Do Community Colleges Provide a Viable Pathway to a Baccalaureate Degree?

Community colleges offer many students open, affordable access to postsecondary training. However, as they have become a more prominent entry point for students who intend to eventually complete a bachelor's degree, there are growing concerns about the transfer function of these institutions. While previous research has highlighted the diversion effects of community colleges, most of this work focuses on students who graduated high school over fifteen years ago. This paper provides a new, timely perspective on the role of community colleges in facilitating baccalaureate attainment. Using a detailed, administrative dataset, the paper compares the outcomes of students who enter community college with the aspiration of getting a bachelor’s degree to similar students who initially entered four-year colleges. Unlike any other study, we track student outcomes for nine years and employ multiple empirical strategies to deal with the selection issue: propensity score matching and instrumental variables. We also shed light on an important context, the fifth largest public higher education system in the country. The results suggest that straightforward OLS estimates are significantly biased. However, even after accounting for selection, it appears that students who begin at community colleges still suffer a penalty. The instrumental variable estimates suggest students are 14.5 percent less likely to complete a bachelor's degree in nine years. The authors thank the Ohio Board of Regents and in particular Rod Chu, Darrell Glenn, Robert Sheehan, and Andy Lechler for invaluable help with the data. Erin Riley provided excellent research assistance. All opinions and mistakes are our own.