Crossing the Finish Line, an impressive book by former Princeton president William Bowen, former Macalaster College president Michael McPherson, and Matthew Chingos,  relied on two massive databases on the entering class of 1999–one on 96,000 first-time freshmen and 30,000 entering transfer students at 21 flagship universities and the other on 108,000 freshmen and 42,000 transfers at less selective state colleges and universities in four states (Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia)–to compile a wide-ranging book of empirical research on topics impacting American higher education. This is the third in a series of posts on their findings (see previous installments on affirmative action and financial aid).

The authors found that students who begin their postsecondary careers at a two-year school are about half as likely to attain a bachelor’s degree as students who start at a four-year institution, even after controlling for high school grades, SAT scores, gender, family income, parental education, and educational aspirations. 1999 high school graduates with a 3.96 GPA and a 1200 SAT score, who aimed for a bachelor’s degree but started at a community college, were able to attain their goal in six years or less 47 percent of the time. Student with identical credentials who opted to start at a four-year institution completed a degree 83 percent of the time. Similar patterns emerge at lower achievement levels and institution selectivity tiers. The lesson for students desirous of a bachelor’s degree is clear: start at a bachelor degree-granting institution.

The lesson for institutions is slightly at odds with this finding. Because transfer students graduate at rates similar to, and in some cases higher than, freshmen enrollees, four-year institutions would be wise to admit and enroll greater numbers of transfers. And, because transfer students tend to be more diverse, come from more challenged backgrounds than first-time freshmen, and have lower academic achievement levels (as measured by high school GPA and SAT scores), the institution would be expanding diversity while simultaneously boosting opportunity and increasing the number of degrees awarded.

At the state level, these findings have clear policy implications. They suggest a careful consideration of where students go to college, rather than just if they go. That message must be communicated to students making their college selections (and parents and counselors helping them), because the book also found significant deleterious effects for a student attending an institution below his or her talent level. The data also suggest that students who start at a community college are generally leaving their bachelor’s-degree ambitions behind somewhere before making the transfer.