Chapter 5 - What Data Can Tell Us About Transfers
To better support the transfer student population, Mānoa Institutional Research Office (MIRO) created various transfer student related filters in dozens of web apps, which can help faculty and staff gain a better understanding about the transfer student population, such as the demographics of transfer students, where they transferred from, how they progress at the university, and what their daily experiences are like.
Abstract
Introduction
The undergraduate transfer population is a significant student group at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. In 2020, transfer students comprised about 40% of the university’s degree-seeking undergraduate student population. Understanding that transfer students may have unique challenges, The Mānoa Institutional Research Office (MIRO) team has gone above and beyond to provide easy access to transfer student data. Ultimately, data provided by MIRO aims to help faculty and staff gain a better understanding about undergraduate transfer students so they can provide better support for this student population. In this chapter, we will introduce the design, features, and available transfer student data of MIRO’s homegrown data tools, and discuss some real life scenarios of how those tools can quickly address different data inquiries about transfer students.
Undergraduate Transfer Admission Web App
One of the first data web apps MIRO created is the Undergraduate Transfer Admission web app that can help users easily retrieve data on transfer students’ applications, admission, and enrollment. The report consists of a graph and table of historical data where users can look at data from different semesters: fall, spring, and summer. The acceptance rate is the percentage of applied students accepted by the university, and the yield rate is the percentage of accepted students who ended up enrolling in the university.
As shown in Figure 1, the number of new undergraduate transfer applicants ranges between 3,500 and 4,500 in the fall semesters, with the exception of fall 2020 when UH Mānoa saw a surge in applications to around 6,152. The acceptance rate increased from 75% in fall 2007 to 82% in fall 2019, and the yield rate declined from 63% in fall 2007 to 49% in fall 2019. In fall 2020, during the global COVID-19 pandemic, the number of transfer students applying to UH Mānoa increased significantly, resulting in both record low acceptance and yield rates.
Figure 1: Undergraduate Transfer Admissions Web App Report
(Corresponding Video Here)
Enrollment Web App
MIRO’s Enrollment Trend web app is the most frequently used web app and can help draw a comprehensive profile for transfer students at the institutional level or in a specific academic unit. This web app has two transfer-related filters that can help users pull data of two different transfer student groups. The first one is “new transfer” in the filter “registration type,” referring to students who transferred to UH Mānoa in a given semester. If transfer students continue to enroll in subsequent semesters, they are no longer considered “new” transfers, but may be coded as “continued students” or other “appropriate types.” The other transfer-related filter is “no” for the “start at Mānoa” filter, referring to students who began their college experience elsewhere and transferred to Mānoa later in their college career. Adopting either one of these approaches will address very different questions and retrieve significantly different outcomes from the other. Therefore, users need to be cautious when deciding which approach to use for data pulling.
MIRO often receives questions about how many transfers UHM has and how many of them transferred from UH-specific community colleges. To answer those questions, there are few transfer related filters such as Registration Type, Transfer Type, and Transfer Institutions. When reporting transfer numbers, MIRO typically separates the undergraduate and graduate students because they are naturally different populations. For this chapter, the focus will be on undergraduate transfer students.
The Transfer Enrollment report provides headcounts and full-time equivalence (FTE). MIRO’s enrollment report provides two types of FTE data: One method uses the IPEDS’s FTE definition by looking at the number of credits, while the other method uses the Common Data Set’s definition by counting each part-time student as one third of FTE. If users would like to know more about these methods, they can simply use MIRO’s online Glossary of Terms located at the bottom of MIRO’s webpage. Figure 2 shows the historical trend of new undergraduates transferring to UH Mānoa in fall semesters. There is a downward trend of transfer students that bottomed out in fall 2019 and climbed back up in fall 2021 to nearly 1,866. The purpose of the simple design of the table and reports is to make data easily digestible to web app users with different levels of data fluency.
Figure 2: Enrollment Web App New Undergraduate Transfers Report
(Corresponding Video Here)
Many of MIRO’s users like to use data generated from MIRO’s web apps in their own reports or presentations because the design is very straightforward. As a result, two functions were created: (1) Download as Excel, which allows users to download the data table as an excel spreadsheet, and (2) Export, which allows users to download or print a graph as a PDF file, enabling users to download the chart in different image formats (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Graph Export Options
(Corresponding Video Here)
Data users are often curious about what types of schools students transferred from. To answer that, MIRO created a filter called “transfer type” that includes UH Community Colleges, UH 4-year campuses, universities in the US mainland, and international institutions.
