How does your Department Handle Transfer Credits?

[Aster]

I am asking for a specific reason. With the current pandemic restrictions keeping most U.S. universities from offering brick and mortar classes, most everything is now either canceled or placed into a remote/online format. This means that courses not normally viewed as online-compatible (e.g. clinicum courses, laboratory courses) are actually forced into being online anyway. This might mean that these courses possess substandard or incomplete curricula. And if these courses are prerequisites for other courses, are needed for a major, are needed for graduation, etc., then they might not fulfill the appropriate academic requirements to successfully complete.

This got me to thinking in general terms as to how transfer credits are screened in general across the Academy. Namely...

1. When a transfer student wants to transfer his/her credits into your university, who screens the course requests?

2. If it's a student wanting to transfer into a specific academic major (e.g. chemistry), does the relevant academic department perform and approve the course transfers? If yes, what does that screening process look like? Are course syllabi requested? Or just a transcript? Do transfer students have to submit course petitions or fill out applications to be approved into degree majors at your university? Or can anybody just transfer in as a history or music major?

3. If you are an academic advisor and you are screening course transfers from students, what do you consider "red flags"? Would an unusual curriculum format for a generic course type (e.g. an online genetics laboratory) be accepted?

[marshwiggle]

I am asking for a specific reason. With the current pandemic restrictions keeping most U.S. universities from offering brick and mortar classes, most everything is now either canceled or placed into a remote/online format. This means that courses not normally viewed as online-compatible (e.g. clinicum courses, laboratory courses) are actually forced into being online anyway. This might mean that these courses possess substandard or incomplete curricula. And if these courses are prerequisites for other courses, are needed for a major, are needed for graduation, etc., then they might not fulfill the appropriate academic requirements to successfully complete.

This got me to thinking in general terms as to how transfer credits are screened in general across the Academy. Namely...

1. When a transfer student wants to transfer his/her credits into your university, who screens the course requests?

2. If it's a student wanting to transfer into a specific academic major (e.g. chemistry), does the relevant academic department perform and approve the course transfers? If yes, what does that screening process look like? Are course syllabi requested? Or just a transcript? Do transfer students have to submit course petitions or fill out applications to be approved into degree majors at your university? Or can anybody just transfer in as a history or music major?

My experience as a lab instructor and course instructor is that the department chair (IIRC, it's been a few years) will send me a list of the student's courses, so I can look at the online syllabi for those courses and figure out which (if any) of our courses they map to. Then I recommend which of our courses they may be exempt from. Sometimes there's one of our courses that may be mostly covered by a couple of theirs, or there's one of ours that is only partially covered by theirs, and I have to make a judgement call.

Of course, covid is going to make that whole thing more complicated.

[Ruralguy]

Generally, the registrar looks for a course equivalent , so she matches "Physical Chemistry" with "Physical Chemistry" and "French Revolution" for "french Revolution" (assuming the course numbering for level are more or less the same.  If she has questions, she asks the relevant chair, and if its non-trivial, the Chair asks the dept. (as in "should we give elective credit for this Dutch student who took the course "Physics of Windmills").  However, before  a current student goes and takes a random course somewhere else, he's supposed to ask if we'll accept it for the major, etc. If we say no, he can probably officially appeal, but usually then they just take the course elsewhere or find a better match at the school they'll be near for the summer, etc.

For the state system, including community colleges, there is a "matrix" that shows course equivalents in all sorts of areas. So, if the student took one of these for credit in the thing the matrix says its credit for, then we automatically accept it.

If you are asking whether or not we'll question every transfer of Physics Intro Lab, or  Chemical Concepts Intro Lab 1, or whatever, probably not if we know the school to be a reliable match, even with COVID and all. Otherwise, students are going to be forced to repeat most or all of their courses.  I get the competence gap, but that's where live instructors have to figure out where to pick up in the fall.

[FishProf]

As chair, I approve transfer equivalencies (with appropriate consultation in areas I don't fully know).  But, once BW-176 from UpperLowerCommunityCollege has been approved, that persists. 

As to what we do under CV-19, we have not even started the discussion.

[Aster]

At my previous, selective 4-year public institutions, departments "spot checked" local community colleges periodically to ensure that their courses were, in fact, identical. Local community colleges were most often selected, as those were the institutions where we received the most transfer students. A "spot-check" was normally initiated after professors observed or reported unusual patterns of learning difficulties or skillsets with transfer students.

I have done this myself. My clearest memory is of a transfer student that was making a ginormous F in class and seemed to lack nearly all of the pre-requisite training skillsets. During office hours, I determined that he was a transfer student from a community college on the other end of the state, and he claimed that "I didn't do any of that stuff" when I asked about standard curriculum practices for the prerequisite course that he completed at his community college. That student was advised by our department to drop his declared major and retake his prerequisites with us. He later withdrew from the university.

