State Audit Affirms Progress in Early Community College Transfer Pipeline, Unveils Challenges for Seamless Transfer to the UC and CSU Systems

(Sacramento)—Seizing an opportunity to illuminate inequities and support a more seamless path to college success, The Campaign for College Opportunity was proud to support a request from Assemblymember Alvarez (D-San Diego) to audit the effectiveness of California’s higher education systems’ efforts to improve the transfer process. This audit identified the most prominent barriers students continue to face after 15 years of efforts to reimagine a student-centered transfer process. We are pleased–and not surprised–that this audit overwhelmingly demonstrates what the Campaign for College Opportunity has known and our research has validated for more than a decade: that the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) is unparalleled in its time-tested ability to offer students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds simplified transfer pathways to the California State University (CSU), with unrivaled benefits of completion, admission, and timely pathways to graduation.  

“We thank Assemblymember Alvarez and the State Auditor for underscoring the urgent racial and ethnic equity imperative to take bold action to transform transfer. Students are falling through the cracks of the transfer maze, and Black and Latinx students are alarmingly underrepresented in transfer preparation and admissions compared to their white and Asian peers. We must act swiftly and courageously to build upon the promise and potential of the ADT as we work to actualize racial and economic justice in higher education,” said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign.    

The Campaign for College Opportunity has long urged the policy transformation necessary to ensure that California’s nearly 2 million community college students—no matter their background—can transfer, earn a four-year degree, and uplift our state with their talents. The State Auditor’s report provides a clear path forward to realize that vision: 

• The California Community Colleges needs bold systems change to ensure students are fully aware of the ADT’s availability and benefits. After over a decade of work to build programs and pathways, this means that the system must now turn its attention to bolstering advising, counseling, and data infrastructure supports for students to ensure accurate and timely information about the transfer process. This includes a willingness to investigate structural impediments and funding structures that systemically limit a college’s ability to invest more deeply into counseling faculty and staff.  

• The CSU & University of California (UC), the systems charged with receiving our transfer students, must embrace fundamental programmatic changes that are long overdue to ensure that students can successfully and seamlessly transfer with an ADT in hand. For too long, students have made their way through the transfer maze, only to fall into a transfer trapdoor at the front gates of the CSU and UC.  

• The CSU must make a concerted and urgent effort to accept more existing and future ADT pathways.  

• The CSU must address capacity constraints at historically impacted campuses and majors to better accommodate ADT earners.  

• The UC must lean into efforts to utilize the ADT as a guaranteed pathway to admission, beginning with the UCLA Transfer Pilot Program. 

• The UC must move to a systemwide admissions guarantee utilizing the ADT in lieu of reliance on their own transfer options that leave students without the core benefits of an ADT. 

View full audit details here and a summary of key findings and recommendations here.