Introduction

College can seem out of reach for many students who perceive a bachelor’s degree as unaffordable and unattainable. It is no surprise, then, that students from the top socioeconomic quintile enroll in college more than 50 percentage points more than students from the bottom quintile and are much less likely to first seek an associate degree.¹ For many low-income students, students of color, and adult students, the pathway to a bachelor’s degree begins at a community college. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC), only 23 percent of students who began at a community college and attended exclusively full time were able to transfer and complete a bachelor’s degree within six years.² Transfer and graduation rates are much worse for the majority of students who attend part time and they are stubbornly dismal for Black, Native American, Latinx, and low-income students.³ A variety of transfer interventions (articulation agreements, guided pathways, university centers, credential stacking, and others) have done some good but the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the state of transfer.⁴ It is clear that transfer is not working for many community college students who want bachelor’s degrees.

And it makes sense that about 80 percent of community college students aim to earn bachelor’s degrees.⁵ The bachelor’s degree remains the main entry point to the middle class. Americans without these degrees are especially vulnerable to economic downturns.⁶ Coming out of the Great Recession, almost 75 percent of new jobs went to bachelor’s degree holders.⁷ But many students, especially those in rural areas, live in education deserts, where access to bachelor’s degrees is limited.⁸ And even where there are colleges and universities in the area, sometimes this is an “opportunity mirage,”⁹ where there are higher education opportunities but students can’t access them due to cost, program capacity constraints, work, or caregiving responsibilities or other challenges facing adult and non-traditional students.¹⁰ Students need options to further their education that are accessible to them where they are, with the resources and time that they have.

One solution to these issues that has become more popular in recent years is allowing community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees, often in high-demand and applied fields. Bachelor’s degree programs offered by community colleges don't just expand access, they do so in a way that fills critical equity gaps facing adult and working learners, rural students, and those who began at a community college and want to continue where they started.

But allowing community colleges to deliver bachelor’s degrees is controversial. Higher education leaders and those in state legislatures fear mission creep, duplication, low quality, and undermining traditional colleges and universities.¹¹ The purpose of this literature review is to provide an overview of the research on the community college bachelor’s degree (CCB),¹² with a particular eye to questions of equity, labor market returns, student outcomes, quality, and whether these programs address key choke points and widen access to the bachelor’s degree and economic stability.