Breaking the barriers: exploring experiences and challenges of Latinx students seeking to transfer from the community college to 4-year colleges and universities

The Latinx population is growing quickly in the United States; however, that growth is not mirrored in higher education degree completion rates at four-year institutions. A primary reason for low degree attainment is that Latinx students are not transferring from community colleges to four-year colleges or universities and obtaining bachelor's degrees at the same rate as other student populations. While we know that Latinx students often face financial challenges and have to work while attending college, we do not know much about the non-financial reasons that may also limit their transfer to four-year colleges. This qualitative study explored, from the student perspective, the transfer barriers and institutional constraints that challenged their educational success. Those barriers ranged from juggling home life and its unstable conditions, to dealing with mental health in silence, to experiencing microaggressions in and out of the classroom. However, connecting with culturally sensitive student support services and utilizing their cultural and personal assets made navigating community college easier. The study relied on semi-structured interviews and used CRT/LatCrit and Community Cultural Wealth theories as lenses in a methodology of counter-storytelling, allowing students' voices to identify the barriers and the supports they received as they prepared to transfer to four-year colleges or universities. Recommendations and future research directions are also discussed.