We are told that community colleges and four-year liberal arts institutions are a world apart. Community colleges are open access and geographically convenient, and focus a substantial part of their curriculum on workforce training. Liberal arts institutions, on the other hand, have competitive admissions standards, are located in often bucolic if not remote settings, and pride themselves on delivering a rigorous four-year baccalaureate curriculum that encourages students to delve into a wide range of disciplines, develop critical thinking skills and forge their own paths.

However, we believe that community colleges and four-year, liberal arts institutions are more aligned than different. Both sectors pride themselves on serving the educational needs of their students and assembling a faculty whose chief aim is excellence in teaching. If there is any mismatch between these higher education sectors, it is the lack of a clear transfer pathway from community colleges to four-year institutions for students who want to earn a baccalaureate degree. This mismatch is especially problematic for underserved groups such as students from low-income backgrounds and those who are first-generation college students who may be unaware of or insufficiently encouraged to transfer and earn a four-year degree.

Institutional distinctions aside, there are important examples of community colleges and four-year liberal arts colleges working together to address the nascent postsecondary aspirations of students, especially students who may never contemplate the completion of a baccalaureate degree. Since 1985, Vassar College, along with a dozen or so community college partners from across the country, has sponsored the Exploring Transfer (ET) program. Each summer, 25-30 students are selected and fully funded to participate in a five-week program. They live on the Vassar campus and participate in two intensive courses that are co-taught by Vassar faculty members and faculty at a partnering community college. The program’s goal is to awaken community college students to the idea of earning a four-year, liberal arts degree by immersing them in the rich, residential life of the Vassar campus and its surrounding community. The outcomes for the students include addressing imposter syndrome, building confidence and opening up possibilities they report not previously imagining.

Although Vassar and its community college partners have been engaged in this unique work for several decades, its success is largely unheralded. So when Vassar College President Elizabeth Bradley approached ECMC Foundation in 2021 for funding to conduct an evaluation of the program, the results astonished everyone—except, perhaps, those involved in this effort. ET was found to be a significant and transformative experience in propelling community college students toward the completion of a four-year degree. Among those who responded to a survey, 70% had earned a four-year degree, and among those students, an additional 19% had earned master’s or doctoral degrees. Another 15% of students were currently working toward their baccalaureate degrees, some at highly selective universities, and another 5% were planning to apply to a four-year program. Surprisingly, only 5% of all participants chose not to pursue a four-year college degree.

ET’s success in enabling community college students to attain a four-year degree motivated Vassar to work with the Foundation to see if the ET model and its impact could be spread to other liberal arts colleges. With a grant from the Foundation, Vassar colleagues forged a national network of highly selective liberal arts colleges (HSLACs) and community colleges that were interested in helping more community college students prepare for and earn a four-year degree.

Among the numerous colleges that have been engaged in the effort over the past two years, several HSLACs—Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, Smith and others—have been participating in this project with Vassar. In addition, 11 community colleges from across the nation are participating. They include three urban colleges (Borough of Manhattan, Los Angeles City, Bunker Hill), three rural institutions (SUNY Dutchess, SUNY Orange, SUNY Ulster) and two Tribal colleges (Diné College, College of Menominee Nation). As a result of sustained engagement, ongoing reflection, working groups and a focused retreat with Vassar colleagues, Bryn Mawr and Haverford are partnering with the community colleges in their area and will launch their ET in June 2025.

This project aims to advance the ET model and community college transfer more generally in three ways. First, it encourages HSLACs broadly to enroll more community college transfer students, a constituency rarely seen on such campuses. Second, it signals to community college students that the option of transferring to an HSLAC and earning a four-year degree is within their grasp. And third, it creates a pipeline of diverse, well-prepared students who are poised for transfer to an HSLAC.

ET outcomes also represent important changes in traditional higher education that run counter to a fashionable narrative that open-access community colleges have almost nothing to do with the world of selective colleges and universities. The Vassar ET results tell an extraordinary story about the desire of students—students who do not fit the traditional profile for these institutions—to earn a liberal arts degree. More importantly, these students have proven successful in earning degrees. It is often argued that students who transfer from open access institutions are ill-prepared for the rigor of the liberal arts curriculum. The Vassar data do not bear this out.

The participation of well-regarded HSLACs in this initiative challenges the idea that liberal arts institutions are disinterested in enrolling community college transfer students. Although first-year community college students will remain the primary enrollees at these institutions, more and more of these colleges are building curricular on-ramps for transfer students to enter as juniors at liberal arts institutions and complete their degrees there. Such flexibility will be key to the success of liberal arts colleges in the future as they grapple with demographic shifts that predict a declining number of high school graduates in the coming decade.

However, success at the end of this two-year grant will not necessarily see immediate and significant increases in the number of students who prepare for transfer to HSLACs. These institutions are relatively small, enrolling incoming classes in the hundreds rather than thousands of students. But HSLACs hold enormous signaling power, not only for prospective students who might not otherwise consider enrolling there but also for higher education broadly—students who look to these institutions as guardians of the liberal arts tradition in postsecondary education. This initiative also benefits HSLACs that are often viewed unfairly as insular enclaves. HSLACs’ willingness to invest in community college transfer students expands the virtues of a liberal arts education to a broader sector of American society, values the diversity and contributions of transfer students to their institutions, and offers tangible strategies to overcome the inherent challenges of the transfer process by building on ET-like programs and services. Furthermore, it begins to restore the ideal of higher education as a public good.

ECMC Foundation’s investment in this initiative is anchored in the belief that all sectors of American higher education should evaluate their policies and programs to meet 21st century postsecondary education demands, especially for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in postsecondary education. The work of ET builds on this goal by recalibrating transfer pathways in ways that celebrate the best that is inherent in the nation’s community colleges and liberal arts institutions.