet
(41:17):
their needs.
I think one of the other keythings that you kind of
mentioned, Al, is like yes, wedid it specifically for
California, but we did thedistance from the community
colleges to the university.
There could be kind of miniuniversity deserts within a
(41:38):
specific area.
So I think it's important forindividual colleges and
individual institutions to kindof try to replicate these
findings at their local levelsto see if they can kind of find
similar things.
They can find a maybe pinpointto which students are farther
away from them Are they evengetting those students to their
(41:58):
college and just to kind ofexamine, like what the transfer
movement looks like for theirstudents and if that kind of
reveals any kind ofcollaboration opportunities or
opportunities to provide thosestudents more support.
AL (42:14):
So small colleges, community colleges, are already
underfunded in so many ways.
They rely on a lot of grants,federal grants, and we know
what's happening there thesedays, and in California and in
many other states they havemoved toward a different student
funding formula that looks atcompletion as one variable.
(42:35):
Does a study like this, couldit help impact, influence that
formula?
Because then these institutionsin these deserts, if you will,
will be at a disadvantagefinancially with completion.
So is there a way to weightsomehow this formula for these
(42:57):
institutions, given that decadesago they were kind of set up to
fail in many respects?
When it comes to having a newfunding formula right, it's not
just about butts in seats, andI'm not against the new funding
formula per se actually I likeit for the most part, but we
also want it to be fair.
Darla (43:19):
Any thoughts on maybe perhaps this can help influence
policy we actually wrote aboutthat as well at the
student-centered funding formula, and you know we didn't do the
math, but we're just.
You know the exact math but,like you, we can hypothesize
that everything we're sayingmeans that certain colleges are
(43:42):
being disadvantaged becausethey're not going to have higher
transfer rates, at least notanytime soon, and that equates
to dollars in the formula.
Now there could be some thatargue that they get their money
because they have higher Pellpercentages, something like that
, but it's like well, that's so.
Those two things aren't thesame.
(44:06):
Just because I can make it upover here, me, having a higher
panel has whole otherimplications that have nothing
to do with transfer in somerespects.
So I think there absolutely isan argument for needing to take
a look, and that was part of our.
Bigger note is that and Daisymentioned it earlier you've got
(44:28):
to take distance into accountWith all these policies.
It is a variable that affectsstudents and their options,
their true ability to benefit atthe same rate as students who
have multiple choices, the samerate as students who have
(44:51):
multiple choices.
And then, daisy, I don't knowif you want to talk about this.
Another finding that was reallyinteresting is that we just, or
even just repeat it, about howwe did look at acceptance rate,
because that comes up theuniversity's acceptance rate and
so, like you, can live acrossthe street from the university,
but if they only take 10% of thepeople, then is that really
accessible to you?
AL (45:10):
I'll be remiss if I didn't mention Dr.
Kevin Walthers at Allan Hancock, because he is such an advocate
for this.
I think his college, thatcollege, has that issue right.
It's.
It's not far from cal poly, sanluis obispo, which is, I mean,
I don't know if you can call ita broad access institution.
And then Santa Barbara UC.
(45:31):
Santa Barbara isn't exactlyacross the street, but you know
it's the nearest UC, but that'snot a broad access institution.
And so some of the things thatI know he's been fighting for,
and other presidents, is whatyou mentioned earlier the
baccalaureate at the communitycollege, what I find ironic.
Do you remember like, oh, thisis like 15, 18 years ago, the
(45:54):
CSUs were making an argument andthey were using words like
equity when the UCs were balkingagainst them having doctorates?
Right, and they have somedoctorates now.
And now the CSU are saying noto community colleges having a
baccalaureate and not eventhinking about that.
(46:17):
We can accommodate them.
There's a sufficient number ofstudents.
We're not taking any studentsaway, right?
Just the irony there, huh?
Darla (46:26):
Dr Walthers is on our advisory committee.
We didn't mention that up front, but this project and a lot of
our larger projects, we recruitpeople who you know kind of with
an interest, with experience inthe area.
