Examining the Educational and Employment Outcomes of Reverse Credit Transfer

Abstract

Reverse credit transfer (RCT) is an emerging policy designed to award associate’s degrees to students who transfer from 2-year to 4-year colleges after transfer. The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of RCT degree receipt on students’ university and labor outcomes using data from Texas, where the legislature passed RCT policy in 2011. We find that posttransfer associate’s degree recipients are significantly more likely to persist and attain in universities compared to their peers who were eligible for RCT but did not receive the degree, and these benefits are often larger for students from populations historically marginalized from higher education. However, these estimates are suggestive given the potential of self-selection biasing the estimates upward, and the results are sensitive to moderate bias from unobserved variables. We find limited evidence of additional benefit of these associate’s degrees, which are largely academic and transfer-oriented degrees, on labor outcomes.