The Implied Promise to the Student
In a perfect world, all Americans will go to college in August following their high school graduation parties.
In a perfect world, all college students will pass all of their courses, know the perfect career for them after college, never miss a single day of class, graduate on time and go out into the world without a worry of whether the perfect job will be there, or their student loans can be paid back.
In the real world, life happens! For whatever reasons (and there are many), life after high school is not nearly as clear cut and smooth sailing. The majority of high school graduates do not know for sure what they want to do for careers. Many cannot go straight off to college. More cannot go to college without accumulating student loans, credit card debt, and plenty of unplanned events and situations that may cause them to have to have to change schools or even stop-out or drop out of college. For those "real world" students, the implied promise is that whenever they are ready to go back to college, all of their previously earned college credits will count toward their degrees. The implied promise is that even if you can only take a course or two every year, that these courses will ultimately fit into a degree program.
Consumer Beware: College transfer, the transition of many learners spanning many colleges and universities in pursuit of degrees and credentials, is not always smooth sailing. If you are reading this blog, you are somehow involved in college transfer. Either you are someone considering it, or you are someone trying to help those that are in the midst of questioning their pathways to degrees.
For decades we have heard and felt the resistance of making college transfer easier. The resistance comes from the core of the tradition of academia. It usually stems from the different practices and policies employed across regions, states and institutions.
The very foundation for the differences in policies and practices are the competitive interests embedded in the development of curriculum and programs. Developing academic programs and curricula requires a huge investment of resources, building upon what has been created over many years, and preserving academic rigor. In other words, it is time consuming, expensive, and is very labor intensive for our academic scholars. Part of it also stems from our singular desire to diistinguish ourselves from everyone else.-- individually, programatically and institutionally.
No instructor or faculty member will teach a course exactly the same even though they use the same syllabus, textbook and course objectives. Whether we take courses in a traditional setting or online, we seek confirmation that our work (investment of time, effort and money) will have currency beyond the cost of attendance and participation.
Yet, the knowledge economy and globalization will not stand still waiting for us to shake out our differences and respect the prior learning accumulated by millions of Americans. This is CT.Net's challenge, and we hope our unrelenting commitment to improving college transfer for everyone will make important changes very well-entrenched practices, or at a minimum shine the light on how transfer works.
We launched the Promise, Partner and Pioneer campaign in January 2010. It is a compelling and creative push to help all colleges and universities to live up to the promise of their missions. Our big idea is: Let's promote academic programs, courses, assessment and learning outcomes not as divided compartments, but part of a holistic model of learning. It is about aligning what the Academy promises with the reality of practices institutions follow.
What We've Heard....
We have listened to the many respected, traditional voices that seek to keep things the way they are, as they express the importance of academic freedom and the role of faculty in assessing course comparability, applicability and rigor. Transfer is, afterall, an academic process. It is correlated to accreditation, often framed by "academic quality." The "articulation" of credits (or the recognition of how previous college credits apply, or do not apply, to a degree of study) is a very scholarly endeavor, cloaked in solemn mystery.
Yet, as we have worked tirelessly to foster a platform to support administrative, academic and faculty involvement in college transfer, we have discovered that the "mystery of transfer" may be over-played. Most institutions administer transfer through admissions and the registrar's offices under an academic framework of catalogs, degree plans, and experience; not by a full professor checking to be sure that the course transferring in matches what the intent of the course in the curriculum was meant to yield in terms of academic outcomes and learning overall. This lack of ongoing academic oversight -- even the simplification of what counts and doesn't count -- is an unspoken conceit, allowing administrations to leverage the student churn.
Granted, most institutions seek to help students persist and overcome their obstacles. But, the politicized and polarized stances of academic leaders stressing that faculty oversee transfer decisions is more than a stretch. It is not telling the whole truth. This is not meant as a slam. There are several statewide collaborative initiatives that are applying the academic effort to tune curriculum and align course work. We applaud these trailblazers who are opening up transfer for discussion, collaboration among faculty, and equally important, making all transfer information open to everyone via the Web. We are excited and want to ensure more of these intiitatives launch as a result of the promise of these states. We are actually participating in several of them. Most colleges and universities do not have faculty who would want to do the tedious work of reviewing student transcripts, researching course work and drilling down into the learning outcomes suggested by the abstract course descriptions found in course catalogs. Because transfer is tied to today's mobile society, it is no longer the occasional student, but rather a majority of students who are presenting more than one transcript to college and university staff. The sheer volume of transfer documents and transcripts from all over the U.S. (not just the community college down the street) has made it too difficult to sustain ongoing faculty involvement as transfer students are inquiring every day. So, many institutions facilitate the process by assigning administrative staff to evaluate transcripts based upon surface analysis; sometimes putting students in the position of defending the quality of their prior learning, rather than coordinating the review between institutions and their faculty.
Here is Where Our Promise Makes a Difference.
It is also where we can help the Academy fulfill its promise to the millions of mobile students trying to complete their college degress. We are promoting the Promise, Partner and Pioneer campaign to help colleges and universities use our technology platform to engage faculty in the college transfer process proactively with a work flow designed as a proactive review process. This reduces the reactive one-at-a-time evaluation process in place at most institutions that is kept behind the firewall, preventing others (students, parents, adult learners) from knowing in advance how exactly their credits will transfer. No one should ever have to work through duplicative course content "just because."
Facutly tend to notice descrepencies in transfer decisions made by staff only when a student is not prepared for a course because previous coursework did not provide the necessary foundation for student success. Faculty rarely notice the student who is doing very well, simply because s/he is taking the same content over again -- using precious time, effort, and sometimes financial aid that is unnecessary. As a result, the data and process is often suspect and fraught with issues unknown to faculty. What's the harm you say? Well, given the magnitude of college transfer and how we have welded perceptions that coursework would transfer - which is the implied promise, it costs American tax payers more than $10 Billion annually.
We can solve this problem by putting a fraction of what is spent "reactively" one student evaluation at a time toward efforts to help institutions share a common process, platform and network that can reduce the tax on the overall system. And, more importantly help students progress through their coursework, assured they are indeed learning what they need to succeed when their college degrees are finally conferred.