It’s easy to make transfer credit seem like a really big deal.  Outside of BC and Alberta, institutional credit transfer policies are pretty ad hoc, and there’s no shortage of anecdotes about students having to re-do courses they’ve already done.  But little data has hitherto been available to help us understand the extent to which credit transfer policies affect times-to-completion.

Until now.

Using HESA’s CanEd Student Panel, we examined this question from a couple of different angles.  Figure 1 gives an idea of the dimensions of this problem: one-in-six of the 1876 university students we surveyed on this issue had actually transferred credit from one institution to another, while one-in-five had considered transferring, but had not done so.

 University Students’ Credit Transfer Experiences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The percentage who had transferred was highest in Alberta and British Columbia (30%) and lowest in Ontario (11%).  Some might take that as evidence of the obvious superiority of those provinces’ transfer systems, especially the bits that allow credit to be transferred from colleges to universities.  But a closer look at the evidence reveals a more nuanced picture.

Among those Ontario students who transferred, the proportion that did so from college to university (35%) was almost identical to that in Alberta (38%).  In total, just over a third of students transferring credit to Canadian universities are doing so from colleges.

Percentage of University Transferees Whose Previous Institution was a College

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t have perfectly equivalent data for colleges, but when we completed a similar survey for Colleges Ontario, last year, 54% of transferees came from universities, and 46% from other colleges.

Now, here’s the interesting thing.  We asked university students in the CanEd panel, and Ontario college students, what percentage of credits earned in their previous program they were able to transfer.  Of students who transferred into universities, 89% were able to transfer at least some of their credits, and one-third were able to transfer all of their credits. On average, students who did transfer credit saw over 75% of their credits recognized.

Percentage of Previous Credits Recognized in Transfer Process, Canadian Universities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Ontario colleges, we see similar numbers.  83% of students who transferred got transfer credit – but over three-quarters of those who did not get credit actually didn’t even apply for it.  Fully 95% of credit requests were at least partially successful, and, additionally,  a third of students who didn’t ask for credit were awarded it anyway.

That said, not all awarded credit necessarily helped to shorten the time-to-completion (on average, students said their studies were reduced by about one semester).  That’s because roughly three-quarters of transfer students in colleges were switching their area of study; simply having old credit recognized didn’t lessen the need to master all the material in the new program areas.

More tomorrow.