JACKSON Miss. – Leaders of Mississippi’s two-year and four-year higher education programs have reached an agreement to standardize course requirements for transfer students.
They began with elementary education because it is the most popular major for students transferring from community colleges to four-year schools.
Almost 39 percent of the 11,815 students who transferred from the state’s community colleges to its senior colleges in the fall of 2009 majored in elementary education.
Those universities agreed this month on 60 to 62 hours of requirements, depending on laboratory classes, for elementary education majors.
Eric Clark, executive director of the State Board for Community and Junior Colleges, said previously there were eight separate agreements one for each of the universities.
“Now it’s all one,” he said. “We have one agreement that says that all eight universities will accept the same 62 hours from any of our community colleges.”
In March, the state College Board adopted a list of 30 common core requirements they would accept from Mississippi community college students.
