Building Stronger Transfer Pathways Through Peer Connection

For millions of students, beginning at a community college is intended to be the first step toward earning a bachelor’s degree. Yet the path from a two-year institution to a four-year university is often far more difficult to navigate than students expect.

Approximately 80 percent of entering community college students intend to transfer and complete a four-year degree. However, only about one-third transfer, and approximately half of those students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to the Community College Research Center. These outcomes reveal an important challenge for higher education: creating a transfer pathway on paper does not necessarily make it easy for students to follow.

Transfer Is More Than a Credit-Mobility Challenge

Articulation agreements, transfer maps, and coordinated advising are essential. Even with these structures in place, students may encounter unclear degree requirements, inconsistent information, and policies that prevent accepted credits from applying to their intended majors.

Approximately two-thirds of transfer students experience some credit loss, losing an average of about 20 percent of their prior coursework. They also tend to accumulate more excess credits than students who begin at a four-year institution, increasing both the time and cost required to complete a degree (Giani et al., 2026).

But transfer success depends on more than whether credits move successfully between institutions. Students must also learn how to navigate a new academic environment.

They need to understand questions such as:

• Where do I go when I need help?
• What expectations do professors have?
• How do students succeed in challenging gateway courses?
• Which institutional processes and resources should I know about?
• Will I feel like I belong here?

Answers to these questions are part of higher education’s “hidden curriculum.” Students who have access to trusted relationships and institutional networks are more likely to acquire this knowledge. Students who are first in their families to attend college, however, may be less likely to have those connections. That is why effective transfer pathways must build social and cultural capital alongside academic preparation.

In a paper developed with the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU), George Kuh, Julia Michaels, and I examine how cross-institutional peer tutoring can help students build academic confidence, learn the receiving institution’s expectations, and form connections before they transfer. The paper also explores how serving as a tutor can help university students develop skills they can use in the workplace.

Peer Tutoring Can Connect Institutions and Students

Technology-enabled, cross-institutional peer tutoring offers one promising way to strengthen transfer pathways. In this model, successful students at a four-year institution provide tutoring to students at a community college, particularly in foundational and transfer-relevant courses such as college algebra or writing. The relationship begins with academic support, but it can also give community college students a meaningful connection to the university they may eventually attend. A well-prepared peer tutor can help a student in several interconnected ways.

First, tutors help students strengthen their understanding of course content and develop more effective approaches to studying and learning. As students experience academic progress, they can begin to see themselves as capable of succeeding at a four-year institution. Research has connected learning support and academic success with increased confidence and self-efficacy (Cepeda et al., 2021).

Second, peer tutors can help make institutional expectations more visible. They can share practical insights about navigating college, seeking support, communicating with faculty, and preparing for upper-level coursework. In this way, tutors can serve as guides who help students interpret unfamiliar systems and norms (Jabbar et al., 2021).

Third, tutoring creates a personal connection. A peer tutor at the receiving institution can become a social anchor, giving a prospective transfer student at least one familiar relationship before arriving on campus. This matters because a student’s sense of belonging is closely connected to persistence and academic success, especially for students from historically marginalized backgrounds (Strayhorn, 2016).

A Transfer Pathway Students Can Experience

The partnership between the University of South Florida and Hillsborough Community College illustrates this potential. Through USF’s FUSE transfer program, participating students receive coordinated advising and academic support as they work toward transferring to the university. Peer tutoring through Knack extended that support across institutional boundaries by connecting HCC students with successful USF students.

These interactions provided more than assistance with an individual assignment or course. They helped community college students become familiar with USF students and the broader university community. Some students who successfully transferred to USF later became tutors themselves, allowing them to use their experiences to support those following a similar path.

This creates a powerful cycle: students receive support, successfully navigate the transfer process, and then help the next group of students do the same.

Intentional Design Matters

Peer tutoring does not automatically produce stronger transfer outcomes. Institutions must design these programs intentionally and connect them to advising, academic support, and other student-success services.

Tutors need preparation not only in course content, but also in inclusive communication, referral practices, role boundaries, and strategies for helping students understand institutional expectations. Clear coordination between participating institutions is equally important.

Without this structure, tutoring may help a student pass a course without addressing the broader information and relationship gaps that make transfer difficult. When tutoring is integrated into the transfer ecosystem, however, it can support students academically, socially, and institutionally at the same time.

From Transfer Agreement to Transfer Experience

The strongest transfer pathways do more than specify which credits will be accepted. They give students an early opportunity to experience the receiving institution as welcoming, supportive, and invested in their success.

A positive relationship with a university peer can make the institution feel more accessible long before a student matriculates. It can also communicate something no brochure or recruitment campaign can fully convey: students like you belong here, and people here want you to succeed.

For institutions facing enrollment pressure, equity gaps, and demands for stronger student outcomes, cross-institutional peer tutoring represents a practical opportunity to advance several priorities at once. It can improve academic preparation, build confidence and belonging, make transfer pathways more visible, and create greater continuity between two-year and four-year institutions.

Transfer pathways are ultimately about more than moving credits. They are about helping students move successfully between academic communities. Peer tutoring can provide the human connection that makes that journey easier to understand, easier to navigate, and more likely to lead to degree completion.

Want to dive deeper into how cross-institutional peer connection transforms the transfer experience? Read the full white paper, Building Stronger Transfer Pathways Through Peer Connection, co-authored with UERU, to explore research-backed strategies and actionable models for your campus.