The Path Forward

Let me tell you about Andrew, a motivated student who graduated high school early with impressive dual-enrollment credits. After attending a private college for a year and taking some time to work, he rekindled his educational ambitions at a community college. With approximately 30 credits remaining for his bachelor’s degree, he applied to an R-1 university, ready to complete his journey.

What should have been a seamless transition became an unexpected challenge. Despite submitting his transfer work in October and regularly checking in with his adviser, Andrew discovered in January—after classes had already begun—that he faced “at least three years of coursework” rather than the anticipated single year to graduation.

This isn’t a rare occurrence or some administrative anomaly. Rather, it is the norm for individuals who aren’t pursuing a four-year degree on the traditional timeline. Higher education talks endlessly about completion and student success while maintaining systems and policies that actively undermine these goals.

Andrew’s story represents a critical opportunity for higher education. While his family successfully advocated for a refund and found another institution that better recognized his prior learning, his experience highlights a fundamental challenge we must address collectively.

The Scale of the Challenge

We have 42 million Americans with some college credit but no degree. We have 200,000 military personnel transitioning to civilian life annually. We have an economy desperately needing upskilled workers. Yet higher education’s response to credit mobility remains anchored in outdated policies and processes that fail to serve today’s students, institutions or workforce needs.

Many institutions have made meaningful progress in supporting diverse student needs through childcare services, flexible scheduling and online options. These are important steps. Now we must extend this same commitment to the academic evaluation processes that directly impact students’ time to degree and financial investment.

The Disconnect

Transfer articulation agreements—where they have been struck—have created valuable pathways, but their implementation often lacks the consistency and transparency students deserve. When agreements include qualifying language without firm commitments, students can’t effectively plan their educational journeys or make informed financial decisions.

The contradiction is striking: We express concern about student debt and extended time to degree, questioning why students take 150 credits when they only need 120 to graduate. Meanwhile, our credit evaluation processes remain opaque, slow and often costly.

The current reality—where students frequently must apply, pay deposits or even enroll before understanding how their previous academic work will be valued—creates unnecessary barriers. We can do better—and, frankly, must. It’s like buying a car and finding out the price after you’ve signed the paperwork. In what other industry would this be acceptable?

The Opportunity

Consider the possibilities if we fully embraced credit mobility as a cornerstone of student success:

• Students could make informed decisions about their educational pathways before committing financially.
• Institutions could demonstrate their commitment to affordability by recognizing prior learning.
• Graduation rates would improve as students avoid unnecessary course repetition.
• The workforce would benefit from skilled professionals entering more quickly.

Addressing the Objections

The objections to credit mobility typically fall into three categories:

1. Faculty workload: Faculty are being asked to do more, and evaluating credits for prospective students can feel like an unnecessary burden. But what if more students could see that their learning had value, that their degree was within reach, that they didn’t have to retake classes they’ve already mastered? This shift in perspective could transform the evaluation process from a burden to an opportunity.
2. Lost revenue: The focus on enrollments often overshadows the reality that only 50 percent of students who start college actually finish within six years. What if our goal was to expand opportunities so more students could complete their degrees? What if students were taking classes that genuinely added to their experience and built their confidence rather than repeating content they’ve already learned?
3. Quality concerns: Quality is often cited as justification for delayed evaluation. In reality, transparent evaluation supports faculty’s desire to maintain academic standards. Clear processes allow for informed decisions and data collection that ensures the focus remains on student outcomes.

The AI Opportunity

The emergence of artificial intelligence presents a tremendous opportunity to enhance our credit-evaluation processes—addressing issues of time and cost while creating transparency for data analysis. A new study just released by AACRAO on the role of AI in credit mobility makes a compelling case as to why the technology could help unlock new ways of working. We can harness technology as a powerful tool to support faculty decision-making and administrative resource allocations. AI could:

• Identify potential course equivalencies based on learning outcomes.
• Highlight relevant information in transfer documentation.
• Streamline evaluation processes, allowing human experts to focus on complex cases.
• Provide leadership with insights into where credit mobility is operating effectively.
• Identify areas needing additional resources or training.

With proper implementation and training, AI can become a tool to achieve our goals of access and completion at scale—reducing both the cost and timeline to graduation.

The Path Forward

If we truly believe in access and completion, then credit mobility must become a shared priority across higher education. This means:

• Making course information, learning outcomes and sample syllabi readily accessible.
• Expanding recognition of diverse learning experiences, including microcredentials, corporate training, internships and apprenticeships.
• Establishing and honoring clear timelines for credit evaluation.
• Eliminating financial barriers to credit assessment.
• Providing updated articulation and equivalency tables in easy-to-find locations on admissions websites.

Andrew’s experience should be the exception, not the rule. Colleges and universities that embrace this challenge will not only better serve their students but will also position themselves for long-term sustainability in an increasingly competitive landscape. Those that resist change risk becoming irrelevant to the very students they aim to serve and perpetuating the cost and time-to-completion conundrum.

The Call to Action

The question before us isn’t whether credit mobility matters—it’s whether we have the collective will to make it a reality at scale, not just at a handful of institutions, but across systems and all institutions. We must recognize that our students are learning in new ways, on new timelines, and bringing knowledge that evolves faster than our curriculum. Our students deserve nothing less than our full commitment to recognizing their learning, regardless of where it occurred.

So I’ll ask: How committed are you to credit mobility at scale? Your answer says everything about how seriously you take college completion.