Category: Transfer News

by Jane Sherman, Passport State Coordinator

Despite the fact that more students start college in the U.S. than in any other nation, only slightly more than half of them (54.8 percent) graduate in six years. (National Student Clearinghouse, Six-Year Completion Rates, 2016). That statistic alone presents a clarion call for not only utilizing different educational practices to increase student retention, but also for placing higher value on, and recognition of, students’ learning achievements early in their postsecondary experiences.

Commonly referred to as an institution’s General Education core, these compulsory areas of early postsecondary coursework generally account for about half of an associate’s degree or a quarter of a bachelor’s degree and cut across many different disciplines.

An emerging national network of colleges and universities called Interstate Passport Network is committed to changing the way we think about General Education, from a disjointed series of standard courses to a critical set of learning outcomes.

The learning outcomes from General Education courses play a critical role in preparing students for their majors, as well as for their lives as employees, entrepreneurs, and citizens. Studies show that employers highly value the knowledge and skills based in General Education, (American Association of Colleges and Universities, Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success, 2015). These skills include, for example: oral and written communication; teamwork skills; critical thinking; creativity; quantitative reasoning; understanding of the sciences and human society; knowledge and insights into other cultures.

Even though colleges and universities all have different courses and course patterns in their General Education requirements, the learning outcomes they want their students to achieve turn out to be very similar, and closely mirror the outcomes highly valued by most employers. Every career pathway necessarily incorporates robust General Education learning, and every university requires lower-division coursework across a broad array of the liberal arts and sciences.

Understanding and using mathematics is an example. Whether it’s calculus for engineers, statistics for political scientists and nurses, or basic math literacy for those in the liberal arts, each math pathway supports specific majors, and all are relevant for understanding the larger world.

In the same vein, basic understanding of scientific concepts and methods is also important. An artist, for example, who starts an art-related business will quickly discover that mathematics, sociology, and psychology are important for marketing, accounting, hiring, and selling. Conversely, scientists with little understanding of history or psychology will be less effective in relating their work convincingly to others.

The broad areas of General Education produce graduates prepared to succeed in our multi-dimensional and rapidly changing world.

Given today’s imperative for broad sets of skills and knowledge, it makes sense to identify a coherent set of learning outcomes that are the foundation of every institution’s General Education core and then provide the learning experiences that allow every student to achieve those outcomes. Once achieved, they can be acknowledged and documented on a student’s transcript as an academic progression milestone.

That’s what the Interstate Passport Network does. It defines learning outcomes and facilitates its college and university members in identifying the courses at their institutions that deliver those outcomes. By doing so, they acknowledge that their students have reached common learning goals that are transferable as a block across institutions and states. For students who transfer from one Network member institution to another, that means acceptance of General Education credits as a block – with no lost credits, courses to take over, or additional expense.

For students, the Passport provides an incentive to reach a first level in higher education and the confidence to continue toward degree completion. It also offers an interim credential signaling academic success and specific learning well before the award of a degree.

For employers, it provides assurance about the actual knowledge and skills that prospective employees have achieved, in ways that a traditional transcript cannot do.

The growing Interstate Passport Network and the idea of learning-based outcomes promise to become a solution for our times, providing a new way of thinking about General Education that will benefit students, employers, and society at large.

For more information on Interstate Passport or how to join visit http://interstatepassport.wiche.edu/membership

A recent article in Education Dive examines barriers for community college students trying to transfer and strategies to remove those barriers. Often students “aren’t aware of their transfer options, but many others intend to transfer to a four-year college or university, only to be surprised, challenged and overwhelmed by the complexity of the transfer process.” Qualitative research found there are distinct patterns for students who did not complete their transfer from the community college to a four year institution. Challenges include the length and complexity of transferring, limited access to academic advisors, and the variety in transfer requirements among institutions. Findings suggest that institutions can better support students with more one on one communication, engage students earlier in the transfer process, and streamlining the steps required to transfer.

