Colleges and Universities Woo Once-Overlooked Transfer Students

Transfer students — whose challenges have often been ignored in higher education — are feeling a surge in popularity as colleges and universities are increasingly wooing them.

“This was a group that was always taken for granted,” said Todd Rinehart, vice chancellor for enrollment at the University of Denver.

But last month, the University of California system announced that it has accepted more transfer students than ever before. And in a move that is perhaps more symbolic than substantive, Princeton University has, for its 2018 class, accepted 13 transfer students, the first such students it has enrolled since 1990.

“At this moment in time, transfer students are receiving the most positive attention from higher education that they ever have,” said Janet Marling, executive director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Georgia.

Transfer students, who make up 38 percent of all students in higher education, have always helped a university’s revenue by replacing students who leave after the first or second year. But behind the new interest in courting them lies one stark reality: Undergraduate enrollment is declining and has been for six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit education research organization.

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