Today’s college credit transfer system has financial and human costs for learners. With this set of policy recommendations, CHEPP offers a roadmap for policymakers and accreditors to support more seamless credit transfer.
Higher education’s credit transfer system forces millions of today’s learners to spend extra time and money completing their degrees. The average student loses 43% of their prior credits when they transfer – an experience that makes them less likely to persist and graduate. In May, CHEPP released The Costs of Today’s College Credit Transfer System for Learners and the Mindsets and Practices That Reduce Them, a report on the financial and human costs of today’s transfer credit system.
Learners face a financial burden when transferring institutions – on average, learners transferring to a public four-year institution pay over $13,000 more in attendance, and those transferring to a private four-year school pay over $26,000. At the same time, we found that learners who had over 90% of their credits accepted were 2.5 times more likely to graduate than learners with less than half of their credits accepted.
In a newly released supplement to the credit transfer paper, Improving the College Credit Transfer System: Policy Recommendations, CHEPP lays out a roadmap for policymakers to support institutions in improving the credit transfer system.
By supporting and incentivizing comprehensive credit transfer systems, federal and state policymakers and accreditors can not only lower college costs and improve persistence, they can help higher education reengage the more than 40 million learners who have some college and no credential.
While colleges can adopt policies to streamline the credit transfer process for their own students, federal policy change is needed to improve outcomes for millions of learners. The Higher Education Act (HEA) prohibits the Department of Education from forcing colleges to accept credit from other institutions. This prohibition has resulted in little action at the federal level to improve credit transfer beyond some reporting requirements.
However, policymakers have a number of avenues to help improve credit transfer systems, including through the accreditation process, financial aid and closed schools’ requirements, increased transparency, and supporting alternative measures of learning through competency-based education (CBE), credit for prior learning (CPL), and reverse credit transfer.
Learners like Tanesha, who stopped out of higher education, benefit from more seamless credit transfer systems. When Tanesha decided to reenroll in higher education, she was searching for a university that would accept the credits she had from two previous universities. She was also raising a family and working full-time. At Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), Tanesha found a supportive academic culture and a transfer credit system that allowed her to apply her credits toward a new degree program.
“The advisors took a lot of the responsibility that a student would typically have to do on their own: gathering transcripts, reaching out to old schools, and getting all this information. They took on that responsibility to help alleviate the process for [the] incoming student … It showed the commitment to the success of the student,” Tanesha said.
Every stopped-out learner deserves this level of support when they reenroll in the higher education system, including there being mechanisms in place to capture and apply students’ relevant prior learning towards their degree program. In some cases, students only need a handful of additional credits to earn the equivalent of an associate’s degree they had been working towards before stopping out of their last institution. Through reverse credit transfer, colleges can work with a student’s prior institutions to retroactively apply new credits to the student’s former degree path so they can earn an associate’s degree – simultaneously working toward their bachelor’s degree. Reverse credit transfer offers enormous opportunities for higher education to reengage stopped-out learners and help them complete their degree that much faster.
SNHU has started a pilot project on reverse credit transfer. The goals of the effort are to support learners’ economic and social mobility through degree completion; increase community college graduation rates and support SNHU community college partners; and support persistence for SNHU learners. The pilot is currently operating with partners in New Hampshire and three additional states, with the goal of expanding nationally.
At a time when higher education enrollment is on the decline and Americans are questioning the value of a college degree, it is more important than ever to build systems that put learners’ best interests at the center. CHEPP’s latest policy recommendations offer guidance for policymakers, accreditors, and institutions as they create systems that embrace transfer students and their prior learning.