Inefficient transfer credit pathways are costing Connecticut Community Colleges nearly 16 million dollars in lost tuition revenue per semester

7,463 students transferred early to a four-year school without completing an associate’s degree.
Last year only 79 students graduated with a TAP transfer associate’s degree out of 5,187 total associate’s degrees awarded.
Only 2% of all students who received associate’s degrees last year were in a TAP transfer pathway.
Connecticut Community College students need state-wide transfer and articulation agreements that guarantee seamless transfer of credits to all public four-year institutions in Connecticut.

Inefficient transfer credit pathways are costing Connecticut Community Colleges nearly 16 million dollars in lost tuition revenue per semester. According to The Higher Education Coordinating Council Accountability Report, 7,463 Connecticut Community College students transferred early to a four-year school without completing an associate’s degree. [1] If those students had spent at least one more semester at a community college before transferring, Connecticut’s 12 community colleges could have generated an additional $15.6 million in tuition revenue. [See attached chart]

Last year only 79 students graduated with a TAP transfer associate’s degree out of 5,187 total associate’s degrees awarded. [See attached chart] Those 79 students represent only 2% of all students who received associate’s degrees last year. [2] This data strongly suggests that the TAP transfer pathways were not designed properly and are not working for students.

Currently in Connecticut we have two separate transfer credit systems, one to UConn and another to the Connecticut State Universities. Recent data shows that these transfer pathways are not working for students. The transfer pathway to UConn, the GAP program, only serves around 10% of all community college transfers to UConn. This program guarantees that students will be admitted to UConn, it does not guarantee that all credits will transfer and apply to the student’s bachelor’s degree. [3]

In 2012 the Connecticut Legislature approved PA 12-31, an act requiring at least 30 credits of transferrable general education courses among public institutions of higher education to be developed no later than July 1, 2013. UConn was exempt from this act. [4]

Also in 2012, in response to that legislation, the Transfer and Articulation Policy (TAP) was approved by the CSCU Board of Regents mandating seamless transfer pathways for Connecticut Community College students to Connecticut State Universities (Eastern, Southern, Central & Western) and Charter Oak State College. The first group of these pathways were finally available to students, in Fall 2016 and very few students have been able to complete these transfer pathways. Students must complete the entire 60 credit transfer pathway to ensure that they can fully transfer all credits to the State Universities. Students who transfer before completing their degree can still lose many of their credits. [5]

This study as well as previous studies on this issue in Connecticut by this author, reinforces the need for the state of Connecticut to finally pass a law mandating statewide transfer and articulation agreements between the Connecticut community college system and all public four-year institutions in the state. The largest barrier to a community college student completing a bachelor’s degree is losing credits when transferring to a four-year institution, the more credits they lose the less likely they are to be able to complete their degree.

Data from this study shows that all the current reform efforts by the CSCU system, including the community college consolidation and guided pathways are missing the real issues for students and will end up being a huge waste of time, money, and resources. Without a statewide transfer credit system in place, students will be guided into pathways that they will never be able to get through.

My previous research, as well as data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would suggest that the average Community College student who successfully transfers to a public four-year institution loses an average of 20% of their credits. This loss of credits would be equivalent to almost an entire semester of credits and would delay the students time to graduate. [6,7,8]

When students take classes at their state community colleges, those college level courses and credits should transfer and apply to their bachelor’s degree at their state universities. This is a bipartisan issue. Students should not be losing credits when transferring within their own state public higher education system. We need to put a system in place to prevent this from happening.

While the number of students enrolled in college has been declining, the percentage of students transferring has been increasing. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 38% of all college students will transfer at least once before completing a bachelor’s degree. The vast majority of students will transfer either into or out of a community college. Inefficient transfer credit systems cause a large number of community college students to transfer before completing their associate’s degree. [9]

According to the Connecticut Higher Education Trends Report, over the past decade the number of students transferring colleges in Connecticut has increased by about 10%. Connecticut has seen a decline in students transferring to public institutions and a huge increase in students transferring to independent institutions. Public institutions have seen a 12% decline in the number of transfer students, while independent institutions have seen a 110% increase in transfer students. [10]

Because of the high cost of independent institutions, compared to public institutions in Connecticut, this strongly suggests that the tuition cost is not the biggest factor when students decide where to transfer. How many credits a student can successfully transfer and whether or not they can graduate on time seem to be much more important to students.