If the community college courses were clearly inferior in a measurable and detrimental way (e.g. no writing assignments, no experience using so-and-so equipment), then the department's faculty advisors rejected the community college courses outright (in states not possessing mandatory 2+2 agreements), or reassigned the transfer credits into non-majors general education courses and made the transfer students retake the course with all of the correct curriculum in place.

We did the same thing with courses from private universities, private universities having a higher tendency to do "wonky stuff" with their courses sometimes.
Our local partner 4-year institution does something similar. Any student transferring into there is screened. Students wishing to transfer into specific majors have to submit an application, which includes a list of majors-level courses they want to transfer, and the syllabus records from those courses.

If the syllabus is viewed as seriously deficient, the faculty advisor won't normally accept the credit, regardless of what the course code is.

Big Urban College used to offer one course that was clearly deficient. Our partner 4-year university department found about it through high numbers of failing students in their own programs. That department traced the failing students back to us, and put a hard hold on accepting that course from us until we fixed it.

I thought that all selective admissions universities had some form of transfer credit examination process in place that screened courses beyond just a code number check.

An identical course code is no more than that, a number. Any college can alter the curriculum within a course, yet keep the same code system in place.

[Ruralguy]

We can't screen every section of every offering at every college, especially local institutions with whom we have an agreement.  Although, OP, you make good points, and we do check into new things that cross our plate, but unless we want enrollments of our current students to decrease, we have to accept reasonable courses.

[Aster]

I am not trying to make it look like all departments need to carefully filter every course for every transfer student. I don't think hardly anyone does that, except for elite degree programs at elite institutions. I'm just verifying that non-open enrollment institutions have *something* in place besides the careless blind acceptance of course codes.

Because just blindly accepting course codes is pretty cavalier treatment for the poor transfer students.

But if a selective enrollment institution has an appropriate, faculty-driven advising process for transfer students, then the transfer students who are let in should have a reasonable chance for the same success as non-transfer students. If an advisor's already checked over a course at the donor institution and is satisfied that it's close enough, that should be fine for the near term. Courses obviously change over time however, so it is prudent to periodically update.

For example, if College A decides to overhaul its Math 101 by changing its learning outcomes and assessments to more closely resemble Development Math 001, that will be a problem for students transferring into College B where  Math 101 is needed for other courses and where Math 101 is a prerequisite. Those students will suffer higher fail rates, course retake rates, and college withdrawal rates. The blame for that student's failure is now shared by *both* Colleges, the College that offered the low-quality course, and the College that accepted it for transfer credit. If I were a student, I don't know who I'd be more pissed with, but the College that "strung me along" would be definitely in the doghouse.

Regarding 2+2 agreements and other "local transfer agreements", I have always found this interesting. Blanket-wide, carte blanche transfer agreements are no less problematic than any other carte-blanche policies and procedures in an institution. If there is no room for exceptions and flexibility, then professors have just willingly transferred over much of their professional responsibility to an external, thoughtless process. But, having served at multiple institutions with such "binding" agreements, I very well know that faculty advisors themselves know that those agreements are not really binding at all. They're only as binding as the faculty at those institutions choose to make them be. Even our low-ranked, barely selective R2 partner routinely rejects transfer credits with matching course codes. If the faculty advisors know that an institution has gotten salty, students are still made to retake the needed courses so that they don't suck.

But I'd like to hear the various ways and nuances that other people Keep The Suck Out of their transfer students' success. Today I learned from one of my colleagues (and it looks like maybe FishProf also) that teeny colleges often have their department heads serve as The Filter, rather than delegate transfer advising duties across the department. That seems kind of mean, but perhaps some places don't just get all that many transfer students?

[Ruralguy]

We don't have a lot of transfer students, but half the student body takes community college courses, almost all being matrix American History, Bio 101 type stuff.  It may not be officially binding, but if we reject many of those, we will get protests, and we are tuition driven.

We have Chairs settle issues of transfer if they aren't standard courses we've accepted before.

I suppose we could put up more of a fight, but it is generally not worth it.

[dr_codex]

We don't have a lot of transfer students, but half the student body takes community college courses, almost all being matrix American History, Bio 101 type stuff.  It may not be officially binding, but if we reject many of those, we will get protests, and we are tuition driven.

We have Chairs settle issues of transfer if they aren't standard courses we've accepted before.

I suppose we could put up more of a fight, but it is generally not worth it.

Pretty much this, and what Fishprof said. The Academic Dean's office & Registrar grant the equivalencies, based on advice from Chairs. Oddball cases go to the Chairs.

We cannot refuse passing grades from in-system colleges. Yes, this causes problems. People looking closely (the Assessment squad) might start to notice that many of our in-house sections aren't exactly equivalent, which might be awkward.

One thing that we did discuss was how P/F grades might or might not transfer. We made no promises to our own students, warning them that they might not be accepted elsewhere, and I'm not sure how we'll treat them from other places.

