College Transfer Initiative Drives Higher Degree Completion Across Illinois
Higher education
remains crucial for long-term financial gain, job stability, career
satisfaction and success outside of the workplace. With more
occupations requiring advanced skills and critical thinking, a
college degree is largely viewed as a must-have for success in
today's workforce.
However, not
every student has the financial means, career certainty or other
capability to immediately attend a four-year institution. Where
community colleges used to have a reputation for being the only
option for young adults who couldn’t “cut it” at a four-year
school, these valuable institutions are now being seen as a smart and
strategic option for many students at all stages of their
transformational education journey.
Tracking
Transfer Trends
It is not
surprising that students switch between two-year and four-year
schools for a variety of academic and financial reasons. This kind of
academic “swirl” means that students have collected credits from
multiple schools before matriculation to the institution that will
ultimately confer the student’s credential. Degree attainment has
become less linear, and the transfer of credits among institutions
needs to be just as fluid.
Here in
Illinois, we have addressed the issues surrounding collegiate student
transfers with innovative legislation, technology and initiatives
designed to ease the transfer process and ultimately help more
students attain their degrees.
Illinois has a
rich and diverse environment of higher education institutions.
According to the National
Center for Education Statistics,
Illinois’ public institutions include 12 four-year and 48 two-year
schools, and there are more than 80 private non-profit four-year
colleges and universities.
Streamlining
General Education Credit Transfer
Illinois’
driving initiative around student transfer is the Illinois
Articulation Initiative (IAI). IAI was originally launched in the
1990s as a voluntary program among the participating institutions.
In recent years, IAI was protected by enacting legislation to secure
ongoing participation (IL Public Act 099-0636). The IAI was created
as a model state system that includes 110 participating public and
private institutions, and serves 45,000 to 50,000 transfer students
annually. Specifically, it assists students who may not have a major
in mind at the outset of their studies by ensuring that courses
meeting a general education core curriculum (GECC) are fully
transferable — as well as applicable — for full credit across all
state institutions. While it is common for students in other states
across the country to discover that certain courses only apply as
elective credit at their new institution, our streamlined approach to
not just the transferability but applicability of GECC courses has
been pivotal in helping students reliably earn foundational credits
across various institutions statewide, regardless of where they end
up transferring for degree completion.
Illinois has
passed other important legislation in support of transfer students,
including the Student Transfer Achievement Reform (STAR) Act,
effective 2016, which was recently reviewed for progress toward its
goals. The STAR Act ensures that students who transfer with an
associate’s degree from a community college do not have to complete
more than 60 additional hours to complete a related bachelor’s
degree.
The state also
invests in technology to help students determine course articulation,
beyond and including IAI coursework, along with information on
inter-institutional agreements. We designed MyCreditsTransfer
as a statewide initiative to facilitate the use of an online transfer
advising tool, which is free to students. Illinois maintains a
statewide license for use of the software tool, Transferology by
CollegeSource. Students use Transferology to find and confirm the
courses that transfer credit between institutions, degree
requirements their courses satisfy and different majors that
institutions offer. Transferology also helps returning veterans
determine how their military experience translates into course
credit.