Comments on Un-complicating Community College Transfer

• Posted by Jeremiah on September 14, 2007 at 8:25am EDT

• But the difficulty in all articulation agreements lies within the moral dimension. Equal credit hours must mean equal conditions. This works across the board. How are faculty hired? What are their qualifications? What expectations exist as to faculty performance? What about measures of course delivery and standards of student performance? For an articulation agreement to be worth anything, these questions--and many more--must be addressed.

• Un-complicating Community College Transfer
• Posted by Stephen Siciliano on September 14, 2007 at 8:25am EDT

• Congratulations to the lawmakers and educators in New Jersey for the passage of this new legislation. It enhances the value of the degree and gives a tangible way to monitor successful transfer. We lack such an arrangement in Michigan and it results in the lost of time and resources by our students. As the article points out, articulation agreements are a poor substitute for this type of legislation.

• Another meaningless law...
• Posted by feudi pandola on September 14, 2007 at 8:45am EDT

• In the real world, this law will have little effect and does nothing to address the real problems with community colleges.The "catch" is that colleges accept students based on their own admittance criteria so it does not matter one whit if they accept all of your community college credits if you need a GPA of 3.2 to get accepted to a four year degree program and your GPA is only 2.5 at the community college level.

  The real problem with community colleges is that probably half of the students in them should not be in them in the first place. The grad rates for all collge students is only about 50% and it's worse for two year programs. This country needs to re-invigorate the whole concept of trade schools where students can go after high school to learn a trade where they can actually earn a living.

  Community colleges would be an ideal way to accomplish that, but that won't happen in my lifetime. Makes too much common sense...

• Not a meaningless law, it's a bad law
• Posted by Robert on September 14, 2007 at 9:10am EDT

• The problem is the enormous variation in rigor of courses amongst community colleges (and yes amongst 4-year colleges too). I couldn’t disagree more with Stephen. I taught at a 4-year college in Michigan in a program that required organic chemistry as a prerequisite. I found the hard way that a student with an A in organic from some community colleges hadn’t learned what a C student had garnered from our own chemistry department. While some community colleges were quite rigorous, one of the community colleges in the Detroit area passed out A and B grades like plastic beads at Mardi Gras. The students who failed organic at my school quickly learned they could get an A at that community college and we would take the credit. It did those students no favors to have those meaningless credits transfer just so they could fail a course that actually required them to know some organic chemistry. I suspect the results in New Jersey will be the same.

• Harper's 100 yr old plan
• Posted by Glen S. McGhee , Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project on September 14, 2007 at 9:15am EDT

• The vision of students moving smoothly up the higher education pyramid was the idea of William Rainey Harper, the University of Chicago president in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the early 1900’s.

  The fact that we even have community colleges is attributable, at least in part, to Harper’s scheme as well. One of the earliest junior colleges began at his prompting in Illinois, Joulet. Another of his students began junior colleges in California.

  The plan was for students to earn general education credits the first two-years, and then advance, thereby freeing up professors and upper-classmen for genuine scholarship and research modeled on the German research university. This was Harper’s one-hundred year old plan.

• Posted by Brian Perry , Director of Advising, School of Mgmt at Binghamton University on September 14, 2007 at 10:05am EDT

• Do colleges required to accept all credits from community colleges get to dictate to those CC's what their curriculum must be? CC's have vested interest in offering coursework normally taken at the upper level in 4 year colleges to justify their dept. size or to prepare no-transfer oriented students to enter the workforce. It is common for NYS CC grads in business programs to have several courses we wouldn't allow our own students to take during the first 4 years since they wouldn't have the appropriate preparation for them.
  I can see a toughening of admissions standards and fewer transfer acceptances as a result of this law.

• Posted by C on September 14, 2007 at 10:30am EDT

• Over thirty years I’ve gained experience in community colleges, regional and research universities (both in Michigan and New Jersey) and seen that the variables in teaching quality are found in every institution regardless of hiring practices, just as there are variables in student’s performance within each of these institutions. I have learned that many community college students are NOT enrolled to earn a degree but rather to supplement previous education or transfer for degree completion, consequently comparing graduation rates as a success factor is misleading. Pretentious generalizations about the quality of community college faculty and students being below that of four year and research institutions contribute to the transfer problems today. As Servants of the Public Trust we have an obligation to the tax payers to be responsible with their investments in higher education and create or accept curriculum which leads to the outcomes we promise. Too often I’ve seen colleagues argue against accepting transfer credit solely because accepting these courses would effect enrollments in their department. Research in the field will show that many highly qualified students start at community colleges because it is fiscally responsible, and many effective faculty, who value teaching over research choose to work there. I applaud New Jersey, and wish them well as they work to address concerns.

