For today’s baccalaureate-seeking students, meeting their graduation objectives is more than likely going to entail earning credit at more than one institution. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 60% of 1999-2000 first-time bachelor’s degree recipients completed their degrees with credit from multiple institutions. Although this statistic has been used to back up a wide variety of claims (Education Trust, 2006), one thing is indisputable—the application of credits earned at one school toward a degree at another is widespread. For the students working toward baccalaureate degrees by earning credits at multiple institutions, determining how their accumulated credits will satisfy one ultimate degree objective depends both on the articulation agreements that exist between institutions and on their own course selection decisions. Ideally, those decisions will be based on the agreements. Students need to answer not only, “What credits will transfer?”, a tricky enough question, but further, “What credits will apply toward the degree I ultimately want to earn?”, a much more challenging and important question.

How credits will transfer and apply is a crucial question for the majority of graduating undergraduates, including the student who begins higher education at a baccalaureate-granting institution and then completes a handful of courses elsewhere as well as the transfer student who pursues a full course of study at one institution and then moves on to another. However, the issue is especially important for the latter, the student who begins higher education at a community college with the intention of then moving to a senior institution to complete a baccalaureate degree—these students want to apply some 60 hours of credit from one college (or colleges) toward a degree at a senior institution. If community college credits do not apply—perhaps they do not transfer for credit, or perhaps the student receives credit, but it does not apply toward any degree requirements—students are faced with additional work. This results in increased cost of education, financial and otherwise, and increased time students spend in postsecondary education, and, thus, more opportunity for leaving before completing the degree. The reality today, though, is that students may be enrolled at community colleges earning credits that will not transfer as expected. “No matter which type of student we observe, only about half were able to transfer all of their credits” (Doyle, 2006, p. 58).

Students who enroll at Illinois community colleges and who intend to transfer benefit from many inter-institutional agreements including the Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI), a statewide course transfer policy, a network of course-to-course articulations between institutions, regional consortia of communication and collaboration such as Transfer Coordinators, a system of Transfer Centers, and program articulation guidelines. These activities and projects promote and strengthen the transfer process, but in order for students to move seamlessly through higher education, they must have information about the agreements. Students need to be able to make course-selection decisions based on an understanding of what articulation agreements institutions have in place. That is to say, they need to be able to learn what courses, based on articulations, will apply to the post-transfer degree; while the agreements and all that faculty, administrators, and policy makers do to create them may remain a mystery to most, the effects of those agreements must be made clear to the students who are affected by them.

The Illinois Course Applicability System (CAS) Project¹ is one strategy that makes course transfer information available to students via the Internet. Using a free on-line program, students can create personal accounts through which they can track their progress toward specific degrees at other institutions. This program is intended to put community college students on similar footing with students who start higher education at baccalaureate-granting institutions. The vast majority of “native students” have access to their schools’ degree audit systems that provide organized, detailed reviews of degree requirements and an evaluation mechanism to determine students’ progress as they complete requirements; only students who are currently enrolled at a particular institution can typically run degree audits for that school’s degree programs.

However, if we want to provide equal access to information for all students, if equity across the system is important and we want to treat baccalaureate-seeking students who begin higher education at 2-year institutions the same way we treat those who start at 4-year institutions, community college students also need access to baccalaureate degree audits or an alternative process that achieves the same end. Two-year institution students and others can use CAS to examine degree requirements and learn how their completed and anticipated coursework will apply toward the baccalaureate degree at potential 4-year institutions.

The use of technology, such as CAS, has the potential to allow better coordination and communication of transfer articulation data and the ability to target specific populations of students who need the information. Students’ difficulty in getting accurate information has been shown to be a major barrier impeding student transfer to 4-year institutions and earning bachelor’s degrees (Cunningham, Redmond, & Merisotis, 2003). Students with early access to correct information are more likely to achieve transfer success than students without information (Cabrera & LaNasa, 2001; Perna, 2002). “Despite many years of investment in equalizing post-secondary education opportunity in the United States, gaps in enrollment rates persist between low-income and higher-income students, and between white students and other racial/ethnic groups” (Cunningham, Redmond, & Merisotis, 2003, p. 1). One of the reasons they give for the persistence of this problem is access to information. The research also shows that students who start higher education at a community college attain the baccalaureate degree at rates equivalent to those who start at the 4-year college or university if the community college students know their major and their target institution, and if the sending and receiving institutions have articulation agreements, and if the students have access to this information (Townsend, 1995).

The Course Applicability System does not take the place of advising or of academic counselors, but instead provides all users consistent, accurate, and timely information about transfer courses and their specific degree applicability. CAS can aid advising at the high school level and ensure that place-bound or financially burdened students exploring their options in Illinois higher education see transfer as a realistic choice. The Course Applicability System has the potential to improve the diversity and access rates of the more than 30,000 undergraduate students transferring among Illinois colleges and universities each fall², as well as many of the over 16,000 students transferring into Illinois colleges and universities from outside the Illinois higher education system each fall³. How well institutions and the state serve students who are planning to transfer is an important equity issue. Table 1 demonstrates that of students in Illinois public higher education, Black students, Hispanic students, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students are more likely to be enrolled in community colleges than in universities.

