Table 3 on page 49 of https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-574.pdf shows loss for various types of colleges (public, private for-profit, private nonprofit) being transferred to. However, there in no mention of public → private nonprofit transfers.
Table 4 on page 50 notes loss by 2/4-year type of college. 2-year → 4-year transfers (40% of total transfers) lost the least at 26%, followed by 4-year → 4-year transfers (25% of total transfers) at 33%. Loss was much higher for those transferring to 2-year colleges (79% from 4-year, 74% from 2-year).
Table 5 on page 51 combines the above characteristics. The 26% of transfers who did 2-year public → 4-year public lost 22% of credits (lowest in the table), while the 1% of transfers who did 2-year private for-profit → 2-year public lost 97% of credits (highest in the table).
No, because those wouldn’t show up in the statistics—remedial courses carry (by definition) zero credits, and so don’t increase the denominator.
The unaccredited (or, more precisely, non-regionally-accredited) institutions are a problem, but as @ucbalumnus points out in the data drop above, that’s a very small proportion of the transferring students.
Transfer loss is a big problem, and an acknowledged one, but one that would require a lot of effort to fix with relatively little payoff in selfish terms, and so nobody does it.
Absolutely. The problem is that this willingness to go above and beyond is monetized, which keeps the books balanced while others carve out their niche as parasites in the same system.
Yes, there are excellent community colleges out there, that are meeting needs that no other educational sector can.
It’s just that many of these institutions seem to fly under radar, and can easily become petty fiefdoms if accountability isn’t actively imposed.
At four-year schools, the people at the top of the proverbial food chain have “arrived” professionally, and can do whatever they feel they need to do. At community colleges, the people at the top are typically still seeing their current job as a stepping stone to something better, somewhere else. They see what is going on with the long-time parasites and power-brokers, but they don’t want to tangle with them. It isn’t worth the risk to their next opportunity.
At the risk of repeating myself: there is no such thing as a “European model”.
There is just the “US model” and then all sorts of higher education models in the rest of the world.
And yes, the rest of the world has dorms. And dining halls. And students who play sports, fall ill, need counselling. But those are considered adjacent services, run at cost, or offered by the community on the same basis as for everyone else. And no one would find it acceptable for those services to be a profit center.
" credit loss as credits earned at the origin school that were not accepted by the destination school. Our analysis does not address the reasons why credits were not accepted."
This isn’t a particularly compelling definition, but digging into the fine print I found this:
“The scenarios assume that the student transfers after 2 years and all transferred credits apply to degree requirements…”
This gets at what I see when analyzing the transfer of community college credits to 4-year colleges. Almost all credits earned by a transfer student are accepted by their new college, with the exception of remedial courses (below 100 level classes).
The problem is that not all of these classes can be applied to the new major. A student may transfer in the equivalent of 40 gen ed classes but only have 24 available gen ed slots. Typically very few qualify toward major requirements.
What many dual enrollment high school students and community college transfers don’t realize is that most of their classes are 100 and 200-level classes. You can take 120 credit hours at the 100 & 200 level but you can’t get a degree without upper level coursework.
Most of the waste happens because students aren’t given good guidance. They pile up more introductory classes than they can apply toward a degree. The good news is more community college are offering transfer pathways to help make sure students are taking coursework that counts toward their major at their new institution.
I’m confused about this. Couldn’t it benefit a school to be generous in accepting transfer credits? Wouldn’t there be some sort of niche for an accredited school that was well known for “making it work” for incoming transfer students. As in “Enroll at Acme University, where we accept as many credits as possible and try to make it as easy as we can for you to graduate!”
That’s what the articulation agreements are all about. Students still need to “follow the rules” to make sure they are taking the right courses (and a kid who decides to switch majors three times is likely NOT going to graduate on time without some serious summer/doubling up once they get to the final U.)
Some students take more introductory courses than they eventually need to take for their 4-year school’s degree requirements because, while at the community college, they may be targeting various 4-year schools with different requirements, so they may take “excess” introductory courses in order to cover the superset of requirements for all of the 4-year schools that they are targeting.
Articulation agreements are obviously helpful, but a community college student aiming at 4-year schools X and Y may take “excess” courses if college X wants to see courses A, B, and C, while college Y wants to see courses D, E, and F.
I know that there are some colleges like this. Birmingham-Southern was one that tried to be flexible for transfer credits. Schools that have a number of students over 25 do as well, especially those that give credit for life experiences. They’re just not the schools that a lot of students think of when they’re trying to transfer.
Regis University used to advertise that they accepted a lot of transfer credits, gave life experience credits, but I think you still needed to earn 30-60 credits at Regis. They are, after all, issuing a diploma with ‘Regis’ on it. Now that they have added more medical majors (nursing, pharmacy), there may be courses that can’t be satisfied with transferred courses; if you need bio and chem, that’s what you need.
My S15 got a bachelor’s degree from Clarion University (now Penn West Clarion) in two semesters (33 credits). All of his previous credits transferred. I think this is fairly common at less selective public universities.
Temple University will accept up to 90 transfer credits. Although whether all 90 can be used for the selected degree, will vary by program.
In general, most PASSHE schools in PA (state owned universities that do not include Penn State, Temple nor Pitt) will accept up to 90 transfer credits.
The Evergreen State College as mentioned a few posts ago limits transfer credit to 135 quarter or 90 semester credits, or three years’ worth, implying that at least one year of course work has to be taken at TESC to graduate from there. Note that TESC BA degree is completely open curriculum, with 180 quarter credits to graduate without restriction on what courses they are.
California public universities limit lower division transfer credit to 70 semester or 105 quarter credits, so transfer students from community colleges need to complete at least 50 semester or 75 quarter credits, or slightly less than two years’ worth, to graduate. Transfer students with upper division transfer credit (from 4-year schools) may keep more than that coming in (but relatively few are admitted due to policies limiting the admission of transfer students who would be seniors or close to that). In the latter case, the minimum appears to be 24 of the last 30 semester credits at UC, and 30 semester credits at CSU, although campus, division, or major level requirements may effectively require more.
The requirements are mandated by the accrediting body. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC - formerly known as a regional accreditor but now known as an institutional accreditor given changes at ED in recent years) requires 25% of the credits to be earned at the institution awarding the degree. Therefore it’s possible to complete only one year (30 semester) hours at the transfer institution if all credits transferred in flawlessly.
The difference in number of credit hours needed to earn a diploma from a particular college is a factor in why many transfers among athletes don’t work out “for academic reasons”.