Recognition as a Lever for Improving Transfer

Community colleges began as junior colleges, intended to provide the first two years of a bachelor’s degree before students transferred to a university. More than a century later, vertical transfer remains one of higher education’s most persistent challenges. We continue to debate how to improve transfer through initiatives such as articulation agreements, transfer admission guarantees, advising reforms, funding incentives and accountability measures. These efforts matter, but they also raise an important question: How do we know when they are working, not individually, but collectively?

What if we’ve been overlooking another critical lever for change? What if improving transfer begins not only with designing better policies and practices, but also by recognizing and celebrating the institutions where those efforts are producing exceptional results?

Never underestimate the power of recognition to drive behavior change. Policy establishes expectations, but recognition shapes aspirations. Colleges and universities are constantly striving to improve, and public recognition validates those efforts while signaling excellence to others. Students notice it. Parents notice it. Presidents notice it. Boards notice it. Recognition influences institutional priorities and creates focus.

Higher education has long understood the importance of recognition. Institutions proudly celebrate athletic championships, national rankings, prestigious grants, faculty fellowships, research designations or student achievement awards. If recognition can elevate so many aspects of institutional excellence, why shouldn’t it also be used to strengthen transfer success?

And if recognition already influences institutional behavior in so many areas, why haven’t we used it more intentionally to improve the transfer learner experience and drive outcomes? Rather than beginning with institutions that struggle, what if we first identified those that consistently help transfer students succeed, celebrated the factors that contributed to their accomplishments and encouraged others to emulate them? This asset-based approach does not ignore problems. Instead, it identifies excellence, makes it visible and creates incentives for others to follow.

Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for high-achieving community college students, has spent the past decade using recognition as a lever to improve transfer. Guided by the belief that students and institutions often improve because they aspire to be recognized for exceptional work, PTK launched the Transfer Honor Roll to recognize four-year colleges and universities that demonstrate excellence in serving transfer students.

The Transfer Honor Roll evaluates institutions on five dimensions that matter most to community college transfer student success. These areas were informed by years of research and experience working with high-achieving community college students and university partners to better understand the factors that consistently contribute to successful transfer. Rather than measuring a single policy or practice, the framework uses more than 40 indicators, including credit applicability, to assess how well institutions support transfer students across the entire transfer journey.

The five dimensions include:

1. Success outcomes after transfer
2. Campus friendliness and sense of belonging
3. Availability of need- and merit-based financial aid
4. Acceptance and application of transfer credit toward degree completion
5. Overall recruitment/admissions experience and campus life for transfers

When the initiative began in 2015, fewer than 50 institutions participated. This year, 1,117 four-year colleges and universities submitted their transfer profiles for consideration. The evaluation also incorporates National Student Clearinghouse transfer outcome data into the evaluation process, recognizing institutions whose transfer outcomes rank among the nation’s strongest. (See the 2026 Transfer Honor Roll announcement for the full list of recognized institutions.)

Recognition is upstream intervention. It influences institutional priorities before policies or regulations ever mandate change. The remarkable growth of the Transfer Honor Roll demonstrates that institutions respond when excellence is recognized. They benchmark themselves against peers, evaluate their own transfer policies, strengthen student supports and continuously improve the transfer experience. Recognition does not replace policy. It accelerates institutional attention, innovation and improvement.

States should pay attention. Instead of asking only, “How do we improve transfer?” we should also be asking, “How do we recognize institutions that are already doing it well?” States have many options, including statewide transfer recognition programs, performance funding that rewards strong transfer outcomes, public recognition of institutions that excel in serving transfer students and scholarship incentives that encourage student mobility.

These approaches not only encourage continuous improvement but also make excellence visible to students and families. Done well, they help a state’s colleges and universities attract talented transfer students, improve transparency for taxpayers and create healthy competition around one of higher education’s most important outcomes.

Higher education has never lacked ideas for improving transfer. Recognition alone will not solve the transfer challenge. But for generations, recognition has shaped institutional behavior, inspired innovation and elevated excellence across higher education. If we want more institutions to become places where transfer students thrive, perhaps it is time to recognize them for doing exactly that.