Conclusion

Considering the overarching theme of higher education and student mobility trends, understanding the institutional culture towards transfer students plays a crucial role in addressing larger issues within student affairs such as persistence, and retention. Identifying institutional barriers that deter transfer student engagement can inform policy and procedures that affect transfer student success and retention. Administrators at institutions must reconcile between their efforts to assist this population of students in ways research shows supports these students’ retention, while also managing various financial, political, and prestige-related restrictions and goals (Tobolowsky et al., 2014). The result from negotiating between opposing forces will define the resulting transfer student success in persistence to degree completion and retention at the institution. Institutions that support transfer students can better position themselves for success in their mission as we face increasingly diverse students with a culture of attending multiple institutions of higher education before degree completion. A crucial step towards supporting diverse students is to create a transfer-receptive culture.

Creating a transfer-receptive culture requires change agents to address underlying assumptions and values that inform the current culture at the institution. Principles from community organizing can be adapted to the higher education context where bottom-up grassroots leaders may require tempered approaches to create change while minimizing costs to their position and well-being. These grassroots organizing principles can provide effective strategies towards organizing within higher education institutions to create a culture that is inclusive and accessible. Change theories applied to analyze and inform grassroots leaders strategies offer ways to lead sustainable organizational change laterally and collaboratively, using relational power instead of power from the top, using power with rather than power over others. These methods allow change agents to advance change and move systems and institutional towards a more transfer-receptive culture.