THE EFFECT OF SELECTED INSTITUTION-LEVEL COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRAITS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF TRANSFEREES AT UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

This study used correlation to examine the effect of 18 institution- or service area-level community college traits on the North Carolina Community College System's (NCCCS) Performance Measure E, renamed Performance Standard 3 (PME/PS3). One of eight measures included in the NCCCS performance funding system, PME/PS3 is the percentage of an NCCCS college's transferees who achieve a grade point average of 2.0 or higher during their first two semesters at a University of North Carolina constituent university. The 18 traits correlated with PME/PS3 were derived from existing literature on factors affecting individual transferees and from speculation voiced by community college personnel. The traits include academic, demographic, economic, and other categories of data. Only two of the 18 traits were found to have correlations with PME/PS3 at the 0.05 or stronger level of statistical significance: the economic condition of a community college's service area, represented by median household income; and market penetration, represented by the percent of a community college's service area population it enrolled. Both of these effects were relatively weak, having a Pearson's r of 0.134* and -0.159**, respectively. In sum, this research suggests that (a) the institution- and service area-level traits examined in this study appear not to exert a strong influence on transferee success at universities; (b) further research should be conducted toward discovering the determinants of that success; and (c) perhaps PME/PS3 is an inappropriate measure of NCCCS colleges' success at preparing their students for transfer to universities.