In higher education reporting, accessibility, affordability and the time it takes to graduate are common drivers of great stories. But as the typical path to a degree for students is changing, are journalists keeping up?
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Bright green quads, twin beds in cozy dorms, and 18 year olds away from home for the first time, with four years to get a bachelor’s degree: That’s the image of U.S. higher education today shown in TV shows and in college brochures. But it’s not the reality journalists often cover.
Decades ago, classes were typically taken–and earned–at one university.
“Today, that’s actually not the bulk of higher ed,” Derrick Anderson, senior vice president of Education Futures at the American Council on Education, said in a Zoom interview. In fact, more than 30% of college students transfer before getting a degree, Inside Higher Ed reported.
Credit mobility — or how various types of credits and learning experiences are transferred to and across higher education institutions — is highly variable and often an unsuccessful process. In an August 2017 report, the Government Accountability Office found that almost 43% of credits students earned failed to transfer.
As transfer becomes increasingly typical and more types of credit can count toward a degree, the difficulty with moving credits between institutions can impede students’ ability to get a degree and even encourage them to drop out — particularly low-income and underrepresented students. Almost half of students who transferred from 2004 to 2009 received Pell Grants—federal financial aid for low-income eligible students, the GAO study said.
Moreover, this issue may well increase the already staggering number of people in the U.S between the ages of 18 and 64 with some college but no degree: 36.8 million,, according to an ACE study.
A Georgetown University report predicts that by 2031, 72% of U.S. jobs will require some college degree, and 42% will require a bachelor’s degree — intensifying the pressure on colleges to retain and graduate students efficiently. To re-engage lost learners and recruit more, higher education institutions should work to award the highest number of credits in the transfer process to help boost graduation rates and get more workers into the workforce faster, experts say.
As ACE and other nonprofits, college leaders and legislators innovate to resolve this problem, I interviewed experts for the Education Writers Association about what is working and what isn’t in credit mobility, who’s getting hurt the most and how journalists can better tackle this problem.
Credit mobility includes transfer of credits earned at one institution, such as a junior college or dual credit course, to another, but it also includes much more.
“Almost every higher education student is a transfer student, whether they realize it or not,” Martin Kurzweil, the vice president of educational transformation at Ithaka S+R, an academic consulting and research organization, said.
High schoolers can earn credit through dual enrollment in high school and college classes — a push advocated for by many states, including Texas and Arizona — and through exams with a qualifying test score after taking Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses.
A study by the Education Commission of the States said dual enrollment courses help boost affordability, persistence and success in college, but often disproportionately impact white, affluent students and are not as available to students of color, with disabilities, or from low-income households.
But journalists should also understand credit beyond that earned in high school or transferred between institutions. Credit for prior learning (CPL) is becoming more popular through recognizing transferable skills from the workforce, internships, apprenticeships and the military.
But CPL can often be treated as a “one off,” Kurzweil said, that is evaluated on an as-needed basis instead of as part of the system of accepted credit.
CPL can include remote classes and opportunities as well, easing the expense and time to degree for students in college deserts – places without access to in-person educational opportunities at broad-access institutions or institutions with an acceptance rate of 80% or more, he said.
And his general analysis showed that online courses often aren’t accepted for credit at more “selective” universities, he said. “That is just a huge deterrent to students who are in places that don’t have a lot of in-person options,” Kurzweil said.
Indeed, these kinds of challenges to credit mobility disproportionately hurt students in education deserts.
ACE estimates that there are 365 suburban counties qualifying as education deserts in the country, and 110 metropolitan areas — a significant portion of the population.
In addition, credit mobility opportunities are also not offered equitably, as disadvantaged, low-income students often don’t have access to dual credit or AP courses.
“There needs to be a recognition of how students access educational opportunities and who is able to access different kinds of educational opportunities,” Kurzweil said. “If we’re (not) focused on that, it’s going to systematically exclude rural students or students from lower-income backgrounds.”
Kurzweil said he sees credit mobility as “both a challenge and an opportunity.”
Most reports estimate that 80% of community college students would like to pursue a bachelor’s at another university, he said, but “there’s a huge fall off” in the number of students who actually do that.
Now, most colleges manually go through a transcript to allow or not allow credits – an arduous process with often no upfront guarantees to the student.
“There’s more access to different kinds of credit for students at more points than ever before,” Emily Tichenor, senior program manager of credit mobility at Ithaka S+R, said. “But if all those things can’t meaningfully put a (student) on a path to a degree … then it’s not doing much good.”
An easy fix would be for colleges to accept all credits, but there’s a few reasons that’s often not the case.
Tichenor said there is a “financial disincentive” for universities to invest due to the complexity of evaluating different types of credit.
