Category: Transfer News

A new report from the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education examines the issues of most concern to students and higher education institutions. Two years in the making, The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America offers actionable recommendations for helping colleges of every type deal more effectively and efficiently with quality, affordability and completion. “What was once a challenge of quantity in American undergraduate education, of enrolling as many students as possible, is increasingly a challenge of educational quality—of making sure that all students receive the education they need to succeed, that they are able to complete the studies they begin, and that they can do all of this affordably, without mortgaging the very future they seek to improve.” The report notes that nearly 90 percent of high school graduates can expect to enroll in an undergraduate institution, but only 60 percent earn a bachelor’s degree, and far too many are saddled with student loans that they struggle to repay. The Interstate Passport offers a solution to this problem as it seeks to improve completion rates for students by preventing obstacles in the transfer process.

Among the recommendations from the Commission are:

• Make degree completion a top institutional priority through the use of data to identify students in need of help and intervene with meaningful, personalized support.
• Improve the quality of undergraduate teaching by providing non-tenure-track faculty members with fulltime positions and longer-term contracts.
• Establish a loan repayment plan that takes the recipient’s income into account to help prevent the borrower from defaulting.
• Track students across institutions (one component of the Interstate Passport) and make financial aid contingent upon satisfactory academic progress
• Restructure federally financed grants for low-income students (Pell Grants) to provide students with greater flexibility in meeting the requirements. 

The report was produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Two recent articles from Inside Education – very worthwhile reading – focus on general education and the efforts underway by several institutions to improve the curriculum to make it meaningful and rigorous. Too often students don’t understand the purpose of general education requirements and what they’re supposed to be learning. In response, Goucher College, Ripon College, and the College of William & Mary revamped their general education programs to be “more than laundry-style lists of distribution requirements.” The results of these efforts are the Goucher Commons, Ripon’s Catalyst curriculum, and William & Mary’s College Curriculum. All three employ seminars that encourage collaboration and critical thinking and focus on oral communication, information literacy, and writing, among other content areas. The new curricula have had positive effects on the campuses, including “a more integrated, cohesive approach to liberal arts education” and more inter-department cooperation. It has also inspired faculty to be more collaborative and adventurous in terms of developing new courses.

Harvard University and Duke University also were concerned that their GE programs were “falling short” and began reform efforts to increase student buy-in and also maintain quality and importance. Faculty at Harvard were divided about the purpose of GE – should it impart liberal arts, teach how to have a more meaningful life, or provide choices to students for self-improvement and reflection? Faculty members proposed a compromise that incorporates all these perspectives plus more typical course distribution requirements as well.

Duke University also re-examined its 20-year old general education curriculum toward the goal of streamlining requirements, promoting the liberal arts and making a distinct new program. “Experience Duke, Deliberately” stresses student choice, allowing students to select their own educational pathway. The Duke Experience is “a multidisciplinary, team-taught, flipped-format course centered on a shared educational experience in which all first-year students would take a common 10-month course led by five faculty members from different disciplines.” The details of the new program are still being worked out but faculty leaders are optimistic that the new program encourages students to make decisions about their education. One administrator noted that students are “motivated and encouraged to develop their own pathway through the curriculum, taking advantage of the many educational opportunities to demonstrate that they have met the expectations of the curriculum.”

The latest research report from Davis Jenkins and John Fink of the Community College Resource Center focuses on partnerships between two- and four-year institutions that enable community college entrants to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree. Takes Two To Tango: Essential Practices of Highly Effective Transfer Partnerships describes the process undertaken to identify cross-sector partnerships that are high performers for transfer success. Researchers examined records from the National Student Clearinghouse for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide and interviewed more than 350 faculty members, staff and transfer students.

Through this research the authors identified a set of essential transfer practices that fall into three broad strategies: (a) make transfer a priority, (b) create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction, and (c) provide tailored transfer advising.

The Interstate Passport fully supports these strategies and will step up efforts in the year ahead both to align institutions’ Passport Blocks with programmatic pathways and to strengthen strategies and practices for academic advisors in assisting transfer students.

First published online in August 2017, the full report is available in the October 1, 2017 issue of Community College Review (Sage Publications).