[mahagonny]

As an adjunct, I wouldn't be privy to information like this. But since the department implemented 'long lasting and positive change' some time ago, I've been hearing from students that certain core courses have less (and more elementary) content than the ones they had in public high school. Sometimes it's amazing what accreditors will approve.

[Parasaurolophus]

We're not a community college (any more), but a lot of our students still transfer out to the bigger, better universities in town. It's kind of too bad, actually; it seems to me that we'd be in a better spot if we committed to being a transfer institution, or committed to being a destination. But in doing both, we do neither (and since we offer very few degrees...).

A lot of the coordination and negotiation happens at the admin level at big meetings that happen every once in a while, so a lot of our offerings are already pre-approved for transfer credit of one kind or another. But those universities also have a point person in the relevant department who contacts us when there's some question about a particular course, or when the student wants to claim a non-pre-approved course for credit, or when it's between meetings. My experience of it so far has been that they ask to see the syllabus and assessments.

Recently, one of these point people (a friend) also asked me for my own assessment of whether the course in question was equivalent (it wasn't). I don't know whether that's a common thing to do, or just because he's a buddy, however.

[pgher]

Our registrar maintains a cross-list for common transfer-in institutions and courses. Anything not on that list gets sent to the relevant department; many departments have an associate chair who either takes care of it or farms it out to an appropriate instructor.

For a handful of core classes in major, we have advancement exams that are required to transfer the credit. The advancement exams are the same as the final exam for the on-campus students. This serves as a quality-control check, since classes with the same title and even the same syllabus can be taught at varying degrees of depth and rigor.

[polly_mer]

Faculty at Super Dinky complained up one side and down the other every year when their specific course was selected as being reviewed by the state folks who were doing the statewide articulation agreements.  The question there was exactly whether SD XYZ 107 still met all the agreed upon student learning outcomes for the intro to XYZ transfer bucket.

Faculty at Super Dinky complained up one side and down the other every time the registrar insisted that course revisions go through the curriculum committee where part of the review was ensuring that courses listed in the statewide articulation agreement still would meet the agreed upon student learning outcomes.  Another part of the review was ensuring that courses on the general education option list still met the requirements of that general education option (e.g., a writing intensive course still had all the writing; the critical thinking course still had sufficient math to meet the quantitative thinking subrequirement).

Faculty at Super Dinky sometimes flat out pitched a fit when syllabus review pointed out the mismatch between stated student learning outcomes and the activities listed.  Yep, learning to drive the boat may be important, but that doesn't help anyone practice waterskiing.  In fact, nothing on this syllabus contributed to waterskiing, even though tree climbing, water sliding, and snow skiing are all interesting and valuable activities in their own right.

Coaches, parents, and transfer students at Super Dinky were often quite vocal in their views regarding the fact that transfer credit was put into the elective bucket at great rates so that students would be transferring 50ish credits, have no electives left, and still might have 6 semesters left at Super Dinky due to timing of courses.  Yep, you took a couple chemistry, physics, and math courses somewhere else.  However, those were the Learning for Everyone courses and do not count as STEM necessary for pre-med.  Thus, you cannot get federal financial aid to pay for that cool literature course because you don't need it for your degree and your elective bucket is full; you need to repeat the intro courses in STEM to pick up the knowledge you don't have and will need.

Yep, you took a whole ton of general education courses that now count as all your electives; you still need to take the super-special-because-they-are-integrated-across-all-the-disciplines humanities sequence here.  If you were transferring with a AA/AS, then you would take only the capstone.  But, since you didn't, then you are taking all five of the courses in order, one per semester.  That's OK, though, because you will also be taking all of your major classes in the required order as well spread across most of 4 years.  That's about 7 semesters of 3-9 credits per semester because you were advised so poorly that your credits don't match up at all with your major that has a substantial prerequisite chain.  No, you can't take extra electives to be full-time for federal financial aid because your major doesn't need them.  You could technically declare a second major and work on those courses, but that still doesn't get you any additional elective slots; you just get more requirements that will require the faculty to schedule courses differently so you can meet all those requirements in a timely manner.

Oh, transfer students who are told the true situation upfront no longer want to attend Super Dinky because that's just absurd?  Yep, that's what happens when faculty members only know about their fields and insist on making curriculum decisions in the absence of the big picture.

[Puget]

We allow only four classes of "outside" credit (not including approved study abroad programs) from students who start as freshman here, and those are mostly filled by AP/IB scores for most of them. Those get automatically applied in place of set intro courses, both for university distribution requirements, and, if they declare that major, the major requirement.

Everything else, including from students transferring in and study abroad programs, has to be reviewed by the registrar for general transfer, then by the undergraduate advising head in each department for application toward a major-- for that they have to fill out a form and submit the syllabus. Sometimes the advising head will have the person who teaches the class they are petitioning to replace take a look at the syllabus and say yay or nay.

[Aster]

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.