Figure 4 shows that 660 students transferred from UH Community Colleges in fall 2021. As mentioned earlier, there were 1,866 new transfers in the same semester, meaning that about 35% of new undergraduate transfers were from UH’s community colleges. If they want to dig deeper into the data, users can change the Transfer Type filter to see how many students transferred from other institutions. They can also add filters such as “college” or “gender” to see results for specific student populations they are interested in.
Figure 4: UH Community College Transfer Data
If someone wants to see the enrollment numbers of individual UH community colleges, MIRO’s web app has the “transfer institution'' filter to address this need. This data can be used to create a bar chart showing the percentage of transfer students from different community colleges to UH Mānoa (see Figure 5). Fall 2020 data shows us that more than 40% of the new undergraduate transfers came from Kapi‘olani community college and roughly 20% came from Leeward community college. Together, these two colleges accounted for about two thirds of all Mānoa’s new transfers from UH community colleges. Following them are Windward, Honolulu, Maui, Kaua‘i, and Hawai‘i community colleges; three of which (Maui, Kauai, and Hawai‘i) are not on the island of O‘ahu.
Figure 5: Percentage of New Undergraduate Transfers from UH Community Colleges
(Corresponding Video Here)
Some students transferred to Mānoa with their Associate’s Degrees while others did not. MIRO created a filter called “associates awarded” to allow users to choose different types of associate degrees and see how many students transferred to Mānoa with those degrees. The aforementioned transfer-related filters can also be used with other filters to address more sophisticated questions on transfer students.
Many programs and offices are often interested in where students transferred from geographically. To answer this question, MIRO created a “geographic origin'' filter that includes options for Hawai‘i, US Mainland, International, and US Nationals/CFAS (US territories and protectorates) students. To search even further, users can use the “Island” filter to track students from specific Hawaiian islands, and the “Hawai‘i Area” filter to track students from a smaller Hawai‘i geographic district.
If users want to know how many new transfer students live on campus, the “campus resident” filter can help address this question. Figure 6 shows that the number of new transfers living on campus dropped significantly to only 43 students in fall 2020, rose back to the pre-pandemic level in 2021, then dropped again in 2022.
Figure 6: New Transfers Living on Campus
(Corresponding Video Here)
To address how many new transfers colleges and departments have each semester, MIRO added filters related to academic units. For example, if the College of Natural Sciences wants to know how many new transfers they have, they can select their respective section, “natural sciences,” in the “college” filter. From Figure 7, the number of new transfers in Natural Sciences fluctuated and bottomed out in fall 2019 with roughly 200 students, but rose to 233 in fall 2022.
Figure 7: New Undergraduate Transfers in the College of Natural Science
(Corresponding Video Here)
Program Comparison - Enrollment Web App
The Enrollment web app looks at the historical trend of a selected group of students. But what if users want to see multiple programs or departments at once? We’ve created another enrollment-related web app called Program Comparison-Enrollment to do just that. This web app also has a transfer status filter called “start at Mānoa.” The option “no” refers to all students who transferred to Mānoa during their college career, not just new transfers. This filter allows us to get the number of transfers from different academic programs at once.
The default setting is “fall semester” and “undergraduate.” The web app generates data of all academic programs across 6 years and has a useful function which allows users to sort the data in a specific order. Users can download the reports in excel and get the percentage of transfers of a list of programs by dividing the transfers by the numbers of total undergraduates.
Using the downward arrow to sort data in a descending order, users can easily find which department has the most transfer students. Figure 8 shows that in fall 2022, programs with the most undergraduate transfer students were Kinesiology & Rehabilitation Science, Computer Science, Biology, Psychology, and Marine Biology.
Figure 8: Programs with Most Undergraduate Transfers
(Corresponding Video Here)
Transfers Persistence
Aside from MIRO’s enrollment web apps, there is another useful web app called Student Persistence. The term “student persistence” is an overall success measure that describes how successful an institution retains or graduates students, and it is calculated as a combination of graduation and retention rates. MIRO created this web app to help users track students who graduated, retained, and dropped out.
This web app allows users to track student persistence rates at different academic levels such as institution, college, department, major, and program. If a student leaves a program, there are several possible paths they may take: they can either go to another department within the same college, switch to another college in the same institution, or leave the institution entirely. Therefore, by giving users the flexibility to track persistence across different academic levels, it can be very helpful in measuring how well the university does.
Selecting “institutional” in the “report type” filter, users can track how successful UH Mānoa retains and graduates the undergraduate transfers. The report generated shows that there were around 1,745 new transfer students in fall 2021 (see Figure 9). Among them, 81.5% either graduated or retained after one semester, and 70.9% either graduated or retained after one year. Both rates are the lowest since 2005, which can be concerning at the university level.