A recent article published in both in The Hechinger Report and The Washington Post discusses the frustrating experience that many students have in effectively transferring their credits when they change institutions and the solutions, including Interstate Passport®, that have been developed to alleviate this issue. “That complication has given rise to something called the Interstate Passport, which lets students who have mastered agreed-upon “learning outcomes” transfer among participating institutions in nine states — Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — without having to re-take general-education courses.”

Author: Jon Marcus

This recent article in Inside Higher Ed makes the case that community colleges provide workforce training and a pathway to baccalaureate degrees, and both of these objectives are needed in today’s America. Community colleges provide access to higher education to millions of students that otherwise may not have it, and the essential component of that access is transfer. “An effective community college transfer process has the potential to be a powerful catalyst for individual economic mobility and heightened lifetime earnings for low-income students and, in turn, transform our society.”

Authors Stephen Handel and Eileen Strempel note that, “best practices are emerging that create sustained and strategic partnerships dedicated to the success of our nation’s transfer students.” Those practices include outreach, transitional advising, recruitment, strengthened partnerships with four-year institutions, and state and institution policies that foster successful transfer.

Both of the recent Inside Higher Ed articles summarized above describe general education innovations that are not likely to fit neatly into course-and-credit based equivalency systems for students who transfer either to or from the institutions. For colleges and universities more dependent on either sending or receiving transfer students than those highlighted in the article, the need to stay in step with partner institutions’ general education course and credit patterns can inhibit innovation.

The fact that Interstate Passport is based on learning outcomes, rather than on specific courses and credits, means that the general education programs offered by Network members could have an almost unlimited variety of approaches to how the curriculum is configured and delivered. For example, like the Passport, Ripon College’s general education innovations were based on faculty conversations about, “What do we want students to be able to do?” Much like in the faculty-led process of developing the Passport Learning Outcomes, they found that, “What faculty members thought students needed to learn was nearly identical to AAC&U’s data on what employers want from graduates.”

As institutions become more comfortable with identifying agreed-upon learning outcomes, and documenting the proficiency of their students in achieving them, faculties may thereby become freer to be more innovative in how general education outcomes are achieved while continuing to make transfer options more efficient. The Interstate Passport Network welcomes applications from institutions with innovative general education programs that ascribe to outcomes consistent with the Passport Learning Outcomes.

Jane Sherman, Passport State Coordinator

The United States Air Force Academy was established in 1954, and since that time the general education curriculum has been its defining characteristic – a single core curriculum with no academic majors. Since 2006, the Academy has undergone a process very similar to the development of the Interstate Passport framework: the development and assessment of a single set of institution-wide outcomes based on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. The USAFA mapped a list of 19 outcomes to a variety of courses, experiences and assessments that spanned three “mission elements” of the institution: academics, athletics, and military training. Starting in 2013 staff and faculty from the three mission elements began cross-referencing the 19 outcomes with the “Institutional Competencies” used by the Air Force in the officer development program. This work has resulted in a list of nine outcomes and a series of related proficiencies that a cadet should achieve. Among the nine focus areas are Critical Thinking; Scientific Reasoning and the Principles of Science; The Human Condition, Cultures, and Societies; and Leadership Teamwork and Organizational Management. Sound familiar? Some but not all of the nine USAFA areas match up to the Passport knowledge and content areas. And, as has been the experience of faculty members at Interstate Passport institutions, the whole exercise of mapping learning outcomes and determining proficiency has fostered frank communication about outcomes and assessment across the institution. Faculty and staff have had to “get out of their comfort zone and hear best practices from other institutions.” One member of the outcomes USAFA strategy team noted that this work “breaks that paradigm that is just another initiative among many.”

A team from the United States Air Force Academy will be presenting on the reform efforts at the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ General Education and Assessment Conference, February 15–17, 2018, in Philadelphia.

Read the full article about the USAFA general education reform at AAC&U’s website.