Date of Award

Spring 5-3-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Higher Education Leadership

Advisor

Kathleen Gillon

Second Committee Member

Elizabeth Allan

Third Committee Member

Leah Hakkola

Additional Committee Members

Janet Sortor

Aaron Tolbert

Abstract

Over the past 2 decades, scholars have made efforts to critically examine challenges in vertical transfer pathways for community college students transferring to 4-year institutions (Handel, 2011; Jain et al. 2020; Strempel, 2013). Though there are many challenges in vertical transfer pathways, credit loss, and extended graduation timelines can have the most significant effect on the economic and social mobility of minoritized students. Articulation agreement policies were developed with the intention to reduce credit loss in the vertical transfer between community colleges and public 4-year institutions (Brint & Karabel, 1989; Cohen, 1995). Acknowledging the cyclical nature of large sociopolitical discoursess, along with the reflective and productive properties of discourses in articulation agreement policy is important. Using a policy discourse analysis methodology could prove invaluable in understanding the ways in which policy situates challenges in vertical transfer pathways, and lastly, how this is framed as an equity issue in the larger context of higher education.

The purpose of this study was to explore and interrogate discourses in articulation agreement policies that may contribute to challenges in vertical transfer pathways for minoritized students. This was done by identifying predominant discourses that depict community college transfer students and what reality was produced by discourses in the policy. I approached this question from a feminist poststructural paradigm, using the theoretical framework of transfer receptive culture (Jain et al., 2020) to guide the sample selection and policy discourse analysis to analyze the discourses in the chosen policy documents (Allan, 2008; Dirks, 2016; Jain et al., 2020).

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