Universities must fix America’s broken credit transfer system

The first in her family to attend college, Teresa had high hopes when she enrolled at a Texas community college. A Latina student raised primarily by her grandmother, she imagined following the “two-plus-two” model that has allowed millions of learners to switch into a US university after two years and earn a university degree within four years.

When we first met Teresa (not her real name) two years into her studies, that dream was slipping away. It took her an additional two years to reach a regional university, but this only brought fresh troubles. Having consulted university advisers, her worst fears over “accidentally taking the wrong classes” were confirmed; she was told she would lose credits for several courses she expected would apply towards a degree in her major.

“These schools need to get together and have all these classes transfer to each other,” she lamented. It left her deflated and, even more concerning, it cost her additional time and money on coursework necessary for her bachelor’s degree, turning what should be a “four-year degree” into a five-years-and-counting process.

With their open admissions and more affordable sticker price, community colleges offer a promising entryway to a degree, especially for low-income students – a pathway followed by some of America’s greatest success stories, from actors Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessica Chastain to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. One-third of American college students begin their post-secondary education at a community college, with as many as 8.9 million students enrolled, according to some estimates. Unfortunately, however, Teresa’s experience is all too common; while most students aspire to complete a bachelor’s degree, only a third transfer “vertically” to a baccalaureate-granting institution.

This attrition is particularly costly for low-income students: a bachelor’s degree is increasingly necessary for entry into a well-paying job that offers employment benefits – which are not just perks but essential given America's lack of a social safety net regarding healthcare. High dropout rates are often blamed on the busy lives that cause many students to stray from community colleges into new and unexpected pathways. But Teresa’s testimony shows – as do dozens more we collected for our recent book, Discredited: Power, Privilege, and Community College Transfer, which profiles Texas’ transfer system – that the fault increasingly lies in the tension between feeder colleges and destination universities.

Community colleges are part of complex public post-secondary systems where institutions – even within the same state – largely operate independently, which makes coordination across them difficult. As Teresa’s case illustrates, the lack of alignment can generate confusion, lost credits and even cynicism among students about the intentions of community college and university staff.

As we discovered, the transfer process is rife with challenges for students, including bureaucratic hurdles during application and enrolment and inadequate information about credit portability. After transfer, students – like Teresa – may find they have lost credits and need to take additional courses.

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Policymakers and scholars interested in improving post-secondary transfer tend to narrowly focus on community colleges, disregarding universities. Many books and articles have described their lack of resources, high student-to-adviser ratios and Byzantine internal paths. In response, new policies aim to streamline systems within community colleges. Yet the burden of improving transfer cannot fall solely on community colleges. But drawing on six years of longitudinal interview data with transfer-intending students and personnel at Texas community colleges and public universities, our research shows that improving transfer requires a fundamental shift in how we think about the problem.

Understanding vertical transfer in the US requires taking a broader viewpoint, examining the personnel operating within each context, their communication with students, and how these dynamics play out across a state’s post-secondary system. In short, we must move from viewing inadequate support for vertical transfer as a “community college problem” to seeing it as a “public higher education problem”. Rather than placing responsibility for transfer outcomes on either community college students or staff, we show that individual actions are shaped – and constrained – by a broader set of rules and norms that are often set by universities.

The common assumption is that community college transfer students can follow a “two-plus-two” model with relative ease, yet this pattern is far from the norm. Only about two-thirds of states have guaranteed articulation agreements, whereby associate degrees (worth two years’ worth of credits) should be fully transferable to a public university: the other third – including Texas, which educates 10 per cent of US community-college students – still rely on “bilateral agreements” between two institutions. These offer greater autonomy for universities, which can tailor them based on faculty preferences and don’t require approval from the state.

Even when statewide agreements are present, departments often rely on bilateral agreements to negotiate how credits will apply towards a bachelor’s degree, given variation in post-secondary curricula. This process creates a complex web of information that transfer-intending students and support staff must navigate.

One of our major findings was that universities often shape community college transfer in ways that undermine access and equity. Faculty and administrators fight to preserve their discretion on which course credits will be accepted, usually on the grounds of upholding high standards. In response, however, students must jump through multiple hoops to prove themselves worthy – both before and after admission.

