How does your Department Handle Transfer Credits?

[dr_codex]

We cannot refuse passing grades from in-system colleges.

I hear this a lot.

I would bet real money that you have much more flexibility than what you've been told, or what you've seen written down as statewide policy. Yes, even those with 2+2 agreements. There are a few different ways that academic departments can (and do!) routinely block/shift/advise against transfer credits that have the same course codes or have been forever abdicated to the automatic acceptance filters in the registrar's office. I've been on both sides of this a couple of times, where my college has had a course type blocked from our partner R2 because it isn't good enough, and where my college doesn't take credit for a "equivalent" course because it wasn't good enough. Yes, the statewide policy says that colleges can't do that. Well, that's bollocks.

Heck, most of the ways I learned myself how to do this, I picked up on the CHE forums from other professors at public institutions.

Professors and academic departments are not locked out of transfer credit decision making if they choose not to be. What I mostly find for the professors that feel themselves locked out, is that they're just taking it on blind faith that they locked out, thinking that's the end of it, and then taking no further action.

It is true that there's a fair amount of negotiation between the Academic Dean and Department Chairs. And it is true that we can "discourage" a lot. This came up most recently with 3-week "Winter Semesters", which hyper-concentrate 15-week/3-credit courses. Calc 1 is popular, especially for students who failed it in the Fall and need it as a prerequisite for Spring courses. We don't offer them, and strongly discourage students from taking them, but we accept any grade of C or better from a College in our State system for transfer and as satisfying the prerequisite.

I don't know what it would take for an academic department to refuse. Our Engineering faculty might have the clout, especially if they gathered some data to support it. (Pass rates in Calc II, for instance.) But the mother ship would not be happy.