Figure 9: Persistence Rates of Undergraduate Transfers
(Corresponding Video Here)
Transfers GPA
In addition to the Persistence web app, users can use the GPA web app to obtain another type of student success data. The GPA web app can display data for both degree and non-degree seeking students, giving users details about grade point averages for current semesters, cumulative semesters, and more. The “current semester” GPA is the average obtained at the end of a given semester whereas the “cumulative” GPA is the calculation of all semester averages received at UH Mānoa, not including the GPA transferred in. Figure 10 shows that the GPA for new degree-seeking undergraduate transfers has been around 3.0, but it increased to 3.18 in fall 2020, then dropped back to 3.07 in fall 2021. MIRO is not sure why there was a significant GPA increase in 2020 but wonders if the pandemic made an impact in some way. This is a good example to remind us that data should always be interpreted with caution. Other than the current semester GPA and cumulative GPA, it is also helpful to look at the percentage of students in each GPA range. For example, the percentage of those who get 3.5 or higher is significantly higher in 2020 and 2021, and the percentage of those who get 2.5 or lower is lower in those two years.
Figure 10: Undergraduate Transfer’s GPA
(Corresponding Video Here)
Degrees Awarded to Transfers
The number of degrees awarded is another important student success measure, and our Degree Web App helps users track how many degrees transfers received over the years. To generate a report, users must select a time period first in the “by period” filter. MIRO set the default as “fiscal year” as it is the standard method to report degree data. In this web app, MIRO also included a “start at Mānoa” filter where users can find data on students who started their college experience at Mānoa and those who transferred in.
Figure 11 provides the total number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to transfer students in each fiscal year as well as their average Student Semesters Hours (SSH) taken and GPA. Shockingly, the number of Bachelor's degrees awarded to transfer students doubled during the 2021-2022 fiscal year. They also graduated with less SSH and had a higher GPA, both of which are desirable trends.
Figure 11: Bachelor's Degree Awarded to Transfer Students
(Corresponding Video Here)
It is unclear why there was such a large number of transfers graduating in fiscal year 2021-2022, but the increased rate is a positive trend regardless. This may also explain why UH Mānoa had less transfer students in fall 2022.
Data is all interconnected, meaning that IR needs to review different kinds of data to get a better picture of each situation. That’s the beauty of MIRO’s diverse and comprehensive web apps: they help Mānoa decision makers connect the dots by giving them access to different types of data.
Time-to-Degree Web App
Another important student success measure is time-to-degree (TTD), or time-to-completion, which measures the length of time students take to finish a degree. At the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, undergraduate time-to-degree is reported separately for first-time, full-time students and transfer students. Before calculating time-to-degree, a cohort must be formed. A cohort consists of the students who completed a bachelor’s degree in a given fiscal year. After a cohort has been identified, MIRO staff look backwards to measure the amount of time (including summers) between each student’s first term as a degree-seeking student and graduation (commencement date). To achieve consistent and comparable statistics across years, specific rules are applied to include students in the calculation. In this case, a shorter time-to-degree is desirable because it means the university successfully graduates students in a timely manner.
MIRO created this web app to display both first-time student and transfer student data. Like other MIRO web apps, users have dozens of filters to choose from and can select the student groups they are interested in. Figure 12 is an example that shares about the transfers who entered Mānoa as full-time juniors and how long it took for them to graduate. The report generated includes both the median and mean of TTD, as well as average GPA and student semester hours (SSH).
MIRO created this web app to display both first-time student and transfer student data. Like other MIRO web apps, users have dozens of filters to choose from and can select the student groups they are interested in. Figure 12 is an example that shares about the transfers who entered Mānoa as full-time juniors and how long it took for them to graduate. The report generated includes both the median and mean of TTD, as well as average GPA and student semester hours (SSH).
Figure 12: Time-to-degree of Transfers who Transferred in as Full-time Juniors
(Corresponding Video Here)
This TTD web app allows the MIRO staff to efficiently get data for analysis needed in our annual time-to-degree report. Figure 13 shows the time it takes for first time, full-time undergraduate transfer students. The data is broken down by educational level at the time of transfer, which is determined by the amount of credits students can transfer in with. Full-time status and educational level can be specified to retrieve consistent and comparable data across cohorts. The most recent 2022 data shows that, on average, students who transfer in as freshmen take 3.46 years to complete a bachelor’s degree, sophomores take around 3.17 years, juniors take 2.41 years, and seniors take 1.9 years.
