Reimagining transfer for student success

Over the past decade, college students have become more mobile, moving in and out as well as through multiple colleges and universities and other learning environments, such as service in the military or other employment opportunities, as they navigate their path to a degree. As students more frequently transition between higher education institutions and between higher education and learning opportunities outside the academy, tracking and validating learning that occurred elsewhere - and when appropriate, awarding credit for it - has become a stumbling block for many institutions in their efforts to serve students. Research suggests that transfer student equity gaps have failed to budge over time, raising questions about the effectiveness of existing transfer policies and practices. The increased focus on racial injustice and widening socioeconomic gaps demands that higher education reduce the barriers for low-income students and students of color to enable them to transfer, persist, and complete their degree.

Inefficient transfer of credit policies and practices only exacerbate inequities that already exist and add to the financial challenges facing college students and their families due to the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic. By shedding unnecessary barriers to students' success, institutions can help strengthen public trust in higher education and reaffirm its value as an engine of economic and social mobility and justice. Acknowledging the shifting realities undergirding the transfer dialogue, [American Council on Education] ACE convened a National Task Force on the Transfer and Award of Credit. The Task Force focused its efforts on the central and perhaps most challenging part of this effort - namely, the need to improve the award of credit for college-level learning acquired at another institution or outside of the academy and maximize the application of this credit to satisfy specific degree requirements.

The Task Force was charged with crafting a set of recommendations that colleges and universities could adopt to improve the transfer and award of credit, with the ultimate goal of increasing the amount of credit applied to a student's degree requirements. The recommendations are meant to help institutions adopt policies and practices that will reduce the time it takes to earn a postsecondary degree, make college more affordable by recognizing and awarding credit for prior learning that has already been acquired, promote equitable policies and practices, and advance student success and degree completion.

Excerpts from publication.

The appendices include the following white papers commissioned by the American Council on Education (ACE) as part of the National Task Force on the Transfer and Award of Credit: Appendix A: A portrait of student transfer and the awarding of credit toward degree completion / Debra D. Braff; Appendix B: Designing a transfer student experience to support persistence and completion / John Fink; Appendix C: An overview of transfer and articulation agreements / Gloria Crisp; Appendix D: Enabling the transfer and award of academic credit for prior learning / Steven C. Taylor and Wendy Kilgore; Appendix E: Technology as an enabler of credit transfer / Wendy Kilgore; Appendix F: A national snapshot: how students experience and perceive transferring earned credit / Wendy Kilgore, Steven C. Taylor and Karina Pineda; Appendix G: A pilot transcript study: exploring the impacts of institutional advising and credit evaluation policy and practice / Wendy Kilgore and Kenneth Sharp. Show less