Want to Find Highly Engaged Students at 4-Year Colleges? Look at Transfer Students

Tim Lum is one of millions of students who returned to college as an adult, getting a two-year degree at his local community college. And this year, at the age of 36, he's one of 13 percent of the nation's college students who transferred institutions in fall of 2023.

He describes the shift from a two-year college to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, which has about 20,000 students, as one of culture shock.

“It feels like Disneyland, in a sense — large buildings, lots of people, crowds, lines,” he says. And in the classroom, especially since much of his community college had been online during the pandemic, he worried about whether he would be prepared for the coursework: “It was feeling like I'm not smart enough — like that slight feeling of inadequacy.”

Lum arrived on campus excited to be there, and eager to dive into class assignments, join student clubs and get involved. To his surprise, though, many other students appear more disengaged.

“I've talked to a lot of other students who went the traditional or conventional path — that came to the university right after high school — and 99 percent of them, I feel like they don’t appreciate it, or they don't realize how many resources are available to them,” he says.

Research shows that he’s not alone — that often transfer students tend to be more motivated and engaged than students who come to college straight from high school. And that might be more pronounced coming out of the pandemic, when professors around the country say students are more likely to skip classes or be watching TikTok or be preoccupied by other distractions during class.

We first talked to Lum two years ago, back when he was in community college and adjusting to college life after years of working restaurant jobs and feeling directionless, as part of our Second Acts podcast series about returning adult college students.

Get EdSurge journalism delivered free to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletters.

For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we tell the story of Lum’s adjustment to university life, and also hear from a professor who has studied transfer students, Benjamin Selznick, an associate professor in the College of Business at James Madison University.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or on the player below.