Quality control is a factor of concern — it’s commonly accepted in higher education that 51% of a graduate’s credit must come from their final institution, for instance, Anderson said. Brand is also important to institutions, particularly the more prestigious universities; prioritizing their own curriculum is part of the institution’s competitiveness and image.
But there’s also a lack of coordination across neighboring universities, particularly with community colleges and public universities. Better coordination could ease some transfer burdens and add more transparency about what students can expect.
“It costs a lot of money to go to college, takes a lot of time, and there’s very few investments in your life that you make that you don’t get the kind of information upfront about the (return),” Tichenor said. “And that is often not present for students.”
ACE, where Anderson works, is an organization that works to expand higher education access to more students. As part of that mission, it has taken an influential role in credit mobility by evaluating many prior learning experiences – such as military service and apprenticeships – for transferability, seeking to streamline and standardize the process of CPL.
Through two published guides, ACE helps veterans and other prospective students know up-front whether their courses or prior learning can count for transfer, and it encourages colleges to adopt its recommendations.
Its national guide includes recommendations for credit from experience earned at companies, nonprofits, government agencies, apprenticeships and online course providers.
On the technology front, Ithaka S+R is launching a universal credit transfer explorer with data from Connecticut, South Carolina and Washington state to show how credits can transfer and count toward a degree, with the goals of expanding to other states in 2025.
Before this, the nonprofit worked with the City University of New York to create the CUNY Transfer Explorer, which documents more than 1.6 million transfer rules for 20 universities in the system, automatically updating when a university changes policy. Tichenor said it has had more than 500,000 visits since launching.
The experts at Ithaka S+R said that the tools the organization develops add transparency to the holistic transfer process, but policy, resources and technology are needed for sustained solutions.
“No single institution can wave a wand and fix this,” Tichenor said.
But a team of stakeholders, it seems, can.
One of the best ways to cover credit mobility, Anderson said, is to highlight where it’s worked.
North Virginia Community College launched ADVANCE in 2017 as a one-time application community college students would fill out to eventually transfer to George Mason University in Virginia. Now, there are more than 80 pathways students can take to transfer between those schools.
Anne Kress, the president of Northern Virginia Community College, said that in each pathway, 100% of credits transfer between institutions. The program is made possible by close collaboration with faculty at both institutions, monthly leadership meetings, and meaningful coaching for students to get them to graduate, she said.
Kress said colleges can be hesitant about investing in transfer pathways, fearing the expense. But that problem fixes itself, she said, with the benefits students get with a smoother transfer guarantee.
“We’ve seen increases in retention; we’ve seen increases in enrollment in some of our programs,” she said. “All of those really help to offset the cost.”
Since the first class began in 2018, 605 people have graduated, Kress said, and more than 1,000 have successfully transferred. About 3,400 are enrolled in ADVANCE and planning to transfer.
Retention rate is at 85% from fall to fall on average at the community college — a high figure compared to the national average of 43.4% — and more than 90% get their bachelor’s within two years after transferring to George Mason, she said.
Student transfers have also reflected the diversity of the community, Kress said — a key goal of the program — and made learning more affordable. Sixty percent are first-generation college students, she said, and 40% receive Pell Grants.
Similar collaborations have been formed in Central Texas, with Austin Community College and Texas State University partnering for a direct pathway to a bachelor’s degree they call “Bats to Cats.” In Arizona, 75% of Arizona State University Online students are transfer students. It’s a call it has embraced: The university has posted resources for a financial aid guide to transfer and a list of especially “transfer-friendly degrees” to help students.
In addition to looking at a college’s transfer and retention rates as well as transfer policies, journalists should look at state legislation, which can have a big impact on credit mobility potential in the state, Anderson said.
He drafted model legislation in Utah to streamline general education requirements between public institutions to avoid students repeating courses.
Texas is considering legislation this session proposed by Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, House Bill 771 that would create a single common course numbering system among public institutions of higher education in which credit can automatically be transferred to another public institution.
Florida already has a common course numbering system, Kress said, which helped ease transfers.
Anderson also advised journalists to look at a college’s transfer resources to tell if it’s transfer friendly and analyze the effectiveness of its policies.
Tichenor said she is feeling hopeful about the future of credit mobility due to the new push from some states and universities to ease the process, realizing that expanding types of credit isn’t enough.
“They now understand (that credit mobility) is the other part,” she said. “We have to really recognize how our systems are working together as systems of higher education, and students have an expectation that these things connect and move together.”
Kress is also hopeful — and she’s seen the impact direct transfer has had.
She met a student who spent 10 years trying to get their nursing degree — a high-demand field nationally — transferring from institution to institution as she traveled with her husband who was in the military. When she came to Northern Virginia Community College, it was the first time she didn’t have to start over.
That story stays with Kress, driving her passion for the program.
”It’s a game changer,” she said.
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