Clearing the Path to a Four-Year Degree | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The John William Pope Center for Education Policy provides a treasure trove of information suggesting the better path forward in regards to North Carolina's number one issue - public education. Public education, at all levels, requires a significant amount of funding from our state government, and all one hundred North Carolina counties, so it is essential that leaders effecting education policy get it right, and know that concerned entities, like the John William Pope Center, will be minding their progress to do so. We welcome the John William Pope Center for Education Policy to our growing readership, and expect our readers to learn all they can to do their part in this wise endeavor to better educate our People.

    The author of this post is Jesse Saffron.

    It may get easier for North Carolina community college students to transfer to UNC colleges in 2014 - perhaps too easy.

    For many college students, the road to a bachelor's degree is not a straight one. Academic and non-academic detours can alter a student's collegiate trajectory, turning what might have otherwise been a four-year experience into a five- or six-year extended stay.

    Community college students pursuing bachelor's degrees can face particularly distressful hurdles. North Carolina's 16-year old Comprehensive Articulation Agreement (CAA) - bureaucrat-speak for transfer student guidelines - was designed to remove such hurdles. But after years of listening to students' horror stories and disheartening anecdotes about the transfer process, community college academic officers, UNC system officials and other policymakers are now proposing revisions that would substantially amend the CAA.

    Under current provisions, if a student completes a 44-hour general education core, he or she won't have to worry about such courses after transferring, and can instead focus on degree coursework and remaining electives. If a student completes an A.A. or A.S. degree, he or she transfers with junior status to the receiving UNC institution (the school that accepts the transfer student).

    However, a majority of students transfer before getting an associate's degree or even completing the general education core. By not completing the core, a student can be subjected to a course-by-course transcript evaluation. That is, the receiving institution can decide whether to count a particular course as an elective, a general education course or a prerequisite for a major.

    In some instances, students have had to take classes twice, postponing their graduation date as a result. In other cases, students have lacked the necessary prerequisites for their major, especially if they changed their major, or were denied admission to their favored university after spending time and resources satisfying that particular school's requirements. Since degree requirements can differ from institution to institution, these students have found themselves frustrated by a confusing patchwork of redundancies, red tape, and administrative intractabilities which serves to unnecessarily prolong their college careers.

    In March 2012, the N.C. General Assembly's higher education oversight committee tasked Sharon Morrissey, the senior vice president and chief academic officer for the North Carolina community college system, and Suzanne Ortega, the UNC system's senior vice president for academic affairs, with creating a report on the current articulation agreement and with developing revisions to streamline transfer procedures. Morrissey and Ortega appointed a special steering committee - comprised of community college academic officers and university provosts - to create a workable alternative to the current system.

    The steering committee has met with dozens of community college instructors and hundreds of university professors to conduct course evaluations and help make recommendations. Officials also reached out to Columbia University's Community College Research Center to help provide a statistical perspective, since, as Morrissey said in a recent Pope Center interview, "You can't make decisions based on anecdotes."

    The Research Center's findings reinforced some of the anecdotal evidence. By tracking a cohort of students from the 2004-05 academic year, researchers discovered that only 13 percent of students completed the 44-hour general education core prescribed by the agreement. Statistics show that students are far less likely to complete a four-year degree if they transfer before completing the core or before earning an associate's.

    The revisions that have been hashed out so far would substitute the current 44-hour block with a 30-hour (two full-time semesters) universal general education core featuring courses in English composition, humanities and fine arts, natural science and mathematics, and social and behavioral sciences. The committee also wants to implement a pre-major course "pathways" system to clarify the specific courses required for specific majors, develop "mapping tools" for students to make course selection at the community college level less harrowing, and improve the advising system with more counseling sessions, something that was recently mandated by a bill passed in the General Assembly.

    Part of the revision requires UNC system officials to "identify community college course equivalencies and publicize an equivalency course crosswalk to ensure transfer of credit uniformity and transparency." The "crosswalk" details which courses are required for baccalaureate completion, although, as the Pope Center's Duke Cheston has discussed, achieving course equivalency could be a challenge. The semester-hour credit requirements of the A.A. and A.S. degrees will be shortened to 60, down from 64. Academic standards will remain the same: students must have a "C" or better in all articulation coursework to be eligible for transfer.

    While the revision process is moving along, some have doubts that it will significantly improve the transfer system. Stephen Prescott, a business law instructor at Wake Technical Community College who has been deeply involved with the negotiations, said in an interview with the Pope Center, "I'm not entirely convinced the revised CAA will succeed. In my view, it is probably the wrong approach. It will encourage UNC system schools to take people as sophomores."

    Prescott's sentiment reflects the concern of a number of community college faculty and administrators. In their view, too many students already transfer early. Making it even easier to leave the community college system will produce a further increase in transfers, especially since UNC system schools are making a concerted effort to accept more transfer students. Transfers can boost graduation rates and provide an additional revenue stream at a time of economic stagnation. They also provide an added benefit to four-year schools wishing to increase diversity (community colleges tend to have a more heterogeneous student body). And from the four-year institution's perspective, accepting students who have already proven that they can successfully complete college coursework is a win-win situation.

    Thus, there is tension between the interests of the community colleges and those of UNC system schools. Morrissey says it's advantageous for students to stay and earn an associate's degree. She believes that doing so guarantees students that they never have to worry about general education courses and makes them more likely to complete a bachelor's degree. Furthermore, she believes that if they don't end up with a bachelor's or an associate's degree, they'll be left with the same earnings potential as a high school graduate. Morrissey has initiated a soft campaign to "get the word out" to students about the benefits of staying and completing an associate's degree program.

    In spite of some of these divergent perspectives, the revised CAA draft has now been sent out to the various campus stakeholders for further review and input. In December, after the institutions have provided feedback, the chief academic officers, the CAA review steering committee and the transfer advisory committee (which is drafting all the various proposals and recommendations) will review it and send it to the UNC board of governors and the state board of the N.C. community colleges. Votes by those two bodies are scheduled for February of 2014.

    So far, the revision process has been comprehensive in nature and impartial toward both the community colleges and the UNC system (although students have not had a chance to give input). Yet it's unclear whether the changes, if adopted, will improve the transfer process. There has been no hard evidence showing that the transfer problem is pervasive. Certainly, some lackluster, blasé students have been unable to plot out a plan of study. But motivated students usually find out which classes they need to take. And one reason why students with associate's degrees go on to earn their bachelor's sooner and at higher rates than other transfer students is because they are more driven and competent from the get-go.

    On the other hand, if these new revisions can give more students more autonomy, and allow them to focus on academics rather than a labyrinthine transfer system, it may be a victory for community college students, if not always for their respective institutions.