One-fifth of the students transferring fall 2004 were underrepresented minorities. That semester, 9,634 Black, Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaskan Native students transferred in Illinois, representing 20.4% of all the students who transferred. Of these students, over one-third (36.3%) transferred to a community college, and under one-third transferred to pubic universities and not-for-profit institutions (30.1% and 28.9%, respectively).

In a recent article in Change, a Vanderbilt University professor of higher education used National Center for Education Statistics data to demonstrate that those students who transfer from a 2-year to a 4-year institution with all credits accepted are far more likely to complete their baccalaureate degrees than are those students for whom only some, or no, credits are accepted (Doyle, 2006). Looking at status after six years, 82% of those who received credit for all their community college work had graduated, but only 42% of those who received credit for some or none of their work had graduated (see Table 2 and Figure 1). Doyle argued that:

It seems that [transfer] students’ eventual baccalaureate degree completion may have more to do with issues outside of their control than their own choices….the transfer of course credits is largely an inter- or intra-institutional responsibility. Students bear much of the responsibility for getting to the point of transfer.... But much of what happens after transferring seems to occur as a result of factors beyond their control and is the responsibility of state-level and institutional policymakers. The articulation agreements, common course numbering, and curriculum decisions that the policymakers develop all play a pivotal role in determining how many transfer credits will be accepted and hence the likelihood of students’ attaining their educational goals. (p. 58)

These data are striking, but I come to a different conclusion. I do agree that policies are vitally important to the process, and I support Doyle’s call for simplifying the articulation process for students, for eliminating barriers, and for standardizing articulations so that clear policies determine transfer outcomes rather than subjective decisions within institutions, decisions that may be arbitrary and highly inconsistent. However, Illinois has a tremendous array of articulation agreements in place. The problem for many students is that they are not aware of the agreements (more precisely, the agreements’ implications), not that the agreements are not in place.

Student course selection, rather than institutional policy, results in much lost credit. In Illinois, with IAI and other strong policies in place to aid course transferability, we need to support students by improving their access to accurate, current, complete, and comprehensible information. The problem for many students is not that they are selecting community college courses only to find out later, when their courses are evaluated at the senior institution, that a bureaucrat has decided after the fact and arbitrarily not to grant credit, as Doyle suggests. Rather, the problem is that students are making poor selections because they are not aware of the agreements and their implications. Student course selection, rather than institutional policy, is resulting in much of the lost credit⁴. It is important to emphasize that students are not necessarily to blame for their choices; rather, it is an acknowledgement that institutions need to guide students more effectively so that they are armed with adequate and accurate information to make the best choices possible. We, the higher education community of scholars and practitioners, must support students so that they can make well-informed choices.

With appropriate help from the sending institutions, the receiving institutions, and the state, students can make better choices, choices that will result in greater proportions of courses transferring and applying toward their degree of choice. Using CAS, community college students in Illinois will be better able to fall into the “all credits accepted” category. Illinois’ students already have a wide range of statewide and institution-to-institution articulation and transfer policies to support their progress. What they need is the knowledge about precisely how those articulations affect them as they plan their pathways through higher education, pathways that are increasingly likely to include credit at more than one institution.

⁴ In this article I argue that community college students need to be armed with better information so that they can carefully choose courses that will transfer and apply toward their intended baccalaureate. This is not to assume that we will ever be able to provide all students the opportunity to choose only courses that will apply to the senior degree. This will never be possible for a number of students. Many students enter community colleges wanting to transfer, but undecided on their major and need to explore options; many will take courses in one pathway (e.g., an applied associate's degree) and then change their goals to a transfer orientation; and many will need to take pre-college courses, to provide a few examples.

References

Cabrera, A. F., & LaNasa, S. M. (2001). On the path to college: Three critical tasks facing America's      disadvantaged. Research in Higher Education, 42, 119-149.

Cunningham, A., Redmond, C. & Merisotis, J. (2003). Investing early: Intervention programs in      selected U.S. states. Retrieved April 28, 2006 from http://www.millenniumscholarships.ca.

Doyle, W. (2006). Community college transfers and college graduation: Whose choices matter most?      Change, 3 : 56-8.

Haycock, K. (2006). Promise abandoned: How policy choices and institutional practices restrict      college opportunities . Washington, DC : Education Trust.

Illinois Board of Higher Education. (2005). IBHE data book on Illinois higher education . Retrieved July      2, 2006 from http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/Data%20Bank/DataBook/default.asp.

Perna, L. W. (2002). Precollege outreach programs: Characteristics of programs serving historically      underrepresented groups of students. Journal of College Student Development, 43, 64-83.

Daniel Cullen is Coordinator for the Illinois Course Applicability System Project. This position is housed at the University of Illinois, and funded by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education in Educational Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Readers with questions are invited to contact Daniel Cullen at dcullen@uillinois.edu.