The Interstate Passport program builds on Utah’s systemwide work and expands opportunities for students by enabling them to broaden their higher education career and experiences within the Interstate Passport Network, while saving time and money.

Interstate Passport is designed to support students’ successful transfer through a competency-based framework that defines expected learning outcomes. Membership in the Interstate Passport Network identifies those institutions that honor the achievement of learning when a student transfers.

Interstate Passport flips the traditional transfer paradigm, making the sending institution responsible for ensuring what a student knows and can do rather than the receiving institution making that determination. Interstate Passport is a proven model that benefits students by streamlining the transfer process.

Teaching at a two-year college, the ability to transfer earned credits is important to me and my students. Interstate Passport allows students to learn a core set of competencies (based on faculty input) and transfer them, without loss of credit, to another Network member institution.  This saves students time and money and can increase completion rates.

One of the great strengths of the Interstate Passport is that, from the very beginning, it has been faculty driven.  Faculty teams developed the Passport Learning Outcomes and faculty at participating institutions develop their Passport Blocks.  Ideally, the Passport Block is a reflection of their own general education curriculum.

The portability of credits from one institution to another is vital to student progress and graduation, especially for General Education requirements. Interstate Passport provides a vehicle to (1) minimize students repeating similar courses across institutions–and paying for the same requirement again, and (2) facilitate shared General Education competencies across institutions of higher education.

Although several states have pushed aggressively to ensure intrastate transfer of the general education curriculum, barriers continue to exist for students transferring across state lines.  As we look toward the future, expansion is critical to meet Interstate Passport’s goals and ultimately serve those who are adversely impacted by the current course equivalency review processes that have been the coin of the realm for far too long.

The transfer of academic credit has been a stumbling block for students for many years.  The Interstate Passport, based on the evaluation of competencies rather than courses, is a wonderful way for colleges across the country to feel confident that students have actually mastered the skills they need to be successful.

COVID-19 exacerbates the inequities and shines a bright light on health and economic disparities for the most vulnerable student populations, who were already under-resourced before the pandemic. The time to fix transfer is now.