• SAFEGUARDS, and CHECKS and BALANCES
• Posted by Theresa on September 14, 2007 at 10:45am EDT

• Let us hope the good people of New Jersey have a mechanism for feedback on whether or not this new system really works. The costs of failure can be significant. Students who do well at the community college level but fail upper-level courses as they move to 4-yr schools have few resources: repeating the course costs money (for both taxpayers and students) and may only be available for a limited time. Suing the community college for lack of preparation is probably not a viable option.

  Students who could succeed but who are closed out of available seats for a semester or more to allow for repeats don't have many options, either. There is a cost here to both taxpayers and students.

  And professors who really want all their students to succeed may increasingly feel dispirited by the amount of remedial work required in or out of class for underprepared students. It is not unlikely that transfer students, often the underdog on 4-yr campuses, will be greeted with even more prejudice by both faculty and students.

  Only if New Jersey schools track the success rate of CC students in upper-level courses and report to both the state and the CCs themselves (I believe most CCs want their students to succeed, not just transfer) will this change prove even moderately effective in the long run. In the short run, New Jersey may be in for some rocky times. We wish them well.

• A clear but not necessarily easy path
• Posted by Don Burton , President at International Import-Export Institute on September 14, 2007 at 10:45am EDT

• New Jersey’s new law makes sense. It doesn’t fix everything, nor could it ever. It does, however, provide a clear path for students to move forward with some degree of confidence. I agree that the variance between what a student might learn in organic chemistry at community college and a four-year school may be less than desired, but the same could be said for the variance between faculty members at the same school. As was pointed out, students may go to a community college to take an easier chemistry class. Every student must have a strategy in mind when they pursue their degree, which I might add should always include taking a class load that balances “easy” and “difficult” courses. Within the same department at any school there are hard and easy instructors teaching the same subject. I also agree the easy instructor may not be imparting the full knowledge the students need to move forward, but does this mean that the student who takes the organic chemistry class is going to end up being an inferior medical doctor? I don’t think so. It all balances out in the end. I believe the education process—when taken in its totality—works. I applaud the lawmakers for setting a good example that improves the educational process in this country. I hope other states follow their lead.

• A well deserved blow to the Mandarins
• Posted by Robert Tucker , President at InterEd, Inc. on September 14, 2007 at 11:25am EDT

• Congratulations to New Jersey! As one who helps two and four-institutions develop stronger inter-relations, I see, first-hand, how student progress is held hostage to the petty, uninspiring pretentiousness of the Mandarins. “Their English 101 course is inferior to mine.” “They don’t teach Economics the way it should be taught.” These are the a few of the printable reasons from a long list of petty mumbling that is supposed to pass as good reasoning.

  (Quoted from above.) “But the difficulty in all articulation agreements lies within the moral dimension. Equal credit hours must mean equal conditions.” Please! The arguments of the Mandarins rest on a house of cards. None of them have been willing to assess and outcomes and impact rigorously, either to authentic, performance-based standards, as value added, or (ideally) as a weighted hybrid. None of them have been willing to rationalize the teaching and learning and embed it in some sort of CQI process. Virtually all of them teach as their great-great grand-professors taught, ignoring 50 plus years of solid learning and pedagogical sciences. How in world can Jeremiah imply that his institution can commonsize their internal credit awards, much less between themselves and another institution? Yes, the mapping of grades awarded to proficiency is all over the place. But it is all over the place within and across departments at the same institution and doesn’t get appreciably worse when you look across instutions. Given how higher education works (its inputs, process, etc.) it could not be otherwise. I would challenge Jeremiah to let me run simple validity, reliability, and internal consistency metrics on his department’s internal grade award, student performance, and other relevant indicators of achievement and proficiency. Watch out when someone raises the “moral” flag. This is all about turf and intellectual insecurity.

  Assuming it were in the national interest to achieve a precision hand-off between one institution and another, I cannot think of two institutions possessing the requisite metrics (I’m counting only good measurement theory and science here, not faculty tergiversations). The truth we would somehow like to avoid is that constructs like “outcomes” and “impact” are, in this context both polymorphous and possesses family resemblance characteristics. Like airplane landings, no two are alike but we recognize them all as a getting the aircraft on the ground. The analytic sciences which would inform this argument exist as methodologies but far exceed the political context in which U.S. higher education takes place.

  Finally, WHO CARES! Not the student who would like to learn some stuff and get on with his life. Not the employer, who cares most that the student improve his or her communications, cooperation, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, and critical thinking skills. The only people who care about this issue are the Mandarins at the four-year institutions who convey their insecurities by arguing, “Those inferior guys who teach at the community colleges couldn’t possibly have taught anything worth three credit hours in my department.” The governor was right to try to put an end to a nearly 100 years of Mandarin tyranny.

