In PA, the path is branch campus- flagship
(this also applies to Pitt, since Pitt Johnstown, Bradford, Titusville, and Greensburg).
OR community college - directional system (PASSHE schools).
WCU does take a fair amount of transfers.
Ohio, to a certain extent, works like this (Ohio State branch campus is a better way to get tOSU Main Campus than CC).
Some midwestern states’ community colleges, even Indiana which I see quoted above, have limited offerings with an emphasis on both remedial and vocational education for the community. It’s their primary goal and they do a good job with it. They’re inexpensive and efficient, but may not serve your typical 18 year old who’s too poor to attend the flagship and is looking for 2 years of “flagship substitute” to save money; winter weather, isolation (rural areas) and roads may make it difficult to commute to a CC that has a more “academic” program with decent transfer rates. There may well be a directional that’s as open-enrollment as the community college, where classes are not more rigorous, and which would be an alternative… sometimes not even that expensive (Nebraska or Wyoming for instance).
I remember the closest community college when I lived in the Midwest only offered one section of Calculus 1 and nothing above it, only the first semester or first year sequence in any college science, only levels 1 and 2 in Spanish (no other foreign language)… The college served as a remedial/vocational center for local adults. A student with a handful of Aps would have exhausted the curriculum. Getting to a community college with more extensive offerings required a car and someone willing to drive 30mn in the summer, much more in the winter. Fortunately, it happened to be a state with good state grant aid, so the strong HS student could afford to study at the flagship if that’s where they were admitted. In the states with a “covenant”, it may well have been more economical for lower-income students to attend the flagship. Some of these “covenant” programs are being dismantled, which is really too bad.