Connecticut must address the real issues facing students as they pursue a college degree. The focus should be on loss of transfer credits and college completion which would help more students graduate on time with less debt. Colleges are too focused on enrolling new students and need to focus more on retaining and graduating their students. They need to operate much more efficiently and do a better job serving students. For many students community college is already free, the main problem is that students do not have a clear path through these institutions that will allow them to fully transfer their credits and apply them to a bachelor’s degree at a public four year institution. [11]

Around 80% of community college students who transfer do not complete a degree before transferring to a four year school. Many of these students leave early and pay between three times up to ten times more in tuition to take classes they couldn’t get at their community college because these courses were not offered or wouldn’t transfer. [12]

In Connecticut, Community College is free for students eligible for a Pell Grant. The grant pays $6,095 a year and the student pays $4,384 for tuition and fees—leaving students with an additional $1,711 for educational expenses such as books and transportation.

States can make college as free as they want, but if they don’t have a system in place to help students get through these institutions and graduate on time with a college degree that allows them to go directly into a good job, or to fully transfer the credits to a bachelor’s degree, they are doing more harm than good.

The entire “Free College” movement involves spending hundreds of billions of dollars and flooding public colleges and universities with new students. The increase in funding to those students results in states cutting funding to their public institutions. This forces colleges to raise tuition on other students not eligible for the free college program to make up for the reduction in state funding.

With the costs of higher education soaring, and states facing huge budget deficits, community colleges are the last affordable route to a bachelor’s degree for many middle and lower income students. The national conversation about college access, affordability, graduation rates and the 1.6 trillion in student loan debt seems to miss the transfer credit issue. For many students the most affordable and successful route to a bachelor’s degree is a community college. This is especially true for low income, minority, and first generation college students who are more likely to begin their undergraduate studies at a Community College. It also misses the fact that fixing the broken transfer credit system is the best way to help these students graduate on time with less debt, and save the students, states, and the federal government billions of dollars.

My previous studies on transfer students, as well as data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, show that students who attend community colleges and are able to successfully transfer those credits to four-year public institutions, have some of the highest graduation rates at the four year colleges. [13]

Community college transfer students represent 49% of all students who complete bachelor’s degrees in the United States. In Connecticut they represent 34% of all students. [14]

A study from the Community College Research Center found that Connecticut is one of the worst states at helping low income and minority students achieve bachelor’s degrees because Connecticut does not have a state wide transfer credit system in place. Around 80% of the students who started at a community college indicated that their academic goal was a bachelor’s degree or higher. However, very few students were able to successfully transfer and receive a bachelor’s degree. Some of the best performing states in that study were Florida, Washington and California. [15] They all have very efficient state wide transfer credit systems that would be good models for us to follow.

Connecticut is ranked 49th in Community College completion and income inequality in new national study from the University of Pennsylvania. The College Opportunity Risk Assessment report, found that it is not how much money a state spends, but whether or not the money is being spent on policies that help more students to be successful in college. [16]

Connecticut ranked 49th for Community College Completion (15.5% graduation rate), 49th for income inequality and 44th for college affordability. The overall rating was 44th.

A national study out of UPenn about college affordability in Connecticut reinforces the need for legislation mandating statewide transfer and articulation agreements to all public four-year institutions in Connecticut. Connecticut ranked 6th nationally for affordability of its community colleges but 35th for the State University System and 45th for UConn. The state was 21st overall.

“Although it has some of the most affordable two-year colleges and private research universities in the nation, its public four-year colleges and universities are among the nation’s least affordable. One third of Connecticut students are enrolled in public two-year institutions. Students would have to work, on average, 17 hours a week to attend these colleges full time. That weekly workload would more than double for students attending four-year public institutions in the state full time.” [17]

The report’s authors recommend that states pass legislation to lower the cost and time to a degree by implementing effective statewide transfer policies: “Transfer programs, when implemented well, can improve educational productivity by creating seamless pathways to four-year institutions and reducing credit repetition. Statewide studies show that many students lose credits or need to re-take courses after they complete the transfer process. Creating statewide transfer agreements provides a smoother transition for students across public institutions and systems in the state.” [18]

The solution to this problem would be for the state of Connecticut to finally pass a law mandating statewide transfer and articulation agreements between the Connecticut community college system and all public four-year institutions in the state. This would require the faculty and staff of the Connecticut Community Colleges, Connecticut State Universities, and University of Connecticut to establish transfer pathways to ensure the seamless transfer of Community College credits. This will ensure that community college students are not paying twice to retake similar classes and can graduate on time with less debt.

