The number of undergraduates transferring to a new institution grew for the third straight year.
College transfer enrollment increased by 4.4% (+50,600 students) in fall 2024, according to the new Transfer Enrollment and Pathways report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Additionally, 2024 transfer enrollment is ahead of fall 2020 levels by 7.9%
“Students are becoming more mobile as we put pandemic disruptions further behind us,” said Doug Shapiro, NSC Research Center executive director.
The majority of transfer students (52%) are returning transfer students – those who had a stopout of at least one semester and whose most recent prior enrollment was at a different institution.
Where students are transferring
Looking across all institution types, transfer enrollment into community colleges has grown the most since fall 2020 – up 13.5%, or 46,500 students. This is despite the fact that total community college enrollment is down 1.5% from fall 2020.
Lateral transfer from one two-year institution to another is up 5.6% from 2023 to 2024, and up 10.3% from 2020. In 2024, two-year lateral transfers made up 19.2% of all transfer enrollment.
In addition, the number of students transferring from a four-year institution to a two-year college in 2024 increased 6.3% from 2023 (+10,409 students), and 17.6% from 2020. Four-to-two-year transfers made up nearly 15% of all transfer enrollment in 2024.
But the largest share of transfer students are those moving from a two-year college to a four-year institution. Two-to-four-year transfer enrollment made up 41.7% of all transfer enrollment in 2024.
Nearly 500,000 students moved from a two-year to a four-year institution in fall 2024, a 3.1% increase from 2023 to 2024. That’s the second straight year of growth, though it’s still down 3.7% from 2020’s transfer enrollment numbers.
Breaking down two-to-four-year transfer enrollment further, transfer from highly vocational two-year colleges grew 6.5% to more than 75,400 students. Institutions are considered “highly vocational” when 53.8% or more of awards are in career and technical disciplines.
Meanwhile, transfer from high-transfer two-year colleges – where 35.7% of awards or fewer are in career and technical disciplines – grew 2.2% to more than 191,000 students.
About 39% of two-to-four-year transfer students in 2024 earned a credential prior to transferring in 2024, compared to 41.6% in 2020.
Fewer than 10% of two-year college students transfer into highly selective four-year institutions. But, they made up more than half (57.4%) of the transfer students at these institutions in fall 2024.
Student demographics
Black and Hispanic students had the largest transfer enrollment gains in fall 2024 (+8.3% and +4.4%, respectively). The highest increases occurred for Black and Hispanic students transferring from a four-year institution to a two-year institution (+9.8% and +6.0% from 2023 to 2024, respectively).
White student transfer enrollment decreased -1.3% overall in fall 2024, though they saw tiny gains in two-year lateral transfer (+0.6%) and four-to-two-year transfer (+0.4).
White students are the only ethnoracial group that still saw lower rates in 2024 than in 2020 (-6.1%), according to the report.
The report also looks at where students at certain income levels are transferring. Though the number of students from low- and lower middle-income neighborhoods transferring into highly selective four-year institutions remains low, it is growing. For example, the number of students from the bottom neighborhood income quintile transferring from a two-year college to a highly selective four-year institution grew 8.8% in fall 2024 over the previous year.
