Counterpoint: What About the Students?

Constantine Curris’s Inside Higher Ed essay about transfer of credit this week confirms in print what many of us in the national accreditation sector already know: that many institutions base their decisions on credit transfers arbitrarily on the accreditation status of the “sending” college, with complete disregard for the students’ capabilities or the course equivalency of the credits the student seeks to transfer.

What is particularly alarming about the article’s portrayal of the transfer of credit issue is its reliance on history, its almost exclusive emphasis on the burdens imposed on the registrars, and, most importantly, the article’s absolute disregard of the effect that current arbitrary transfer of credit decisions have on the millions of students who attempt to change institutions in order to complete or advance their educations. Should not this national debate focus first on the students and the national education policy goals of helping them complete their educations in the most timely and cost efficient manner, while also ensuring the quality of their educations? If so, then resolving the transfer crisis by prohibiting the arbitrary denial based solely on accreditation makes eminent sense.

While Curris acknowledges the increase in student mobility and in enrollments generally, he seems content to justify current transfer policies on the historical basis for such determinations and on a time in particular when accreditation by “region” served a specific purpose. However, the increasing number of “contemporary” students enrolled -- students who are older, sometimes employed, part-time, and mobile -- is undeniable, and federal education policy and institutions must adapt to and accommodate these students.

Indeed, this fact should not be viewed as a burden, but rather as a responsibility and benefit to this country’s citizens, their educational aspirations and achievements, and to the U.S. economy’s increasing need for continuous educational upgrades. Curris’s article, however, confirms the entrenched and fundamental unwillingness of many institutions to voluntarily adapt their policies and practices on transfer of credit.

Here are the facts: Denial of credits results in the denial of access, as well as in increased education costs when students are forced to pay twice for the same course. These obstacles to completing or improving academic credentials come at a cost not only to those individuals, but also to the taxpayers who often foot the bill for the repeated coursework, and to our economy in the form of the affected students’ delayed entry to our nation’s workforce.

Indeed, in a 2005 report prepared by the Government Accountability Office on the transfer of credit issue confirms the national agencies’ own experiences. The GAO found that “84 percent of postsecondary institutions had policies to consider the accreditation of the sending institution when assessing transfer credits.” An official at the Department of Education recently indicated that the single largest number of complaints the Office of Postsecondary Education receives are from students wondering why their credits were denied by receiving institutions.

Accreditation and the accrediting agencies should play an important role in facilitating, not denying, credit approvals as Curris suggests. All recognized accrediting agencies -- whether regional, national or specialized -- are subject to the same criteria and approval processes by the Department of Education. The Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and other organizations, like the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, have jointly and formally adopted a policy confirming that institutions should evaluate credits for transfer without discriminating based on the sending institution’s accreditation.

And, yet, the credits of students who attend nationally accredited schools continue to be denied on the basis of accreditation. Curris says that this denial is not necessarily about discrimination against proprietary schools. He is right -- this debate is not about the proprietary institutions. It is about the students who choose to attend institutions that have met Title IV eligibility and are accredited by agencies that meet the same criteria for U.S. Department of Education approval as the regional accrediting agencies. Curris seems skeptical of the types of schools the national accrediting agencies accredit -- in fact, many of these schools and their students look very much like the two year programs and students found at regionally accredited community colleges.

Instead of making arbitrary transfer decisions based on accreditation, the focus by institutions in these decisions should instead be on the students and the quality of credits they received. Even if institutional resources are tight, receiving institutions should be examining the course equivalency of the sending institution and student competency; students deserve this level of basic attention to objective measures. There is no legislation or regulatory solution proposed that would deny or affect the very important autonomy of an institution to make an independent judgment on the merits of the transfer request. The legislation that had been proposed merely asked institutions to give a student’s record a fair review.

This is a national problem requiring a national solution. Articulation, policy statements and other private sector arrangements, while helpful, do little to ensure that students nationwide will be fairly and consistently treated when considering a transfer. To support legislation in this in this area would provide affirmation to students, institutions, and accreditors that Congress intends to support student achievement, mobility, and access to an affordable education, as a matter of national education policy.

That Curris, as the head of one of the country’s major associations of public colleges, would argue otherwise is dismaying.