A new report from the Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) urges public universities to not only help prepare students for success in life but also to address workforce needs and prepare students for successful professional careers. The report, Ready for Jobs, Career, and a Lifetime: Public Research Universities and Credentials that Count, offers several recommendations for public universities to help better prepare their graduates.

The Interstate Passport aligns well with the recommendations as it focuses on student needs and fosters degree completion and outcomes-based learning. Students who earn a Passport not only complete lower-division general education requirements but also come away with an array of skills that will help them in their further studies as well as any work environment.

The APLU recommendations include:

• Adapting university services and teaching models to suit a new kind of college student that has different needs than so-called traditional college students
• Coordinating with other higher education sectors to determine the best ways to link curriculum and programs across different types of institutions
• Engaging industry to learn and address their workforce needs, including by facilitating planning sessions as universities map current and future curriculum to needed credentials
• Offering alternative credentialing – such as certificates, badges, or competency-based programs – to help individuals sharpen their skills as jobs and even industries evolve.
• Providing forums for industry partners to learn about the university’s research and development enterprise
• Consulting with policymakers to enhance, expand, and refine impact measures to develop capacity for evidence-based policymaking, and
• Helping to formulate public policy to catalyze industry partnerships and network development as well as co-designing indicators to measure the impact of university-industry partnerships.

APLU President Peter McPherson reminded universities that the debate about the purpose of college is framed as a broad education versus employment readiness, when, in fact, institutions need to do both.

A recent article in the New York Times reports that the number of out-of-state freshmen attending public colleges and universities has nearly doubled since 1986. The Great Out-of-State Migration: Where Students Go (August 26, 2017) presents 2014 data from the U.S. Department of Education that shows the flow of students for each state: the number who leave for college elsewhere, and the number of students coming in from other states. The frequency with which students leave their home states to attend college is not surprising given what we see with the rising number of interstate transfer students. Even though students who leave their home states pay higher out-of-state tuition rates, and may forego state financial aid, enrolling in an out-of-state institution has benefits that an in-state school may not offer: independence, a more attractive climate, merit scholarships, tuition reciprocity agreements, or acceptance if they were denied entry to their own public universities.

reports that the number of out-of-state freshmen attending public colleges and universities has nearly doubled since 1986. The Great Out-of-State Migration: Where Students Go (August 26, 2017) presents 2014 data from the U.S. Department of Education that shows the flow of students for each state: the number who leave for college elsewhere, and the number of students coming in from other states. The frequency with which students leave their home states to attend college is not surprising given what we see with the rising number of interstate transfer students. Even though students who leave their home states pay higher out-of-state tuition rates, and may forego state financial aid, enrolling in an out-of-state institution has benefits that an in-state school may not offer: independence, a more attractive climate, merit scholarships, tuition reciprocity agreements, or acceptance if they were denied entry to their own public universities.

States that lose more students than they take in include Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Texas. A few states “break even” – gaining roughly the same number of out-of-state students as the number of native students who leave: Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wyoming. Several states gain a considerable number of students from other states, including: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.

A new report from Third Way, a public policy and advocacy organization, makes urgent the need for an effective and affordable higher education system – stating that higher education “is now a necessity, not a luxury.” State of American Higher Education Outcomes by Michael Itzkowitz (July 2017) illustrates that achieving better postsecondary outcomes must be a priority for policymakers. The report measures how the American higher education system is performing based on three baseline metrics crucial for student success: 1) college completion, 2) post-enrollment earnings, and 3) loan repayment. These outcomes pertain to four-year, two-year, and certificate-granting institutions, as well as across the institutional sectors of public, private non-profit, and for-profit schools. The report also looks at negative trends across multiple measures in order to tell a more complete story.

by Michael Itzkowitz (July 2017) illustrates that achieving better postsecondary outcomes must be a priority for policymakers. The report measures how the American higher education system is performing based on three baseline metrics crucial for student success: 1) college completion, 2) post-enrollment earnings, and 3) loan repayment. These outcomes pertain to four-year, two-year, and certificate-granting institutions, as well as across the institutional sectors of public, private non-profit, and for-profit schools. The report also looks at negative trends across multiple measures in order to tell a more complete story.

