After working across hundreds of higher education institutions over the past thirty five years, I stumbled on college transfer as an issue that was screaming for a centralized, national solution. What I found across the country are isolated, duplicate systems that reflect different procedures and policies that make college transfer so hard. This is why we are in the midst of building content and tools to support college transfer across a range of stakeholders including students, advisors, employers, administrators, recruiters, counselors, and parents. Never before has anyone ever tried to pull together a national resource to help college transfer processes supporting academic credit portability.
The cost and impact of college transfer is felt by millions every year. My estimate, students aggregately pay $7 billion annually for courses that often do not count for various reasons. Institutions also pay a price to support college transfer. Some are not inclined to support student mobility and academic credit portability. Often, ‘elite’ institutions reflect different approaches to transfer. Some are friendly while others feel traditional students entering as freshman fills their seats and addresses their mission. From my interactions, most institutions are not inclined to support transfer out very well. Once you disclose you are leaving an institution, behaviors naturally change. Generally, community colleges do the best job supporting college transfer students with orientation, advising and assistance around the college transfer processes.
Internal, institutional processes supporting sending and receiving students exceeds $2,000 per student on average. This is an estimate revealed through surveying academic and administrative staffs throughout the country. The labor intensive aspect of college transfer requires oversight and review from many across the institution. It is not a simple process. The costs and time are absorbed in current institutional budgets. So, when you consider the affordability issues of obtaining a college degree over five years, the numbers become startling.
Academic credit mobility should be addressed systematically. College transfer is subsidized by states and federal governments. They share in the college transfer costs across sending and receiving institutions. Since government subsidizes many institutions and programs, add another $14 billion spread across the varying State based subsidies. Pretty hefty problem. For a full-time college student transfer absorbs $1,200 per student per year. Imagine what could be accomplished and improved if we could allocate most of those funds to other avenues such as financial aid, decreases tuition, and improved programs.
An average transfer student has to take one full semester of courses to make up for course credits that do not satisfy degree and major requirements. Think about transfer from that perspective. Some take more courses because they also change majors. Some are lucky and lose less than the norm. Some courses may transfer as electives. But, often courses taken previously, won't count toward degree requirements. This is a very subtle problem often caught late in what schools call a ‘degree audit’. A degree audit involves the registrar or someone with academic authority performing a review of your coursework and evaluates it against your major and designated degree requirements. It is a detailed review, often automated with a computer program stepping through the menu of requirements and validates what counts and what does not. Many institutions do not have all academic programs automated, so there are delays in the process. Costs students in wait time, are increased, further complicating the question what do you enroll in and take during the time you wait.
Transfer pathways differ regionally and by sector. Sectors represent both public and private schools as well as independent or for-profit institutions that are nationally or regionally accredited. Accreditation has been one of the means to view academic rigor. Teams of academics and administrators are hired to review each institution and their programs. The process is tedious, but usually enlightening. The teams study academic offerings, processes, outcomes and policies on a published cycle to retain currency of the review. It is sort of like an inspection. They come to your school and evaluate how you are doing things and then publish a report. Federal and state governments subsidize the accreditation processes and organizations. This may be a topic for another time.
College transfer follows two evaluation paths: a block of prior courses or course by course evaluation. A block is a group of courses that satisfy a degree or part of a degree at one institution and will satisfy one or two years at another institution. It usually can not be more than two years at a potential destination school. Block transfers will follow what is called an articulation agreement. These are documents prepared by the sending and receiving schools, signed off to reflect a block transfer. Some call this core to core or program to program. This differs across sectors and institution types. Public community colleges will promote transfer articulation agreements with public receiving institutions usually inside a State. They also have agreements with privates and for-profits. Many States have negotiated State-wide articulation processes that help align course offerings either through program mapping in blocks of courses, course mapping or common course numbering. Sounds complicated, because it is. This is why having a central, national clearinghouse in the long run, will help college transfer students and their stakeholders avert unanticipated costs and challenges.
Satisfying degree requirements today is more career-oriented or in other words more focused on selecting your major. When I went to school a long time ago my major was not as crucial. I only wanted my degree to pass the bar. I wanted the piece of paper saying I made it. Once I had my degree I could do anything. Today, going to college is much different. The complexity of choices and programs oriented toward specific careers and industries has changed the whole playing field. Moving between schools is much harder for students today. Comparing coursework applicable for a major and degree at one school with another is a difficult and frustrating process to navigate given the fragmentation and complexity of information.
My view of college transfer has evolved greatly. Initially, the goal to make coursework portable seemed reachable in short order. Build a national course database, establish software tools for schools to map courses, add navigation and search tools for students to find accurate transfer information and voila, we have a solution. Not so fast. Getting schools to trust a third party and getting them to post their transfer data is much harder than you would think. Just last week, we added a function letting you tell us to contact a school you may be transferring from or transferring to. Our intent is to help use the information you share with us to contact each school to help them see the need for students like you who desire to use the web and sites like collegetransfer.net to find answers, guidelines and accurate information.
Students have been transferring for years and schools across the country have developed thousands and thousands of articulation agreements documenting how a student can move from one institution to another. This is the next function we are busy building and adding. We will help institutions and prospective students by posting a repository of all articulation agreements. My estimate: there are 70,000. It’s pretty hard to find them when they are spread all over the place. Some are posted on the web. Some are sitting on shelves in academic or administrative offices. Our intent is to enable a community of schools to post and manage these agreements, offer students a toolbox to view them and then gain assistance from transfer counselors or others who seek your best interests at heart.
So, if you come across an area of the system that needs work, or can suggest a school to be contacted, please do. We are building this system for you and the institutions that are trying to be transfer friendly. Please share your insights in our forums as well. This site is new. We are just getting off the ground. Over the next twelve months, we have great plans to add functions for students and institutions that will continue to streamline and make college transfer less daunting. Our vision of academic credit portability is achievable. And, we appreciate all your comments and understanding as we build this site with content and tools.