We found several instances where university staff resisted statewide transfer policy reform, more flexible bilateral transfer agreements and other changes to streamline transfer for students. No university staff we interviewed deliberately sought to exacerbate inequities in educational access but their powerful role nonetheless turned them into unwitting gatekeepers – ultimately worsening broader inequality in degree attainment across race and social class.

University faculty and administrators – and admissions representatives, acting on their behalf – determine how courses count towards a bachelor’s degree; their curricular influence trickles down throughout the state. By setting the rules and norms of transfer to emphasise their own priorities, universities and their staff ultimately create an environment that does not seek to facilitate transfer. In contrast, community college personnel hold little power over how credits transfer. Even when they try to improve transfer, there is little they can do within their own institutions to truly alter the transfer process between institutions.

Instead, community college advisers see their role as helping students to manage the vast array of university requirements and transfer information. But these pathways are often elusive, with students forced to find information from various sources. Students described to us the need to be “strategic” when vetting transfer information, sometimes disregarding misinformation from advising staff. Many felt that if they simply followed the advice of community college staff, they could be led astray.

Sam, a first-generation college student intent on earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering, described advice at his college as “hit or miss”. That was primarily because sometimes advisers tried to steer him towards courses in general engineering despite his explicitly stated interest specifically in electrical engineering. If he had followed their advice, he explained, “I was going to waste time taking classes I don’t need.”

His community college advisers were not inept. But Sam and other students observed that advisers often managed a caseload of more than 1,000 students, so offered “cookie-cutter” transfer plans that often did not align with what was needed. Besides, it is virtually impossible for advisers to keep up with the vast amounts of constantly changing transfer information. So some students concluded, like Sam, that they needed to “fact-check” to ensure they were taking the appropriate courses and that the courses would apply at destination universities.

Sam found the resources he needed, including specific electrical engineering transfer guides and admission requirements, on his intended university’s website. Armed with that information, he checked with both advisers at his college and university admissions staff to confirm that he was on track as he took his coursework. But for students from low-income families with work and family commitments – who stand to benefit the most from a bachelor’s degree – this elaborate information-seeking is an additional burden that they cannot afford.

Narrow policy fixes focused on information alone will not solve the transfer problem, however. Such reforms are being rolled out and typically require universities to publicly post their degree requirements or to incentivise meaningful student engagement, perhaps via text reminders to connect with university advisers about transfer. These are low-cost and easy to implement. They also allow universities to keep their institutional autonomy. But they are piecemeal “nudge” interventions that will not alter the status quo.

The problem is that information-reform approaches are error-prone. They rely on individuals to constantly update information, leaving several stages in the advice pipeline where the flow can break down. For instance, who is responsible for updating information, and through which platforms? How frequently will changes be communicated, and via which partners? How will personnel at partnering institutions ensure that updates are shared with students?

Without more stringent government intervention and accountability, universities will be able to continue with business as usual, putting community college baccalaureate aspirants at a considerable disadvantage. And while US higher education has often condemned such external mandates as intrusive, clearly defined institutional policies, systems and structures would lift some of the burden on individual students to gather information, fill out paperwork and navigate the transfer system.

To begin, we need state policies guaranteeing admission in the same major to at least one public university for those who complete two-year associate degrees. In addition, institutions must apply the 60 credits towards the bachelor’s degree and count students as having completed their general education coursework, so that transfer students can focus on major-specific courses.

Importantly, this approach shifts the burden from the student to the receiving institution to decide how credits will substitute and avoids students having to take unnecessary courses. This guaranteed transfer for associate degree recipients has already happened in California but even there more work is needed; the state should ensure credits transfer and apply as mandated.

Enacting state- and institution-level policy change may represent a profound cultural shift for university faculty and administrators who have long fought for absolute autonomy on admissions and standards. However, ensuring fair and equitable admissions is arguably one of the great challenges faced by our sector. That was highlighted last year by the US Supreme Court’s decision to ban affirmative action, which is forcing higher education to revise how it considers race in admissions. Perhaps that decision will pave the way for greater support of transfer from broad-access institutions like community colleges to maintain diversity in universities.

Either way, improving transfer requires action from public universities. They must shift from thwarting transfer to transforming it. That change can occur voluntarily or through mandated reforms, but community colleges cannot solve the transfer problem alone.

Lauren Schudde is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California. Their book, Discredited: Power, Privilege, and Community College Transfer, is published in paperback by Harvard Education Press this month.