Higher Ed Systems Find Solutions to Issues Plaguing Transfer Student Success

New NASH Center for Postsecondary Improvement Leverages Improvement Science to Scale Proven Approaches in Higher Education

In a coordinated effort to address challenges in college transfer enrollment and success, twelve public higher education systems have successfully adopted improvement science as a new method of problem solving for higher education. These systems implemented a set of interventions that led to breakthrough results in transfer student success across the country, including increased transfer enrollment rates up to +22 points above baseline. 

Nationally, around 80 percent of community college students intend to transfer, but only 33 percent enroll in a four-year institution, and only 16 percent successfully do so within six years. Far too many fall short due to fragmented systems and inefficient processes. 

Led by the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH), the participating systems used improvement science, originally pioneered in manufacturing and widely used in the healthcare sector, to test, refine, and spread interventions that improve outcomes for transfer students. The initiative was executed through a collaborative structure known as a NASH Improvement Community (NIC). Improvement ideas are executed in short, 45-day cycles, allowing for rapid testing, quickly identifying what works and leaving behind what doesn’t. NASH refers to this approach as “fail before scale”. 

Transfer student enrollments have been growing as much as four percent annually over the last several years. By comparison, institutions in the Transfer Student Success NIC have seen outsized transfer student enrollment increases, such as:

• Prairie View A&M University (TX) increased first-time transfer enrollments by 16 points between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023.
• “A new partnership between sender and receiver institutions Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College (SKY-CTC) and Western Kentucky University resulted in a 57-point jump in first-time transfer enrollment between the institutions through Spring 2023 to Spring 2024.”
• The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign saw a 22-point increase in transfer student enrollment across its two years of participation in the NIC. 

“We’re not just tweaking processes, we’re changing the way institutions work together,” said Nancy Zimpher, President of NASH. “This is what ‘systemness’ looks like: aligned teams solving shared problems to improve student outcomes at scale.”

The twelve systems that participated include the University of Illinois System, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), Texas A&M System, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, Arkansas State University System, Universities of Wisconsin, California State University System, City Colleges of Chicago, Mississippi Community College Board, Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, and Southern Illinois University System.

• Teams included system leaders, campus leaders, and cross-functional teams at the campus level.
• Institutions rigorously tested 352 interventions over the first two years of the NIC, using structured Plan–Do–Study–Act (PDSA) cycles to identify a core set of proven solutions through a ‘fail-before-scale’ approach.
• Successful interventions are shared between participating campuses, accelerating time to results. Interventions are then documented and shared in a Change Package, the documentation base for spreading effective change ideas.

“Not only have we moved away from the legacy model of lengthy ‘pilots’–and the endless number of committees and subcommittees they accompany– we no longer limit ourselves to tests of change reliant on key dates of the traditional academic calendar, like enrollment census and graduation,” said William Bajor, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, PASSHE. “The rapid-fire improvement science model supported by the collaborative structure of the NASH NIC empowers us to challenge our imperfect practices any time of year AND come away with ‘ready to use’ actionable results. That’s priceless.”

“Improvement science has given us a common language and a structured method to tackle some of the most persistent challenges in higher education,” Isaiah D. Vance, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Advising & Transfer Initiatives, Texas A&M University System. “While the rapid cycle testing approach may seem simple on the surface, the results have been outsized. Through our work with NASH, we’ve not only advanced transfer student success but have also adapted the same methods to begin redesigning academic advising across our campuses, ensuring students receive more timely, personalized, and effective support throughout their journey.”

This transformative work is now driven by NASH’s newly established Center for Postsecondary Improvement. The Center is dedicated to accelerating the adoption of improvement science methods in the higher education sector, serving as a hub for collaboration and lasting impact.

“Our vision is a world in which improvement science is the base methodology for the higher education sector to understand, diagnose, and solve the most complex problems it faces,” said Juliette Price, Director, NASH’s Center for Postsecondary Improvement. “Our goal is to introduce higher education to this approach, educate practitioners, engage them in improvement work that yields results, and empower a field full of improvers to do this work all across the nation.”

The Center for Postsecondary Improvement is excited to expand its improvement science offerings, including:

• The next cohort of the Transfer Student Success NIC, which is currently open for enrollment 
• Introduction to Improvement Science for Higher Education workshops
• Tailored consulting and improvement project support for campuses and systems looking to improve
• New NICs focused on novel problems, such as higher education in prison

Educators and system leaders are encouraged to engage with this growing movement to build the most effective, efficient higher education system possible. 

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About NASH

Founded in 1979, the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH) works to advance the role of multi-campus systems and the concept of systemness to create a more vibrant and sustainable higher education sector. NASH systems include over 700 campuses and serve more than 8.2 million students nationwide. Learn more at www.nash.edu.