The latest report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) shows a significant decline in transfer student enrollment by 8.4 percent. Higher education institutions across America lost over 190,000 transfer students in the last year alone.
The drop is especially significant in lateral transfers when students transfer from one two-year college to another, or from one four-year college to another, and reverse transfers when students transfer from a four year into a two-year college.
“These types of transfers are typically very common among freshmen who are looking to make a quick adjustment, usually correcting for a bad fit, perhaps, or an unexpected level of academic challenge, or some other change of plans,” said Dr. Doug Shapiro, executive director of NSCRC. 
Shapiro and researchers were expecting a huge increase in lateral and reverse transfer. They assumed more students would transfer to a school closer to home or a less expensive institution due to the hardship brought on by the pandemic. However, lateral transfers dropped by nearly 12 percent. Over the past year, more students stayed put or simply dropped out of college entirely.
“This translates into some pretty unusual patterns at some institutions, for example, where we saw falling persistence rates despite increasing retention rates,” said Shapiro.
On the other hand, the number of students moving from a two-year college to a four-year, usually referred to as upward transfers, is relatively stable with only a 1.3 percent decline.
However, the success in holding up upward transfers is not enough to make up for the bigger challenges higher education institutions still face.
