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Among students who begin in a two-year college, only 12 percent of underrepresented minority students and 16 percent of other students transfer to a four-year institution. Among transfers, only 55 percent of the minorities and 61 percent of other students earn a bachelor’s within six years of transferring. In sum, then, only about seven percent of minority students—and 10 percent of nonminority students—who begin in a two-year college earn a bachelor’s degree from any institution in these large systems within 10 years of starting college. These rates are far lower than for students who begin even in nonselective four-year colleges.

We can’t afford to waste this much talent. Indeed, a recent report from the independent, congressionally chartered Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance painted a stark picture of the consequences of current attendance patterns. According to the committee’s calculations, the combination of three forces—the increasing cost of college, insufficient need-based grant aid, and an enrollment shift among college-qualified students toward the two-year sector—resulted in a loss of between 1.7 and 3.2 million bachelor’s degrees over the last decade.