Among the findings:

• Completion: While the majority of four-year institutions graduate more than half of their first-time, full-time students, 45 percent still graduate less than half.
• Loan Repayment: Twenty-four percent of four-year institutions leave more than half of their students unable to pay down at least $1 of their loan principal three years later.
• Earnings: The majority of two-year institutions still struggle to prepare their students for a well-paying job. At 59 percent of two-year institutions, most students are earning less than $25,000 per year six years after they entered.
• Loan Repayment: With many former students earning so little, it’s no surprise that 79 percent of two-year institutions leave the majority of their students unable to start paying down loans three years after attending. 

The report points out that each institution of higher education has its own unique mission, serving different types of students and preparing them for diverse post-collegiate experiences with varying time and effort requirements for graduation – and many institutions can claim success with these missions. However, examining outcomes using multiple measures “tells a more complete story.” Institutions that graduate most of their students, lead them to earn more than the average high school graduate, and equip them to repay their loans still fail to meet the mark when outcomes are measured across the three metrics of college completion, post-enrollment earnings, and loan repayment. In particular, only 19 percent of public institutions and 5 percent of for-profits hit these benchmarks on all three outcomes. Private non-profits demonstrated the strongest outcomes with a majority of their institutions hitting this three-part benchmark.

The author concludes by pointing out the stakes involved in the American higher education system. Overall, the federal government provides $130 billion to institutions of higher education every year. “It’s imperative that we understand how this money is being used and the outcomes that federal-funded institutions produce.” In order to complete globally and provide economic opportunities, much more work is needed to improve the quality of our higher education system.

Although the topic of transfer is not examined in this report, it figures heavily into the metric of completion. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, nationally 37.2 percent of students transfer, and 14.6 percent of those students cross state lines. Whether or not all of those students complete a degree takes into account many factors – if a student starts at a two-year or four-year school, if an associate degree is earned before transfer, if the student is part-time or full-time, and – as the Interstate Passport seeks to preclude – if the student loses credits and/or has to repeat learning already achieved. Good outcomes depend on good inputs, so institutions must continue to improve their processes and policies to achieve their goals.

New laws in Oregon and Virginia, both seeking to improve graduation rates and in-state transfer between two-year and four-year institutions, have some elements similar to the Interstate Passport – namely, allowing students to transfer without losing credits for completed work, or having to repeat successfully completed coursework.

Oregon Seeks to Improve Instate Transfer

Oregon House Bill 2998, sponsored by the Committee on Higher Education and Workforce Development and signed by the governor in August, requires community colleges and public universities in the state to evaluate existing one-year curricula for students who plan to transfer to a different public postsecondary institution in the state, and that institutions establish “foundational curricula” for the first year of coursework as well as requirements for foundational curricula that have a minimum of 30 college-level academic credits. Community college students who complete the foundational curriculum will be able to transfer each academic credit to any public university, and have those credits counted toward degree requirements.

The Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission will lead efforts by the state’s colleges and universities to establish at least one foundational curriculum by the 2018-19 academic year. Institutions will collaborate to develop a unified statewide transfer agreement, based on the foundational curriculum for each major course of study, which will enable community college students to transfer to an Oregon public university without the loss of academic credit or the requirement to retake a course already successfully completed at one of its community colleges. In addition, the statewide transfer agreement will identify the optimal number of academic credits, including in the major course of study, that the student should have when transferring from a community college to a public university in order to efficiently receive a bachelor’s degree.

The new law is considered to be a building block toward better guided pathways at the state’s institutions. The legislation seeks to minimize student debt and increase the rate at which community college transfer students earn bachelor’s degrees.

A Different “Passport” in Virginia

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and each baccalaureate public institution of higher education are now required to develop a passport credit program with each associate-degree granting public institution. The program will include the establishment of competencies and standards for each passport credit course, and each course provider will ensure that a passport credit course meets the standards of the program and satisfies a lower-division general education requirement at any public institution of higher education in the state. SCHEV and the public institutions will develop a one-year uniform certificate of general studies program that assures that all credits earned in academic subject coursework by students attending a Virginia associate-degree-granting public institution who complete the one-year uniform certificate of general studies program are transferrable to a baccalaureate public institution.

In addition, the legislation requires each comprehensive community college to develop agreements for postsecondary degree attainment with the public high schools in the school divisions served by the community college, specifying the options for students to complete an associate degree or a one-year Uniform Certificate of General Studies concurrent with a high school diploma. The agreements will specify the credit available for dual enrollment courses and Advanced Placement courses with qualifying exam scores of three or higher.