• Hm... How about a test?
• Posted by Duncan on September 14, 2007 at 12:55pm EDT

• I agree with Jermiah and Robert - not all community colleges are equal and not even all instructors are equal. I were teaching the existing classes at community colleges and my students entering my classes with A and Bs are common. But. I really can't say they are close to the level I expected for 4 year college students. Even though I have higher standards, I went along and give my top group(usually one or two students) A - I can't give no A - can I??

  Robert, I wonder if you will support the view that students should be tested before credits can be transfered? - in your field.

• Two points
• Posted by BB on September 14, 2007 at 1:55pm EDT

• Theresa is 100% right. This should not be seen as an answer to the transfer issue. The processes and results of student achievement need to be measured and measured and measured. If there is an obvious gap somewhere, make changes to close it. If there is an obvious success, replicate it.

  Second, I fail to see this as a victory over a resistant force. According to the article, there was significant buy-in by the 4-yr community and the organization representing 50+ presidents actually authored the bill. Why be so divisive, and why congratulate the Governor on taking a side, when there was so much agreement?

• community college transfer
• Posted by David Fahey on September 14, 2007 at 1:55pm EDT

• Here are a few issues out of many.

  First, for many students (and their families) a degree is a degree is a degree. What is learned is secondary. The degree is necessary to get a job and not necessarily to do a job. For these, students the quality of courses is less important than the availability of courses.

  Second, the "experts" in education don't necessarily agree about what higher or any other education should accomplish. "Life adjustment," "citizenship," minimal oral and writing competence? As a definition of higher education, such a program won't appeal to people teaching the hard sciences (not that they don't have their own disagreements). By the way, education "experts" rarely impress college faculty members who teach content. By content, I include discipline-specific methodologies.

  Third, I can produce virtually any grade distribution that I want by how I structure the courses and their grading systems. For instance, group assignments "raise all boats." A multiple-choice exam can persuade students that they deserve to be flunked. What is beyond my discretionary judgment is to pass students who don't come to class, don't take exams, don't turn in term papers and other out of class assignments, and lack minimal time management skills. If community college develop the right habits and attitudes, the students probably can get a four-year college degree. Otherwise the transfers get to watch a few football games before they fade away. What saddens me is that the failures aren't always stupid. Frequently messed up lives are at fault.

• Posted by jeremiah on September 14, 2007 at 1:55pm EDT

• Mr. Tucker did a pretty thorough job of dismantling my argument mainly because I don't think I was quite clear. You see, I've taught everything from 7th grade through grad school using all the bells and whistles. For the last 16 years, I've been employed at a rural CC where my job lies solely in getting transfer students prepared to deal with the 'mandarins' (which I assume are not upper class east Asians or oranges). This is the heart of my argument that equal credit hours should mean equal conditions. We honor our students with high expectations so they can face Mr. Tucker's 'mandarins' without fear or failure. Perhaps what I do might best be described as boot camp for the 3rd and 4th years. An articulation agreement is fine but student success lies within the hazy realm of character, dedication, and discipline by everyone involved.

• Posted by Melissa , tenured instructor at an Illinois community college on September 14, 2007 at 2:00pm EDT

• Yes, it is true that students often find it easier to earn better grades in their "gen eds" at community colleges than they do at universities. That's a rather predictable outcome of smaller class sizes, close-knit student communities, and available professors (no TAs) who are in it primarily to teach.

  http://www.itransfer.org/newwebsite/container.aspx?file=iai

• no longer second rate
• Posted by bradley bleck , instructor at Spokane Falls CC on September 14, 2007 at 2:55pm EDT

• It seems that one of the assumptions driving at least part of this discussion is that community colleges offer inferior instruction or they are primarily devoted to technical/professional programs. It's a dubious assumption at best with regard to the inferior instruction and qualifications. As was noted, CC faculty teaching transferable courses have a graduate degree, at least an MA and more and more a PhD, so education is hardly the issue when so many undergrads, at least at R1 institutions, are being taught by TA's and GA's, who may or may not have even an Masters degree, who may or may not be able or even want to teach. In the state of Washington, if a student earns an AA/AS from a community college before transfer, they are a bit more likely (not a huge difference) to earn an BA/BS if they transfer in-state to a four-year school. The four-year schools in Washington have long been accepting AA/AS degrees as satisfying General Undergraduate Requirements and we are now working on common course numbering among the two-year schools in the state (30+ of them).

  As was also noted, more students are beginning at CC's because of the cost savings, the smaller classes (no classes such as Econ 101 of 400 students), faculty accessibility and an overall focus on teaching and learning throughout the institution. Yes, some grade "easier" than others, but having attended one community college and four universities as a student, I can say that this sort of thing is hardly unique to the CC or four-year, or even graduate/undergraduate realms.

