So, yesterday we saw that, in fact, the vast majority of transfer students receive credit for their previous work, and in quite substantial amounts as well. But what about the credits that didn’t get recognized?
There’s a pretty clear correlation between non-recognition and changing programs. Overall, university transfer students said that more than 60% of their credits were accepted for transfer (among those who had any credit accepted, it was roughly 75%). But as the figure below shows, the results were substantially better for students switching to a related program of study than for students who switched to an unrelated program. This is important for understanding why credit recognition in colleges may actually be more restrictive than in universities, since students transferring into colleges are much more likely to be switching fields of study, compared with students who transfer into universities.
Figure 1 – Percentage of Credits Accepted for Transfer by Universities, by Relationship of Old Program of Study to New Program of Study
Another counter-intuitive finding is how open universities seem to be to accepting credit from colleges. Among students transferring from another university, the average amount of previous credit awarded was 67%; for those transferring from colleges, the total was a remarkably high 58%. Much of this result is driven by Alberta and BC, where credit-transfer systems have been designed specifically to smooth the path from colleges to universities. However, in the other 8 provinces, the average amount of credit recognized was 43%, which points to a substantial willingness among universities to recognize college achievements, even in the absence of formal credit-transfer arrangements.
Institutions sometimes require transfer students to re-take a specific course, because the version taken at the previous institution doesn’t quite meet the new institution’s standard. From students’ perspective this is pretty aggravating, and this phenomenon is always the focus of news coverage on credit transfer.
Despite the fact that, in general, Canadian institutions seem to have a pretty good record on credit transfer, this is an area which needs improvement. Among students who transferred between two similar programs, 38% said they had to re-take a pre-requisite course. The elaborate systems of credit transfer in Alberta and British Columbia made this phenomenon much less prevalent, but still did not eliminate the problem, by any means. Intriguingly, students transferring in from colleges were slightly less likely to have to re-take a pre-requisite, compared with students coming in from other universities.
Figure 2 – Percentage of Students Transferring From a Similar Program Who Were Required to Re-Take at Least one Pre-requisite Course
So there you have it. The Canadian credit transfer system may look chaotic, but a lot of credit does in fact get transferred, and much of what doesn’t is excluded for the legitimate reason that students are switching programs. The big irritant is universities being fussy about course pre-requisites. Solve that, and we might just have a system to be proud of.
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Alex, fascinating, as always. Another time would it be possible to include the data source and year someone on the charts or in the post so I don’t have to dig through the blog to find parts 1 and 2? (No need to publish this on the site)
This has been a very interesting series on transfer credit, and quite helpful in Alberta’s current context where, for some reason, our government does not appear to grasp that our transfer credit process is highly developed and quite effective.
There are a four of issues that were omitted that I think would add to the picture.
First, currency of course work is an issue. For example a student presenting a computing science course completed in 1980 may not receive transfer credit simply because the field has changed dramatically in the interval. Similarly, someone who completed a Canadian history course in 1980 is missing a significant part of history, and so may be asked to retake a course to pick up the missing components.
Second, credit is sometimes not transferred when a student has reached the maximum transfer available. That is, normally programs have a residency requirement which means a certain number of credits (usually about half) must be completed at the awarding institution. Students who have a lot of credit may not receive 100% transfer not because the institution does not recognize those courses as transferable, but because there simply is not room for those credits. In this situation the student is generally not required to repeat a course, but is deemed to have met the requirement while still be required to make up the total residency required credits.
Third, your discussion does not reflect Prior Learning Assessment. This practice varies widely across the country, but usually involves the student receiving credit for prior learning that is not directly transferable. There may be a challenge exam involved, or more elaborate portfolio development work. In the end, however, the student receives credit but not transfer credit.
Fourth, the data reported is from students. My experience, which is 20 years as Registrar, is that students recollection of transfer credit is nearly always worse than what was actually awarded. It would be interesting, although perhaps not feasible, for institutions to report on the percentage of credit transferred.
In the end, I think at least the first three factors will mean that we can never get to a 100% transfer situation. The fourth means that we will never be perceived to have reached that threshold. So a more realistic measure of a well functioning transfer system need to be developed — perhaps a target of 100% of eligible credits (i.e. those that are current, fit within residency restrictions, are program applicable) transfer and that prior learning assessment is broadly available.
Hi Glenn. Those are all excellent points. You’ll be reading more about that third one – PLA – in some future one thoughts as I think it is one of the most important transformations facing higher education at the moment.
Thanks for reading our stuff.
In British Columbia we have done extensive studies on why credit is not transferred, and the overwhelming reason is that students transferring from a generic “Arts and Science” program elsewhere are nearly always attending an institution which offers vocational, or career courses; these courses are not transferable to any degree program anywhere. Perhaps the most typical case is business courses which have no equivalent in university faculties of commerce or business. Students present all the courses, and receive credit for the subset which is clearly listed in the transfer guide as transferable. They answer the survey question honestly, and without remorse. They generally have no problem with the fact that some of their previous work was non-transferable; they were keeping vocational options open, and they realized that all along.
The second most common problem is “unassigned credits”. A student with 60 credits may be assigned credit but not credit toward their degree for all 60 credits. They are told that in addition to the 60 upper level credits they must still obtain for their degree, there are also missing credits at the first and second year level. University students refer to this as “more electives than I needed for my degree”.
But the most interesting feature of the system is in the report on “credit to degree” http://bccat.ca/pubs/creditstograduation.pdf
Controlling for courses which are clearly labelled as non-transferable, the system works almost seamlessly; there is virtually no “wasted credit” in the transfer system in terms of degree completion.
I need to pay more attention to BC. There’s a lot of data out there that’s really interesting that I know nothing about.
Thanks for your comments Walter – helpful as ever.
Echoing what many have said above, it’s important to remember that students that work with an academic advisor tend to have zero loss.
Even after students go elsewhere, good support can serve a student. Several times this year, we’ve contacted another institution on behalf of a student and resolved transfer issues (with outlines, having the instructor contact the other institution with more detail, providing an example of what would be involved in a written assignment, pointing out a mistake made honestly). Promoting student self-advocacy or increasing advisor support will (and does) also lead to alternatives such as “course substitution” – where a course doesn’t “transfer” but meets the learning requirements of a particular program enough that it will do – or PLAR.
This said, there is room for improvement in identifying and guiding students who aren’t asking the right questions because they aren’t sure what questions to ask or the language to use (ie. “Does this transfer?” will yield a no, but “Can this be substituted?” might be different). This is done via support from both the sending and receiving institutions. Educating students on the language we use and how to accomplish their intended task, plus providing them with a place to turn when things go wrong is what is needed more than an “overhaul” of Alberta’s amazing transfer system.
Interesting. Thanks for that.
One thing we found when we were doing our credit transfer project for Colleges Ontario was that students really didn’t have a sense of where to go even to ask about transfer credit. A very high percentage started by asking their instructors. So getting to the right person quickly – and making sure there wasn’t a lot of subsequent running around to get signatures or approvals in different places – seemed to us to be the key to successful credit transfer experiences.