The reverse transfer literature contains studies investigating the demographic characteristics of postsecondary students that attended a community college after attending a four-year institution, and their proportion in the community college student population. A few researchers have investigated reverse transfer student motives for enrolling in the two-year college. However, the literature is lacking studies exploring the intentions of reverse transfer students to complete their programs of study at the community college, and how these intentions impact retention and completion measures of effectiveness at the community college. The purpose of this study was to examine reverse transfer student demographic characteristics, education background, and motivations for participating in reverse transfer behavior to predict program completion at the community college.

The research design of this study used a survey administered to 860 students in classes in two community college districts. Data were analyzed using correlations and hierarchical regression analyses. The findings demonstrated that reverse transfer students in the study group bore substantial differences to reverse transfer students reported in earlier national literature. The only statistically significant predictive variables for program completion identified were gender and marital status: married students and female students were more likely to indicate that they intend to complete their programs of study than other reverse transfer students.