• Gving no A's
• Posted by Bill A. on September 14, 2007 at 3:00pm EDT

• Of course you can give no A's in a particular semester. For exactly the same reason that you can give no F's.

• Hardly a new idea
• Posted by Assoc. Prof. at Florida CC on September 14, 2007 at 9:05pm EDT

• Florida has had this system for decades. At one time, Florida even had some institutions that had zero freshmen and sophomores; they only taught upper division courses.

  The main saving is that a 4-year school can't jerk around a transfer student by requiring that they take some particularly esoteric mix of history and humanities classes (adding many $$$$ and maybe an extra year in school) just to meet general education requirements.

  I understand the concern of one prof about organic chem at one particular CC -vs- the course at their college, but the reverse can also happen. A good prof teaching organic at a CC, with 30 kids in a class, can produce high quality outcomes compared to a busy researcher and/or his grad student, with 300 in a class and m.c. tests. I get frequent reports from a neighboring university that students who took calculus there (usually from a grad student adjunct) are weaker than ones who took it at our CC.

• Posted by Sherman Dorn , Associate Professor at University of South Florida on September 17, 2007 at 8:50am EDT

• My colleague from a Florida CC is right: we've had a statewide course numbering system for years, and it's a reasonable balance between accepting everyone's courses and having to look at syllabi for in-state public institutions. (It also works for transfers between institutions at the same level.)

• Posted by Gareth Russell at NJIT on September 18, 2007 at 12:15pm EDT

• All this debate about the relative merits of community colleges and four-year schools misses an important point. What about the student who arrives with an ok overall GPA but a D in organic chemistry and wants to get a four-year degree majoring in Biology. Most of the Departments in four-year colleges have their own separate GPA standards for majors, requiring a minimum running average, or minimum grades in certain foundation courses, in order to progress to more advanced courses. Otherwise, they would fail those more advanced courses. No-one getting a D in organic chemistry at my institution would be able to progress. But this law appears to mandate that we accept the credit. At the very least, if we say we require 'our' organic chemistry (with a minimum grade of C), then we have to find a way to give some kind of elective credit for the D in organic chemistry. That is almost impossible in most curricula.

  Please note that this problem exists even if the community college courses are exactly the same quality as the four-year college version AND the grading system is the same. It simply allows an underperforming student to avoid the criteria applied to other students in the same major.

• Read the Bill; don't abuse Community Colleges
• Posted by Berry on October 17, 2007 at 9:00pm EDT

• Read the bill itself. Colleges will not have to compromise their standards and start taking D grades in the transfer process. Remember that Assemblywoman Lampitt, who really is not the only author of the legislation, is an employee of the University of Pennsylvania, and I'm certain her experience there has influenced her thinking about what's good for NJ. For example, there's no way on this earth Penn would ever accept a D grade in chemistry for transfer.

  The bill, however, is bad legislation. I understand the premise. Why should the taxpayers, who pay the lion share of educational expenses, pay twice for English 101 or Calculus 1 or Speech 101? The problem is that this bill leaves little choice for students to explore different majors once they get to the community college. Who doesn't understand that plenty of students change their major when they get to college or after a semester or two? A change from an English major to a psychology major could minimally result in an extra year of college, as well as extra cost to the taxpayers. This is a symptom of the academic affairs officers and presidents running scared over the Lampitt Bill, without much frontline communication in developing the new transfer guidelines. Remember, Lampitt and other legislators are elected officials, and college faculty and staff are voters, too!

  Now, about the quality of education at community colleges: Why do students constantly tell me their 4-year college coursework is not as demanding as their community college work? In fact, former NJIT Provost Gary Thomas did a study years ago, which supported that transfer students were more successful than native students? So, stop bashing the community colleges. If you do, at least make sure you don't have any typos in your remarks! (I'm not bashing, so it's okay if I have them!)

• Scholarships
• Posted by Andrea , Student at Cumberland County College on April 24, 2009 at 7:15pm EDT

• As some of you may know New Jersey has implemented a scholarship program, NJ Stars, in which High school seniors are eligible to earn free tuition and fees at a community college upon graduation. These same students may transfer to a four year public college in NJ and receive a large scholarship for the duration of their completion of their bachelor’s degree. For more information visit: www.njstars.net . Since this scholarship, based on academic achievement, encourages students to attend community college attendance at these same community college has greatly increased. In addition many students are seeing the financial benefit of free themselves and/or their parents of the burden of college loans. This law, the Lampitt bill, is enabling these students to complete their degree as planned in four years. These students tend to take rigorous course work and take great pride in their achievement. If this law makes it more difficult to transfer to four year colleges then maybe people will take their community college more seriously, I see nothing wrong with that.