Survey Results

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) conducted a national survey in 2000 in preparation for an invitational conference. It focused on systematically identifying barriers to baccalaureate level education, practices that help overcome those barriers and initiatives that seem promising in the way of overcoming barriers. All members of AASCU and AACC were surveyed. What follows is a synopsis of the survey results.

On almost every item dealing with obstacles to access to baccalaureate education, 2-year institutions perceive the obstacles to be greater than do 4-year institutions.
The expressed differences reported between 2-year and 4-year institutions do not seem to be greatly affected by institutional characteristics such as geographic region, degree of urbanization, enrollment size, or expenditures. The key variable appears to be whether the respondent is from a 2-year or 4-year institution.
The major obstacle identified by survey respondents is the reluctance of baccalaureate institutions to accept coursework taken at 2-year schools on programs leading to the AAS degree.

Other key obstacles identified by survey respondents deal more with particular needs of community college transfer students and adult returning students – daycare, course offerings at appropriate times, financial aid for targeted populations, and advising personnel specifically trained to work with transfer and non-traditional students.
The major higher education system issue identified as a barrier by survey respondents is the need for adequate distance education programs.
In terms of successful initiatives to address barriers to access to baccalaureate education, articulation agreements were cited as the area where the most substantial progress has been made.

In terms of the least progress, a common course numbering system between 2-year and 4-year institutions was identified as the area needing the most attention.

Summary of Qualitative Analysis

Survey participants were invited to provide open-ended responses to three questions related to student access and transfer in higher education. The questions related to identification of specific obstacles to student access and transfer; to identification of proven initiatives for addressing those obstacles and to identification of promising new initiatives for reducing or eliminating obstacles to access and transfer. Representative responses have been extracted and are presented below.

Based on comments received from responding administrators about obstacles faced by students trying to access baccalaureate level education, the categorical results are strikingly similar across the sectors. Ranks resulted from a count of the number of comments.

(see full report in PDF format)

print this page