Articulation Report

This Articulation Report presents descriptive headcount statistics for those undergraduate students in Florida's State University System (SUS) whom, prior to enrolling in their respective universities, were enrolled in one of Florida's twenty-eight public community colleges. In the Fall of 1996 there were 66,547 such students, an increase of 1% compared to Fall 1994 in which there were 65,846.

The Articulation Agreement, Rule 6A-10.024, Florida Administrative Code, facilitates the transfer of students from community colleges to the universities. That agreement also encourages the SUS and the Division of Community Colleges (DCC) to cooperatively conduct longitudinal research on community college transfer students. It is in this spirit that the Articulation Report has been produced by the DCC since 1973. In 1974, the SUS established the Student Data Course File, which contains records of all students enrolled in the universities. Starting with this report the selection criteria has been changed to more effectively restrict the cohort pool to undergraduates without a baccalaureate or higher degree. These changes have made the cohort smaller in comparison to prior reports.

The reader may be interested in comparing groups of students of concern to him or her. Comparisons are not made herein, but sufficient information is provided for the reader to compare groups. Only brief comments will be made on the data contained in the various tables.

Tables 1,2 and 3 display, by gender, race and age respectively, the frequencies of headcount enrollments of undergraduate students attending the SUS in the Fall term where the college of last attendance was a Florida community college. The percentage of female student enrollment has changed from 55% to 56% for the 1994-96 Fall terms. White student enrollment decreased by 2.6%, Black student enrollment increased by 1.4%, Hispanic student enrollment increased by 9.7%, and Asian student enrollment increased by 0.3%.

Table 4 shows that 35.0% of community college transfer students enrolled in the SUS in the 1994 Fall term were enrolled for the first time. This percentage decreased in Fall 1995 and increased in Fall 1996 terms.

Table 5 clearly shows that the majority, 81.1% of students in Fall 1996, transferred 60 semester hours or more upon entering the SUS. This rate is a 1.2% decrease compared to the Fall 1994 rate of 82.3%. Table 6 shows the total number of semester hours accumulated, including hours transferred toward a degree for the 1994-96 Fall terms.

Table 7 and 8 show the distribution of students by the university at which they registered in the Fall 1994-96 terms and the community college from which they transferred. Percentages in Table 7 are for percent of transfers to that university (columns) whereas in Table 8 the percentages are for transfers FROM that community college (rows). For example: In the Fall of 96, 35.9% of the community college transfers TO the University of Florida were from Santa Fe Community College. As compared to Table 8 showing that of the students who transferred FROM Santa Fe Community College into the SUS 75.3% of them transferred to the University of Florida. Table 8 indicates that the largest percentage of students who transfer from a community college tends to enroll in the nearest university.

Table 9 shows that most transfer students earned a grade-point average (GPA) of 2.50 or higher while enrolled in the SUS for the Fall term. GPA is based on a 4.0 system that is calculated by dividing grade points earned by semester hours attempted. Please note that the percent of community college transfer students earning 2.50 or better increased from 67.1% in Fall 1994 to 68.5% in Fall 1996. Also note that the first range of GPA's which previously started at 0.01 has been changed to include GPA's of zero.

Table 10 displays two types of former community college students enrolled in the 1994-96 Fall terms: students transferring prior to earning 60n semester hours, and students transferring after earning 60 semester hours or more. Because cumulative GPA refers only to academic course work at a particular institution, the cumulative GPA shown in Table 10 does not include the grades earned at the community college. Data for previous years are not shown, but are available in prior editions of the Articulation Report. Table 11 shows SUS totals for the same cohort by Community College for 1994-96 Fall terms. Those students who have no transfer hours but do have an AA or AS for the highest degree granted from a Florida Community College have been moved to the greater than 60 hours category in Tables 11 and 12.

Table 12 and 13 present the same data as Tables 10 and 11 except that each N (enrollment) represents the total from a particular community college.

Table 14 shows the number of students enrolled in each major field of study for each university and for the system during the 1994-96 Fall terms. Each major field of study is divided into two subgroups: students earning a GPA of 2.00 or higher and student earning a GPA lower than 2.00. Mean GPA for each group is reported in the final column.

Table 15 reflects the full year, 1994-95 (Summer, Fall, Spring terms), GPA performance of community college students with an associate in arts degree versus native university students classified as upper division. Table 15 represents a SUS summary. As such, students are classified in slightly different major categories than in Table 14. This may make cross comparisons difficult in some cases.

Please note there are two versions of Table 15. The first is the format used in past years and the second is a new format showing breakouts for AA, AS, and other.

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