Broad higher education contexts shape how community college students and postsecondary personnel approach transfer from community colleges to baccalaureate-granting institutions. We leverage the concept of strategic action fields, an organizational theory illuminating processes that play out as actors determine “who gets what” in an existing power structure, to understand the role of political-ecological contexts in “vertical” transfer. Drawing on interviews with administrators, transfer services personnel, and transfer-intending students at two Texas community college districts and with administrators, admissions staff, and transfer personnel at public universities throughout the state, we examine how institutional actors and students create, maintain, and respond to rules and norms in the community college transfer field. Our results suggest university administrators, faculty, and staff hold dominant positions in the field, setting the rules and norms for credit transfer and applicability. Students, who hold the least privilege, must invest time and energy to gather information about transfer pathways and policies as their primary means of meeting their educational aspirations. The complex structure of information—wherein each institution provides its own transfer resources, with little collaboration and minimal alignment—systematically disadvantages community college students. Although some community college personnel voice frustration that the field disadvantages transfer-intending community college students, they maintain the social order by continuing to implement and reinforce the rules and norms set by universities.

广泛的高等教育背景决定了社区学院学生和高等教育人员如何从社区学院转学到学士学位授予机构。我们利用战略行动领域的概念，这是一种组织理论，阐明了参与者在现有权力结构中决定“谁得到什么”的过程，以理解政治生态环境在“垂直”转移中的作用。通过对德克萨斯州两个社区学院区的管理人员、转学服务人员和打算转学的学生以及全州公立大学的管理人员、招生人员和转学人员的采访，我们研究了机构参与者和学生如何创建、维护和遵守社区大学转学领域的规则和规范。我们的研究结果表明，大学管理人员、教职员工在该领域占据主导地位，制定了学分转移和适用性的规则和规范。拥有最少特权的学生必须投入时间和精力来收集有关转学途径和政策的信息，作为满足其教育愿望的主要手段。复杂的信息结构——每个机构都提供自己的转学资源，几乎没有合作，协调性也很低——系统性地对社区学院的学生不利。尽管一些社区学院工作人员对这一领域对打算转学的社区学院学生不利表示沮丧，但他们通过继续执行和强化大学制定的规则和规范来维护社会秩序。