Transfer students are abused by system

[davewill]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017...o-transfer

It's no surprise to anyone here that schools aren't helping transfer students be efficient. I find it funny that the article seems surprised that schools don't help. The 4 year schools have no incentive and the CCs have no budget.

[Life Long Learning]

That why the Big 3 were established in 1971.  Its been going on for generations.

[dfrecore]

Their conclusions cannot be right. First, it only costs $3000 to get an associates degree or 60cr of transfer at a CA CC ($42/cr x 60 = $2520, plus fees). Even with books, you're talking less than $5000. Second, our state universities (CSU rather than UC) only cost ~ $7500/yr. So in 4 years, that's $30,000. How can it cost "36,000 to $38,000 more" to transfer from a CC to a state university than if you started out at the state university in the first place?? That makes zero sense.

Also, we have ASSIST, which shows exactly which courses will transfer and how, from any school in CA to another (all public, but MANY private ones as well). Plus, we have IGETC and CSU GE Advising guides that tell you exactly which courses you can take to go to the various schools (IGETC only has 34cr in requirements, CSU has 39cr in requirements). So if you wanted to transfer from Local CC to Local State University, you could go to the CC website and print off the CSU GE Advising guide, and know exactly which courses to take to fulfill your transfer requirements, and then go to ASSIST to see what additional courses you could take that would transfer over for your major. If you wanted to transfer from Local CC A to Local UC, you would use the IGETC Advising guide and then ASSIST.

I've helped several kids through the process (they couldn't get an advising appointment right away at the local CC), and once I explained it to them, showed them the transfer guides, and showed them how to use ASSIST, even the least sophisticated completely understood how it worked, and were able to plan out their entire transfer plan easily.

The other thing that needs to be explained to kids: once you stop taking 15+ units a semester, your chances of graduating with an AA or transferring to a 4-yr school goes down DRAMATICALLY. They get it. Not that I have any illusions that they will all do the smart thing, but they understood what switching to part-time meant.

I will also say that I don't know many people who picked 1 major, and stuck with it for an entire 4+ years. So I think a LOT of the problem is people changing their minds, many of them multiple times, and then losing a lot of credits due to them not fitting into their new majors when they finally transfer.

[sanantone]

Every few months, I get into an argument with this guy on City-Data who feels the need to tell everyone every time CCs are brought up that most CC credits won't fit into the degree plan. He believes that students will lose about a year's worth of credits and will take five years to graduate with a bachelor's degree. He also believes that CCs tend to not have the right prerequisites.

My belief is that students and parents don't know how to navigate the system, but it's not hard if you bother to spend a few hours researching.

First of all, don't expect remedial courses to transfer. They aren't going to transfer anywhere no matter where you take them. Even if your child starts at a 4-year school, remedial courses can add on a year to completion time.

Second of all, CCs usually have articulation agreements with in-state schools. They may even have articulation agreements with schools in a bordering state. There are also a growing number of 2 + 2 programs. Additionally, some states require, by law, that all general education courses transfer as well as courses in certain majors.

Thirdly, don't expect credits to transfer if the major isn't an exact match. Don't complain when your associate's in criminal justice doesn't fit neatly into a BA in criminology. Don't expect your hodgepodge of courses in your associate's in general studies to have a place in your BBA in accounting.

Lastly, realize that options to complete CC degrees are often flexible. You may have the option to take physics for science majors or university physics. If the engineering program you want to transfer to requires university physics, then take university physics.

There is some snobbery from schools that leads to them rejecting credits. However, I noticed that for-profits and some non-traditional schools offer strange courses. For example, I had two writing courses at WIU that I can't remember the name for, but they should have just been called English Comp I and II. TESU had no problem accepting them, but Excelsior and a couple of CCs did not.

I sort of skimmed through the article, but I don't know if it discussed accreditation issues. We all here already know the issues with transferring from NA schools, and most of those just happen to be for-profit.

[Thorne]

First of all, don't expect remedial courses to transfer. They aren't going to transfer anywhere no matter where you take them. Even if your child starts at a 4-year school, remedial courses can add on a year to completion time.

Second of all, CCs usually have articulation agreements with in-state schools. They may even have articulation agreements with schools in a bordering state. There are also a growing number of 2 + 2 programs. Additionally, some states require, by law, that all general education courses transfer as well as courses in certain majors.

Thirdly, don't expect credits to transfer if the major isn't an exact match. Don't complain when your associate's in criminal justice doesn't fit neatly into a BA in criminology. Don't expect your hodgepodge of courses in your associate's in general studies to have a place in your BBA in accounting.

Lastly, realize that options to complete CC degrees are often flexible. You may have the option to take physics for science majors or university physics. If the engineering program you want to transfer to requires university physics, then take university physics.

This is probably true in most cases. When I tried to transfer to an in-state university (Texas) with my CC degrees, the most transfer credits I would be awarded, for any program, was 45. I had completed 79, so this was a slap in the face.

I was awarded 42 for a program that matched one of my majors exactly (AAS in Cybersecurity >> BAAS in Cybersecurity) and they wanted me to retake some of the cyber and networking classes I had already taken. Apparently my CCNPx3, CCNAS, and Digital Forensics courses are normally UL, but my CC ran them, so they ended up as LL. The 45 came from a BAAS in Business Administration, of all things

Meanwhile, WGU offered me 85 with my degree + certs and both EC and TESU would have offered me around 42 (+ certs for EC) for a tech degree with a great deal of flexibility unavailable in a B&M institution.

