The University of California has offered admission this fall to 28,750 transfer students, a record number, UC officials said in July. Most of these students are California residents transferring from community colleges.
That is an encouraging development for the large share of students who start college at the community level. In NELA, for example, 300 of 841 college-bound seniors in the Class of 2018 are headed for community college, according to a recent survey by the Boulevard Sentinel of six local high schools.
Help with the transition to a four-year college or university is key to increasing the number of community-college graduates who go on to earn bachelor’s degrees, especially among underrepresented students of color, said UC officials.
Latino students made up 32% of the transfer students admitted to the UC system in the fall, white students were 31%, Asian Americans were 27%, African Americans were 6% and Native American and Pacific Islanders were less than 1%. Some students did not report their race or ethnicity.
Going forward, transfers from community college to the UC are expected to grow. For students who start community college in the fall of 2019, UC will guarantee transfers to a UC campus for those who achieve the requisite grade-point average in one of 21 transfer “pathways” for popular majors.
These majors include anthropology, business administration, communications, computer science, English, economics, film and media, history, mathematics, philosophy, political science, psychology, physics and various fields in biology, chemistry and engineering.
The charts below show the highest level of educational attainment by zip code for NELA’s population, age 25 and older.
About one third of Americans age 25 or older, 33.4%, have college bachelor’s degrees or higher. In NELA, the comparable figures are 44.5% in 90041 (Eagle Rock); 30.3% in 90065 (Mount Washington, Glassell Park and Cypress Park); and 27.9% in 90042 (Highland Park).
In all three zip codes, about one-fourth of the age 25+ population tops out at ‘some college but no degree’ or at an associate’s (two-year) degree. This suggests the need for programs to help students complete community college and transfer to four-year colleges.