Martin Kurzweil, program director of educational transformation of Ithaka S+R
Ithaka S+R is a nonprofit organization that researches and provides consulting services to universities as well as other nonprofits.
“We’ve seen these big national reports on credit transfer and the challenges students face trying to get the credits they earned at one institution to count at another,” said Martin Kurzweil, one of the report’s authors and Ithaka S+R’s program director of educational transformation. “So, we know it’s a problem, but we’ve found the solutions have been somewhat lacking."
Kurzweil noted studies have shown that 43% of student credits nationwide are lost in a transfer because a new institution did not accept the earned credits. Research has also found that community college students who transfer to their state universities lose over 20% of their credits, or almost a whole semester. And the vast majority of students will transfer into or out of a community college.
"That means it takes more time and more money for students to graduate," said John Mullane, president of College Transfer Solutions, a research, policy advocacy, and consulting group focused on helping colleges and universities serve transfer students. "And this is an issue that directly impacts low-income students, minority students, and first-generation students because those are the students who are more likely to start at a community college."
Dr. Janet Marling said that lost credits during transfers especially harm students of historically underrepresented backgrounds. Marling is the executive director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Georgia, where she is an associate professor of education.
