by Jason E. Lane & Maria I. Khan
The movement of students, and their earned credits, between colleges is inherently a system issue. And, systems may be the nation’s best bet for improving transfer at scale. Yet, systems of higher education are often overlooked in discussions of how to address problems related to transfer. As backdrop, the transfer debates have focused mostly on analyzing how to reduce the number of credits students “lose” when they move between institutions. They also often operate from an assumption that transfer is almost exclusively vertical, from a two-year to a four-year institution. Yet, we know that students transfer between multiple sectors four-year to four-year, two-year to two-year, and four-year to two-year may. Students may also accumulate credit at multiple institutions while progressing toward a degree.
Articulation agreements between two institutions may help. But the reality is that — with thousands of such arrangements between colleges and universities nationwide – transfer environments remain complex, difficult for students to navigate, and ultimately up to the whim of the campuses involved. Articulation agreements are also labor intensive for faculty and administrators to create and maintain and such agreements rarely reflect how students actually navigate higher education.
Through our work with NASH’s Taking Student Success to Scale (TS3), we have learned that transfer needs to be approached through lens of systemness. That is, by taking a comprehensive and multi-institutional approach to student mobility, systems of higher education may not only be able to more effectively address credit loss, they may also be able to rethink and improve the entire transfer student experience.
For example, when Jason worked for SUNY’s system administration, transfer data from across all of the 64 campuses was looked at. That data showed approximately half of all baccalaureate graduates in the system had earned credits from at least two institutions and often more. Moreover, the data indicated students transfer multi-directionally, the most common multi-institutional degree paths, and which credits were most likely to be lost. As a result, the system board passed a common policy that led to revision of multiple programs; development of common degree pathways; and other technological, policy, and advising supports for transfer students. After five years, the data have shown that that student completion rates increased, time-to-degree decreased, and the number of credits at graduation decreased.
Now systems across the US, from California to New York and Texas to Wisconsin, are advancing system-level efforts to improve the student transfer experience.
Beyond magnitude, what makes systems particularly important for addressing the transfer puzzle are these intentional practices:
- Common Policy Frameworks: System governing boards can pass policies that affect multiple institutions thereby creating a more “seamless” policy environment across multiple institutions. This is in contrast to the current spider web of articulation agreements that are often in place and typically differ, sometimes markedly. A common policy framework can make it easier for students to navigate the transfer experience, particularly if they move among multiple institutions.
- Aggregated Data: In many cases, systems have student-level data from each of their campuses. This allows systems to analyze for common patterns and bottlenecks in ways that no single institutional data set would allow. Including analyzing the success rates of transfer students after they leave an institution and comparing transfer and native student success. Some individual campuses undertake this analysis now; but doing so at the system level offers a more comprehensive perspective. These Transfer Analytics can drive important change conversations at both the system and campus levels.
- Curricular Alignment: We have learned that it is not enough to guarantee transfer of individual courses. Students must take the right sequence of courses in the lower division to stay on track to complete a bachelor’s degree efficiently. Across systems and states, there have been varied efforts to create more common pathways. Strategies include system-wide course numbering, shared general education frameworks, and degree pathways with agreed upon learning outcomes. Whereas articulation agreements create some of this between two campuses; systems have the ability to create more consistent alignment among multiple campuses and can work with both two-year and four-year campuses to adjust curriculum appropriately.
- Facilitative Leadership: Systems have increasingly been engaged in facilitative leadership, which is essentially about working with stakeholders to get them moving in the same direction. Systems are able to convene groups of faculty and administrators to develop shared implementation strategies and collectively adjust curriculum across multiple institutions, avoiding a patchwork of articulation agreements and pathways that can be difficult for students to navigate.
- Cross Registration: One aspect of transfer is students enrolling at another institution in order to pick up a needed course and then moving that course to their home campus to count toward their degree. This can often be an overly burdensome process, particularly if only for a single course. Increasingly, systems are developing policies and platforms to allow students to take courses at other campuses in the system, either via cross-listing or cross registration. These policies enable students to take advantage of the academic offerings throughout the system, without having to actually formally transfer.
- Cross-Campus Coaching: A frequently recurring story about transfer troubles starts with inadequate or ineffective advising. In many cases, this is because advising between the sending and receiving institutions is not coordinated and students can get lost in the shuffle. One solution being explored by systems is hiring coaches at the system level to work directly with students and to stay with them as they move between campuses. While resource intensive, this work has been mostly attached with online transfers and adult returning students; though it could be scaled to meet the needs of all transfer students.
- Common Technology Platforms: Technology is increasingly being used to support student success; though work with transfer students has lagged. Some systems have been working to implement system-wide technology solutions, including learning management systems, early alerts, and guided pathways. Developing system-wide solutions can be particularly powerful for increasing transfer student success. For example, it allows for students to more easily identify transfer paths and assess how their credits will transfer. In terms of early alerts, profiles can now track with students across campuses, instead of having to be built from scratch at each new institution. This can provide supports sooner than commonly available and create specialized – not to mention timely and necessary – supports for transfer students.
In the coming months, NASH will be undertaking a more active action agenda to work with its members to further coordinate and advance system level efforts to improve the transfer student experience.
We invite you to share your interest and system-level student transfer efforts by reaching out to us at mikhan@albany.edu.