TESU -- what do transfer credits look like?

[a2jc4life]

I'm not sure if that was an accurately descriptive subject line. Here's my current situation: my current undergrad credits didn't transfer in to TESU because they're DEAC-accredited (Distance Education Accreditation Council or whatever that stands for; I can never remember the last two words), and although that's Dept of Ed-approved accredation, it's not regional.

The DEAC is going to talk to TESU for me. That may or may not get me anywhere, but I'm hoping that by pushing back maybe it will at least make some headway toward DEAC credits being easier for someone else to transfer in, in the future. But they need me to let them know how I had hoped/expected my credits would map to Thomas Edison credits -- and I don't really know how to answer that because I don't know what successful transfer credits look like, in general.

When you transfer credit for a course that isn't something Thomas Edison offers, what do they call it on the evaluation? Do they try to "call it" by the closest course title TESU has, or do they just call it whatever it originally was, and put it under the most appropriate category (general ed categories, major requirements, etc.)?

[jsd]

they're not going to convince TESU to take non-regionally accredited credits. national accreditation just isn't as portable as the higher accreditation.

that said, to answer your question, TESU will transfer it in as what their equivalent to that course is. usually this is pretty standard. "English I" or "English A" is all pretty much the same across the board at most institutions. However, some are not so easy, or have no real equivalent at TESU. Those will come in as "Special Topics in X," with X being the field of study (such as history, or psych, or finance, or whatever). TESU will decide what they accept as upper or lower leverl credit.

[davewill]

TESU determines what's called an equivalency. They will decide on a TESU course that the transferred credit most closely matches. Sometimes there is no TESU course and they will give it a generic number ending in 99, like my physics course which was listed like this:

PHYS195B Electricity and Magnetism 4.00 B PHY-299 *CC *TE

I'm sure we're all interested to see if DEAC gets TESU to accept more courses, but you should check out ACE. They recommend many non regionally accredited and non-accredited courses for college credit and TESU accepts their recommendations. It may be that the courses you've taken are already there.

https://www2.acenet.edu/credit/?fuseacti...ripts.main

[a2jc4life]

Thank you!

[Notgodot]

An example: Shmoop's Drugs in Literature course had no equivalent at TESU, so it is reflected on my transcript as LIT-299 Special Topics in Literature. Shmoop's Holocaust Literature course had an equivalent, and transferred in as ENG-301 The Holocaust.

Sometimes it gets a bit tricky. For example Saylor has a course called Public Speaking, but it does not fill the oral communications requirement because there is no recorded speech component. Saylor's Business Law and Ethics course translates as LAW-201 Business Law, completely ignoring the ethics portion of the course, which is probably 60+% of what the course is really about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, getting credit transfered in is often puzzling, and getting non-regional credit will be difficult on top of puzzling. But I do sincerely wish you good luck and patience trying!

[dfrecore]

I'm going to guess that TESU will not care what DEAC says, since they have a policy of not accepting non-RA courses. Every school gets to decide what they're going to accept, and TESU has made their stance here clear.

But, good luck.

[Notgodot]

I'm going to guess that TESU will not care what DEAC says, since they have a policy of not accepting non-RA courses. Every school gets to decide what they're going to accept, and TESU has made their stance here clear.

But, good luck.

I think the argument TESU would make is that people can go the PLA route in cases like this.

[a2jc4life]

I'm going to guess that TESU will not care what DEAC says, since they have a policy of not accepting non-RA courses. Every school gets to decide what they're going to accept, and TESU has made their stance here clear.

But, good luck.

Probably so, but unless somebody pushes back, they almost certainly won't ever consider it. As stupid as it probably sounds, I'm more annoyed at the prospect of having to pay and take the English Comp CLEP than potentially having to build portfolios for courses that can be challenged that way. (Shoot, I have hours and hours of coursework to offer as supporting evidence.) I've demonstrated proficiency in English so many different ways already it's ridiculous, and none of them count for anything.

[jsd]

The issue isn't that people haven't tried to convince TESU to accept NA before. The issue is that TESU, like most regionally accredited schools, has already looked into this and decided that NA credits are not accepted.

That's not to say don't try, there's always some off-chance that they'll work out an exception for you. But I wouldn't get your hopes up. It's beyond unlikely.