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arXiv · 2605.16992

Push and Pull in Community College Cross-Enrollment: Remoteness, Articulation, and Student Mobility

Conrad Borchers·Robin Schmucker·Ashutosh Tiwari·Zachary A. Pardos
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Abstract

Cross-enrollment across institutions can expand access to courses and support student progression. Still, little is known about how geographic constraints and institutional policies jointly shape cross-enrollment within community college (CC) systems. We adopt a push-pull framework: geographic remoteness constrains feasible cross-institution mobility, while credit mobility may attract enrollment expressed as articulation (CC-to-university: credit toward a four-year partner) and course equivalencies (CC-to-CC: equivalencies across the system). Using de-identified administrative records from a 12-institution community college system (100,547 students; 1,290,311 course enrollments), we quantify outgoing and incoming cross-enrollment and relate these patterns to institutional remoteness and credit mobility. We find that less remote colleges exhibit higher outgoing and incoming cross-enrollment than more remote colleges. Further, cross-enrolled students are more likely to take articulated courses, and institutions with higher equivalency ratios receive higher incoming cross-enrollment (8.62% vs. 6.70%). This association was slightly stronger at more remote colleges. This study demonstrates how analysis of complex college systems can surface factors shaping student mobility and inform the design of cross-enrollment and articulation policies in CC systems.

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Conrad Borchers, Robin Schmucker, Ashutosh Tiwari, Zachary A. Pardos. 2026-05-16. Push and Pull in Community College Cross-Enrollment: Remoteness, Articulation, and Student Mobility. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16992

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