Doing the math, your argumentative acquaintance would have been right in my isolated case. Due to the courses (and their prereqs) required for any of the programs I looked at before coming here, it would have taken an additional 3 years (minimum 2 1/2 years) to get a Bachelor's past my AAS.

[sanantone]

First of all, don't expect remedial courses to transfer. They aren't going to transfer anywhere no matter where you take them. Even if your child starts at a 4-year school, remedial courses can add on a year to completion time.

Second of all, CCs usually have articulation agreements with in-state schools. They may even have articulation agreements with schools in a bordering state. There are also a growing number of 2 + 2 programs. Additionally, some states require, by law, that all general education courses transfer as well as courses in certain majors.

Thirdly, don't expect credits to transfer if the major isn't an exact match. Don't complain when your associate's in criminal justice doesn't fit neatly into a BA in criminology. Don't expect your hodgepodge of courses in your associate's in general studies to have a place in your BBA in accounting.

Lastly, realize that options to complete CC degrees are often flexible. You may have the option to take physics for science majors or university physics. If the engineering program you want to transfer to requires university physics, then take university physics.

This is probably true in most cases. When I tried to transfer to an in-state university (Texas) with my CC degrees, the most transfer credits I would be awarded, for any program, was 45. I had completed 79, so this was a slap in the face.

I was awarded 42 for a program that matched one of my majors exactly (AAS in Cybersecurity >> BAAS in Cybersecurity) and they wanted me to retake some of the cyber and networking classes I had already taken. Apparently my CCNPx3, CCNAS, and Digital Forensics courses are normally UL, but my CC ran them, so they ended up as LL. The 45 came from a BAAS in Business Administration, of all things

Meanwhile, WGU offered me 85 with my degree + certs and both EC and TESU would have offered me around 42 (+ certs for EC) for a tech degree with a great deal of flexibility unavailable in a B&M institution.

Doing the math, your argumentative acquaintance would have been right in my isolated case. Due to the courses (and their prereqs) required for any of the programs I looked at before coming here, it would have taken an additional 3 years (minimum 2 1/2 years) to get a Bachelor's past my AAS.

I knew I forgot something. Don't expect to fill up an exorbitant amount of your baccalaureate credits with LL credits. CCs are designed to fulfill the first two years of college, not the first three. Having 79 CC credits to transfer is definitely not the norm. Associate's degree programs rarely pass 65 credits. If even EC and TESU gave you 42 credits, then you definitely had way too many LL credits.

Even though you applied to a BAAS program (these are actually pretty new), the problem is that you had an AAS. Those aren't designed for transferring; they're actually designed to be terminal. With those, you can salvage whatever general education courses you took plus whatever LL credits that are considered LL at a 4-year school. If I had gotten an AAS in business, I couldn't expect any school to accept my strategic management class from a CC.

Back to that argumentative guy, he was not talking about AAS programs. I think his kid got an AS or AA.

[dfrecore]

If you're strictly talking transferring from a CC to a 4-yr school, you really just need to be strategic about it. You cannot think that an AA/AS/AAS will work as transfer requirements - because here in CA (the study was for CA schools), it's the 60cr of transfer credits that you're looking for. There are some AS-T programs (AS for Transfer) but there are only a few of them.

You really have to do the 60cr of General Credits, including the 34/39 credits that are required, plus then check and make sure that your major has courses that can come in as well (for instance, if you're an engineering major, you want to get your LL science and math courses out of the way).

Once you start looking at the AA/AS/AAS, you're no longer looking at being a transfer student, you're getting a degree at the CC. Transferring is a whole different ballgame.

[Thorne]

I knew I forgot something. Don't expect to fill up an exorbitant amount of your baccalaureate credits with LL credits. CCs are designed to fulfill the first two years of college, not the first three. Having 79 CC credits to transfer is definitely not the norm. Associate's degree programs rarely pass 65 credits. If even EC and TESU gave you 42 credits, then you definitely had way too many LL credits.  

Even though you applied to a BAAS program (these are actually pretty new), the problem is that you had an AAS. Those aren't designed for transferring; they're actually designed to be terminal. With those, you can salvage whatever general education courses you took plus whatever LL credits that are considered LL at a 4-year school. If I had gotten an AAS in business, I couldn't expect any school to accept my strategic management class from a CC.

Back to that argumentative guy, he was not talking about AAS programs. I think his kid got an AS or AA.

Nah, I didn't expect anyone to give me more than 54-60 credits. The slap in the face was that an IT-specific program would only offer me 42 credits, despite claiming that all of my AAS courses would transfer in when dealing with Admissions. I get that the AOS is primarily UL/UD, which is why it is their fault. I explained three or four times that I only had LD credits, but they (Admissions at unnamed Texas school) still swore up and down that they would accept my entire AAS and apply all 60 credits to the program. Essentially, if they had done as much, I would have had 2 AOS courses (capstone plus a cyber law course) remaining (along with all of the general requirements). When I sent them my transcripts, my official evaluation was returned with 42cr, which is nowhere near the 60 they promised (I actually saved the email from the woman in admissions explaining that I would get all 60 applied to the Cybersecurity degree, the school still wouldn't do anything).

I agree that Strategic Management at a CC is not equivalent to an UD Strategic Management course, I just think these schools need to be more honest about the programs and how they transfer. I mean, CC advising told me on the day I selected the program that it would transfer without any issues to any school in the state for a 4-year program.

An AS/AA really is a different case. If I had an AS with a CS concentration, I could have transferred 57-60 credits from the AS to any school I was looking at, plus taking more courses at the cheaper rate.