We had one for African AmericanTransfer, tipping Point, we had
one for Through the Gate, wehad one for Student Support
(46:47):
Redefined and Student SupportRedefined was the first one, and
after that experience it was sohelpful we said we have to have
these advisory committees andonce again we had one for our
Geographic Barriers Project andI, like you, I've been hearing
him for years before as well,and so he was probably first on
my list to reach out to to saywould you like to be a part of
(47:08):
this project?
And so he was probably first onmy list to reach out to to say
would you like to be a part ofthis project?
And so he's been very vocal inour advisory committee.
Obviously, you know I just sawan article he often will send me
an article that he has written,alan Hancock is interesting
because and they, they arereally there's nothing close.
(47:29):
They are really there's nothingclose.
Forget broad access or otherwisebeing where they're located.
Again, like you mentioned,you've got Cal Poly very hard to
get into, you see, santaBarbara also hard to get into.
So the broadest access collegenearest them is all the way at
CSU, channel Islands, which is,I I think, 100 miles away or
(47:52):
something along those lines.
That's not reasonable to justtell a student that's it, that's
your choice.
You don't necessarily think ofSanta Maria, where Alan Hancock
is located, as a desert andespecially he's like well, cal
Poly is right there, it's gotSanta Barbara, although I
wouldn't want to do that, santaBarbara, santa Maria, I've done
(48:14):
it.
I wouldn't recommend that as aregular commute.
They're just in this.
Those students just don't havethe options that may look like
they have.
And so we, you know, beendefinitely trying to not just
look at, obviously, how thosestudents are affected.
But there are others throughoutthe state who you know.
(48:34):
There's some where you hearthat name and if you happen to
know where that college isbecause that's the other thing,
people don't know where thesecolleges even are when they hear
the name but if you happen toknow there's some you hear and
you go oh, yeah, okay, thatmakes sense.
Desert is not going to be auniversity you know, anywhere
around there.
But there are others, like theAlan Hancocks, where it might
(48:55):
not initially come to your mindas a university desert, but it
is because of circumstances likewe've just been discussing.
AL (49:04):
Thank you so much for doing this study, because to some will
be like, well, no brainer, uh,distance maybe, yeah, but but
you quantified it, you gave it astory.
There's students, real livesbehind this and and, like in so
many cases, it's usually ourhistorically most
disproportionately impactedstudents that are right that we
(49:25):
have to think about here.
So thank, thank you forquantifying it.
We did summarize with someideas right, recommendation,
practices.
Anything else, or maybe yournext step right might be
something qualitative.
We can wrap up with that.
Daisy (49:39):
Yeah, so one of the things about this study as all
studies do is it really justspurred more questions, right.
And so now we can, I think,definitively say that just
distance does matter.
But then there are a lot ofother questions that are
remaining, such as like what isdriving students' decisions to
transfer or not, and, especiallysince we saw those differences
(50:02):
among the different studentgroups, just like what is
driving the decisions for somegroups and not others?
And then what is specificallyabout that distance is really
preventing them fromtransferring, you know, and how
do we help them overcome thesebarriers, and what resources do
we need to get to these studentsto help them along their
journeys?
And so, yes, we have.
(50:22):
Our next step is our next study,Al, as you foreshadowed earlier
today, we're doing morequalitative work this time
around.
So we're going to be goingspecifically to you know, those
rural colleges that are like thefurthest away, and talking to
you know, practitioners,administrators, to students
(50:43):
there, to the faculty there, toreally talk about what, how they
help their students transfer,what are the decisions that
students are using to decide totransfer or not transfer, and
what it is that we can do tohelp them so we can really tie
down how we can help students,and so hopefully I'm really
excited about this next step ofthis new spinoff of our research
(51:07):
, that we'll actually get totalk to some of these different
people and hopefully get somemore answers and probably spur
more questions, but at least getsome additional answers for now
.
AL (51:20):
Thank you both so much for participating in the Student
Success Podcast.
Daisy (51:24):
Yes, thank you very much for having us.
Darla (51:26):
Thank you Al.
AL (51:28):
Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast.
You can subscribe to the showand newsletter on the Continuous
Learning Institute link belowand, of course, on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube orwherever you get your podcasts
you.
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