The original draft of the transfer credit law, passed in 2017, that I advocated for (PA 17-229) would have done this, but UConn and CSCU testified against it. The compromise was to keep two separate transfer tracks, one to UConn and another to the State Universites which makes transfer much more difficult and confusing for students. The bill did mandate some data reporting requirements and other things that could improve the process for students, however the law is not being fully enforced, and the institutions are not disclosing whether or not the eligible credits are actually applying to the student’s bachelor’s degree.

A statewide transfer credit system would save the students and the state of Connecticut millions of dollars each year and make higher education more affordable and accessible for all students, especially our low income, minority and first generation college students who are more likely to begin their undergraduate studies at a Connecticut Community College.

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Sources:

[1] Connecticut Higher Education Coordinating Council Accountability Reports 2016 and 2017. http://www.ct.edu
[2] State of Connecticut Office of Higher Education, Degrees awarded at Connecticut Colleges and Universities 2018. https://www.ctohe.org/News/pdfs/2018/2018DegreesConferred.pdf
[3] UConn Report on Transfer and Articulation, January 2019.
[4] Public Act No. 12-31: AN ACT CONCERNING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A GENERAL EDUCATION CORE OF COURSES TO ALLOW FOR THE SEAMLESS TRANSFER AMONG PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION. http://www.cga.ct.gov/2012/ACT/PA/2012PA-00031-R00HB-05030-PA.htm
[5] CSCU Transfer and Articulation Policy (TAP) http://www.ct.edu/files/pdfs/tap-policy.pdf
[6] Study: UConn rejects nearly 25% of credits from community colleges. Community College Daily, April, 2017. http://www.ccdaily.com/2017/04 /study-uconn-rejects-nearly-25 -credits-community-colleges/ [ccdaily.com]
[7] Simone, S.A. (2014). Transferability of Postsecondary Credit Following Student Transfer or Coenrollment (NCES 2014-163). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2014163
[8] U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2017). Students need more information to help reduce challenges in transferring college credits. Washington, DC: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-574
[9] Shapiro, D., Dundar, A., Huie, F., Wakhungu, P.K., Bhimdiwali, A., Nathan, A., & Youngsik, H. (2018, July). Transfer and Mobility: A National View of Student Movement in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2011 Cohort (Signature Report No. 15). Herndon, VA: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. NSC transfer report. https://studentclearinghouse.org/blog/only-60000-of-more-than-1-million-community-college-students-transferred-with-a-credential-research-centers-transfer-and-mobility-report-reveals/
[10] State of Connecticut Office of Higher Education, 2018 Trends Report https://www.ctohe.org/News/pdfs/2019/2018SystemTrends.pdf
[11] Bailey, T. R., Jaggars, S. S., & Jenkins, D. (2015). Redesigning America’s community colleges: A clearer path to student success. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/redesigning-americas-community-colleges.html
[12] Shapiro, D., Dundar, A., Wakhungu, P.K, Yuan, X., & Harrell, A. (2015, July). Transfer and Mobility: A National View of Student Movement in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2008 Cohort (Signature Report No. 9). Herndon, VA: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. http://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport9/
[13] Shapiro, D., Dundar, A., Ziskin, M., Chiang, Y. Chen, J., Torres, V., & Harrell, A. (2013, August). Baccalaureate Attainment: A National View of the Postsecondary Outcomes of Students Who Transfer from Two-Year to Four-Year Institutions (Signature Report No. 5). Herndon, VA: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. http://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport5/
[14] National Student Clearinghouse Research Center: Contribution of Two-Year Public Institutions to Bachelor’s Completions at Four-Year Institutions
https://nscresearchcenter.org/snapshotreport-twoyearcontributionfouryearcompletions26/ [nscresearchcenter.org]
[15] Community College Research Center: Tracking Transfer http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/press-releases/new-report-ranks-states-on-colleges-performance-helping-students-transfer.html
[16] University of Pennsylvania. The College Opportunity Risk Assessment https://irhe.gse.upenn.edu/College-Opportunity-at-Risk
[17] University of Pennsylvania. Affordability Report http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/irhe/affordability_diagnosis/All_50_State_Affordability_Reports.pdf
[18] University of Pennsylvania. National Affordability http://www2.gse.upenn.edu/irhe/sites/gse.upenn.edu.irhe/files/Natl_Affordability2016.pdf

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