Figure 13: Average Time-to-degree of Full-time Undergraduate Transfers
(Corresponding Video Here)
Transfers’ Student Engagement Data
So far, the web apps introduced use the data collected by the university of Hawai‘i itself. MIRO also has valuable NSSE data that can help enrich understanding about transfer students. NSSE stands for the National Survey of Student Engagement, and it is the most popular student survey in the U.S. (see Chapter 8 for further review of NSSE).
Figure 14: MIRO Web Apps for NSSE Survey
(Corresponding Video Here)
Research has shown that the more High Impact Practices (HIP) activities the students engage in, the higher the possibility that they will continue their studies at the university. In MIRO’s HIP Web App, users can choose “started elsewhere” in the filter “start of college” to identify the transfer students and generate a report to compare NSSE data between transfers and non-transfers (see Figure 15).
Figure 15: Transfer Students High Impact Practice Participation
(Corresponding Video Here)
MIRO designed the report to include more information while also being simple and concise. In this design, the left side is the freshmen’s data, and the right side is the seniors’ data where the light bars represent the 2015 data and the dark bars represent the data from 2020. The survey respondents’ answers include “participated in two or more HIPs” shown in blue, “participated in one HIP” in yellow, and “none”in gray. Both 2015 and the 2020 NSSE data show that seniors who transferred to UH Mānoa have a lower HIP participation rate than non-transfers.
To help users easily see the progress between 2015 and 2020, MIRO designed a table to show the change in percentage point for UH Mānoa and the three comparison groups’ data. This allows our users not only see our own progress but also have comparison groups’ data trends for reference (see Figure 16).
Figure 16: Transfer Students HIP Participation Comparison
(Corresponding Video Here)
Users can further examine and compare specific HIP measures for transfer and first-time students like service learning, learning communities, research with faculty, internship or field experience, study abroad, and culminating senior experiences. The 2020 NSSE survey shows transfers participated in less high impact practices than those who started college experience at UH Mānoa. For example, using the engagement indicator web app, users can quickly find out that transfers rated higher in Reflective & Integrative Learning, Learning Strategies, and Discussions with Diverse Others; and rated lower in Quality Interactions and Supportive Environment.
Using the Time Usage web app, users can see that transfers spend more time than first-timers in class preparation, reading, community or service work, commuting to campus, working for pay and providing care for dependents; and spend less time relaxing or socializing.
Figure 17: MIRO NSSE Time Usage Web App Report
(Corresponding Video Here)
Campus Experience Survey Web App
What if campus data users wanted to know about transfer students’ experiences and challenges? MIRO also built a series of web apps to help users locate useful student feedback through tens of thousands of random and anonymous narratives, in which many are provided by transfer students.
MIRO has a series of qualitative data web apps that have similar transfer-related filters mentioned earlier to specifically help campus officials examine transfer student feedback (see Chapter 6 for more details on qualitative data). Qualitative data–or, in this case, student narratives–tell institutions what their students go through, what they think, how they feel, and what they would recommend to change.
For example, in the 2018 Campus Experience Web App, MIRO retrieved 791 responses of transfer student's specific suggestions on improving programs, activities, or events. The WordCloud graph generated helps to see the most frequently mentioned keywords.
Figure 18: WordCloud of Transfer Students’ Feedback
(Corresponding Video Here)
Users can click any of the themes and indicators to see how transfers commented on other issues such as courses and curriculum, teaching and learning, and academic workload; users can also see how students commented on services such as advising, career services, and dining (see Figure 19). MIRO believes that, to help students overcome their obstacles and achieve a satisfied college experience, personal comments and recommendations are more valuable and useful for actionable change.
Figure 19: Theme and Indicator Table
(Corresponding Video Here)
The narrative responses are from six open-ended questions asked in the 2018 survey. This survey was expanded with more questions and has been conducted multiple times since 2016, altogether collecting thousands of transfer student narratives to understand their experiences, challenges, and expectations. By having more student feedback based on their demographics and academic backgrounds, departments and offices can easily see feedback from students they serve and provide better support to their transfer students.
Closing Remarks
The massive and comprehensive data points that MIRO made available–along with the reports, presentations, and symposiums–all aim to help decision makers at UH Mānoa use data to improve their service to transfer students. In addition to numerical data, MIRO encourages offices and departments to access our open-ended survey web apps and review the student comments, as they are the gold key to understand the unique challenges transfer students are facing. What can be learned from the qualitative data will help faculty and staff provide more appropriate services and work more efficiently. We believe those efforts will eventually result in improved success measures, such as retention and graduation rates, among transfer students.