Transforming Tulsa Oklahoma’s Postsecondary Education: The Tulsa Transfer Project
Project Goals:
• To increase the number of students who attain post-secondary credentials in northeastern Oklahoma through enhanced transfer student success with a specific focus on the following goals:
• To increase the transfer rate of TCC students to four-year institutions,
• To increase the percentage of transfer credits accepted toward majors at transfer-receiving universities,
• To increase rates of bachelor’s degree completion, and
• To build a sustainable structure to ensure ongoing coordination and collaboration among partner institutions.
Outcomes:
• 278 administrators, faculty, staff, and students participated in the evaluation of transfer at their institution. As part of the evaluation they reviewed data on their transfer students, their current institutional policies, transfer services, and practices.
• Each institution conducted two surveys: one of their faculty and staff and one of their students. A total of 1,798 employees and 2,124 students shared their perceptions of the transfer experience in these surveys.
• These institutional self-studies led to the development of action plans comprised of a total of 123 recommendations for improving transfer across the participating institutions.
• After two years of collaborating informally through the Tulsa Transfer Project, leaders from the seven participating institutions agreed in early 2020 to explore formalizing the collaborative.
Funding Partner:
Schusterman Family Foundation
The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (Schusterman) is a global organization that seeks to improve lives, strengthen communities and reduce inequality. Our philanthropic vision is grounded in a commitment to pursue justice, repair the world and treat all people with dignity and civility. We invest in efforts to improve public education in the United States, strengthen the Jewish people and Israel, and address the needs of marginalized individuals and communities.
Partner Institutions
“The issue of students starting at a community college and efficiently and successfully completing a bachelor’s degree is a national, state, and regional concern. Nationally only 13.3% of the students who started at a community college in 2010 completed a bachelor’s degree in six years.”
Key Insights
- Twenty-two percent (729) of the 3,264 Fall 2015 TCC first-time entering students transferred to a four-year institution within three years. Seventy-eight percent (570) of those students went to one of the Tulsa Transfer Project partner universities.
- Of the 2,362 AY 14-15 TCC graduates, 1,254 (53.1%) transferred to a four-year institution within three years of graduation from TCC.
- Of the 1,254 graduates who transferred, 733 (58.5%) earned a bachelor’s degree within three years of graduating from TCC. For the 1,552 AY 14-15 students who graduated with a transfer degree (AA or AS) 69.6% transferred to a four-year institution.
- Sixty-three percent of the AA or AS graduates earned a bachelor’s degree within three years of graduation from TCC.
Next Step
In January 2020, the Presidents of the seven participating higher education institutions issued a formal charge to establish the Tulsa Higher Education Task Force to “undertake an initial exploratory process to develop a plan for the creation of a formal structure for sustaining collaboration across the seven institutions and key community stakeholder groups.”
The Consortium’s mission is to advance student learning, improve student success, achieve equity in outcomes, and meet workforce needs by working collaboratively to increase higher education opportunities in the region.
