SD26 - The Transfer of Academic Credit


Executive Summary:
Senate Joint Resolution No. 182, sponsored by Senator Lambert, requested the "State Council of Higher Education and the Virginia Community College System, in collaboration with the Joint Subcommittee Studying the Status of and Need for Academic, Financial Assistance, and Incentive Programs to Encourage Minorities to Pursue Postsecondary Education and Training, to study the transfer of academic credits." The study resolution asks that the report address a series of specific issues. Below are summarized the major recommendations with respect to each of those issues and the findings that support them.

Recommendations

• Since the Commonwealth of Virginia wishes to increase the accessibility of higher education for all qualified students; and

• since one way to do so is to increase the ease of transfer from two-to-four year institutions; and

• since the private-college contract program promises to make Virginia's private colleges full participants in the state transfer program; and

• since African-American students presently transfer in small percentages than their general representation in the higher-education community; and

• since most students who transfer, because they are not enrolled in transfer programs, are often uncertain of their direction and likely to be self-advised; and

• since African American students are more likely than others to transfer from occupational/technical programs;

the State Council of Higher Education recommends the following:

1) that all senior institutions be in compliance with the State Transfer Policy by 1996;

2) that the State Committee on Transfer broaden its membership to include a representative from one of the private colleges involved in the independent college-contract program, and that the committee help chief transfer officers at private institutions;

3) that the State Committee on Transfer continue to develop the transfer module so that students undecided about their field of study can take courses that they know will transfer;

4) that the Virginia Community College System develop and publish a list of 2 + 2 programs (occupational-technical programs that transfer to specific four-year programs) in the state, including those with private four-year institutions, and that the State Committee on Transfer encourage the further development of such programs;

5) that the Virginia Community College System work to ensure that general education courses in the occupational-technical programs are acceptable for transfer to the senior institutions and inform students when specific courses are not transferrable;

6) that the Virginia Community College System and the Council develop a 1996 budget request for a centralized student-information database that would help students plan their academic programs; and

7) that as quickly as possible, the Council make available electronically transfer guides from the public and private institutions that are now in electronic form.

The Council will continue to monitor transfer and graduation rates of community-college students in general and of African-American students in particular in order to ascertain the effectiveness of these actions in encouraging the transfer and baccalaureate graduation of community-college students.