Upward transfer in North Carolina is about to get easier thanks to a new partnership between its two- and four-year higher education systems. Students, academic advisors and admissions staff now have a one-stop-shop to navigate the college credit transfer process across nearly 100 institutions.
While state leaders tout the new partnership as a groundbreaking initiative, it also sheds light on how other states and regions are advancing their credit mobility initiatives by boosting user navigability and accessibility.
North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities and the North Carolina Community College System first developed a transfer agreement in the 1990s, allowing two-year students to transfer to a bachelor’s granting institution with junior standing after completing the core curriculum. And in the past 10 years, they’ve developed discipline-specific transfer agreements to ensure students take the right prerequisite courses for their intended majors.
The new online portal, powered by Acadeum, pulls institutional data from the two state systems’ 36 four-year colleges and 58 community colleges into one public database. Hope Williams, president of North Carolina’s four-year system, believes the online portal will cut out the labor-intensive legwork of researching each college’s credit transfer guidelines.
“As students have more information about the different institutions to which they might transfer, they’re much more likely to find that right fit. And if they find the right fit, they’re much more likely to complete.”
Data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that while nearly 80% of low-income community college students plan to work toward attaining a bachelor’s degree, only 13% do within eight years. The biggest roadblocks they face are the lack of proper guidance in the transfer pathway process and credit loss. The latter refers to when a four-year school declines to recognize a transferring student’s course credit and requires them to re-do it at the new institution—delaying their graduation date and increasing tuition costs.
Williams also hopes the new portal will help reengage stopped-out adult learners, an increasingly important enrollment demographic for four-year colleges and universities.
Connecting community colleges, bachelor’s-granting institutions and students onto a single platform comes with other perks as well. The portal can track a student’s progress at a four-year institution and automatically grant them an associate degree from the two-year college they’ve transferred from, once they’ve completed all relevant coursework.
“More students transfer before they finish their associate degree than after, which is a negative on the graduation rates of the community colleges,” Williams says. “It certainly helps the graduation rates of the two-year college, but it’s also a great incentive for that student to feel that they’re halfway there and know that they can finish their baccalaureate degree.”
President’s corner: Dr. Kadish on better protecting Jewish students
Furthermore, students blocked from scheduling a course in an upcoming semester can search the state portal for a similar course offered online elsewhere—and be confident their home institution will accept the credit.
The Teagle Foundation, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, ECMC Foundation, John M. Belk Endowment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation collectively contributed $1.3 million to spur this tech-infused partnership. A separate donation by the Lumina Foundation will help gather volunteers from each participating two- and four-year institution to guide the portal’s development and provide up-to-date data on their credit transfer guidelines.
“It may be a great system, but if the institutions don’t have ownership in it and it doesn’t meet their needs, then it won’t work,” Williams says.
Are college credit transfer agreements getting an upgrade?
North Carolina’s new portal echoes similar initiatives growing across the country that strive to increase two-year students’ bachelor’s attainment rates, said John Mullane, president and founder of College Transfer Solutions, in an email. “We are starting to see a national push for accountability, transparency and efficiency in the credit transfer process.”
Higher education leaders across North Texas, including Dallas College, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman’s University and the University of North Texas at Dallas, unveiled last month a similar online tool to help guide students switching schools, Dallas News reports. The Dallas Transfer Collaborative will promote a series of “meta majors” that can easily transfer from one school to another.
“This agreement is truly greater than the sum of its parts,” Warren von Eschenbach, interim president of North Texas at Dallas, said in a school press release. “We are building a bridge between two- and four-year institutions.”
Furthermore, the New Hampshire Department of Education is now urging its state community college and university systems to consolidate resources and create friendlier transfer pathways in light of falling enrollment, New Hampshire Bulletin reports. In a new bill signed into law, the state is requiring institutions to align their credits from the two- and four-year levels and create guaranteed transfer policies for students who earn a certain GPA.
The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a Colorado-based organization, helped create New Hampshire’s credit transfer blueprint. Coincidentally, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a law in May that guarantees “a seamless transfer” of course credit across its institutions. The law requires four-year institutions to publicly report which two-year credits they accept, relegate to elective course credits or flat-out reject. Students whose credits are rejected can appeal.
“If done correctly,” Mullane said, “North Carolina can be an example of how states can utilize technology to give students a much clearer path from a community college to a four-year school.”
