Pandemic cost transfer students a lot; options are few

The coronavirus pandemic cost some transfer students more than worry and anxiety over falling ill. It cost them internships and research opportunities, chances to work closely with renowned faculty and even travel abroad as part of their studies.

With less time on campus than the traditional freshmen or sophomores who arrive as high school graduates, some question whether transfer students can get any of that time and those opportunities back.

“That’s the thing we don’t talk about,” said Alexis Zaragoza, a transfer student at UC Berkeley. “I have friends graduating right now, and they entered the pandemic only having one semester of actual college and doing college things as transfer students.”

Students missed out on opportunities to travel to Washington, D.C., for a semester or participate in state government as part of

UC’s Sacramento program, she said. Such college programs and activities are essential to giving students, especially low-income students like Zaragoza, opportunities to network and expand their experiences.

“How many students are losing the only time in their life with free funding opportunities to go do these things, to go to Europe and do research?” she said.

Colleges are taking a new approach to how they welcome transfer students to their campuses this fall given how the last year has played out for those students.

“Transfer students have a limited window of opportunity on campus, and their timeline is compressed,” said Judith Brauer, associate director at the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Georgia.

Transfer students, who mostly come from California’s 116 community colleges, typically spend two years at the university before graduating. Nearly 70,000 transfer students are enrolled across the 23-campus CSU system. At UC’s nine undergraduate campuses, there are 50,510 transfer students among the 226,000 undergraduates.

Brauer said transfer advisers are worried that these students haven’t spent much time on campus and are even losing “informal opportunities” that they would learn about face to face, such as social events, scholarships, future jobs or research opportunities dropped during informal discussions while walking in a hallway.

Steven Nguyen, the Berkeley campus’ transfer center program director, said he and his colleagues have been planning and focusing on building a community and connections for the transfer students who arrive on campus this fall. Berkeley hosts about 3,500 transfer students each year.

“We’re planning large, outdoor events right now based on local guidance and city and county rules,” he said.

Those events would cap participation at 200 students and connect transfer students around similar backgrounds, such as their majors, community colleges or living situations. The point is for them to meet one another and make friends, but the events also will promote self-care and give students time to de-stress.

A Berkeley campus survey of about 1,400 students found more transfer students were delaying their time to a degree than firstyear students. On average, transfer students take 2.14 years, or two years and a semester, to graduate, Nguyen said. The survey found 28% of transfers were considering an extra semester or more time to graduate, versus 8% of freshmen.

“Some students I’ve worked with have said they aren’t going to come to Berkeley in an online modality, or they’re not going to pay tuition to attend online,” he said.

At Cal Poly Pomona, a survey sent to all students found first-year freshmen and junior-year transfer students — groups that have had no face-to-face contact — are eager for a “reset,” said S. Terri Gomez, the school’s associate provost for student success, equity and innovation.

“For transfers, career engagement, internships and research opportunities are at the top of their list of things, and they have a certain sense of urgency.”

The Pomona campus already has a strong program called PolyTransfer that provides dedicated staff, activities and programming to transfer students and starts “onboarding” them in the summer.

The PolyTransfer program helped Jezzabella Jimenez, a communications major who transferred to