Fortunately, more attention is being paid to credit transfer in higher education than ever before. Unfortunately, less certainty exists about what progress around credit transfer is being made.
Earlier this month (July 2026), The EDU Ledger ran a LinkedIn poll exploring how much progress respondents’ states have made with credit transfer reform within the last two years.
Forty percent of respondents reported either some progress (28%) or significant progress (12%) around credit transfer reform. One in five respondents indicated no progress has been made. The final 40% of respondents were unsure of what if any progress has been made.
Where Transfer Students are Going, Where They’ve Been
The urgency around smoother credit transfer pathways persists. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s Transfer Enrollment and Pathways reports indicate very little change in the number of students who transferred into a new institution between Fall 2023 (13.2 percent) and Fall 2024 (13.1 percent).
Still, transfer students continue to comprise over 10 percent of students across higher education. Also of note is the most recent report (Fall 2024) indicating overall transfer enrollment has increased nearly 12 percent since 2020.
Community college students transferring to four-year colleges and universities continue to represent a large portion of overall transfer enrollment: 41.7% of all transfer students. Further, more Black and Hispanic students are turning to transfer as a key component of their educational journey.
This growth in transfer enrollment has led one columnist to proclaim the “transfer generation” is here. The Progressive Policy Institute’s Bruno V. Manno sees these trends as an indication that transfer has shifted from being “a side road in American higher education” to “one of the system’s main highways.”
The Need for Credit Transfer Reform
Why insist on reform at a time when transfer enrollment is growing?
Put simply, successful transfer enrollment between two institutions doesn’t equate to successful credit transfer. Seamless articulation – the ability of credits to cleanly move with the transfer student from one institution where the credits were earned to a new institution – is a term commonly used as an ideal, yet one that all too often doesn’t play out in reality.
Findings from a recent survey conducted by Public Agenda of over 3,000 Americans of various age groups regarding their experiences in and perceptions of higher education help illustrate the issue. 39% of survey participants reported attempting to transfer credits between institutions.
Nearly all of those participants (37%) who tried to transfer credits reported the process to be difficult. More disconcerting (though not surprising if you follow or study transfer), 25% of respondents reported being able to transfer few if any credits.
This is an issue we’ve known about for some time. Some responsibility lies with students wishing to transfer as well as their advisors.
Yet as researchers Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar explain in their book Discredited: Power, Privilege, and Community College Transfer, an imbalance exists within the transfer process wherein transfer-receiving institutions all too often prioritize “institutional autonomy over credit transfer and curricula.” Even more problematic is when transfer-receiving institutions engage in “active resistance to state transfer policies.”
College accreditors, which work with both two- and four-year institutions, have recently advocated for change around the credit transfer process. Last fall, the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions released a statement calling for change and encouraging the integration of AI into the transfer credit review process at transfer-receiving institutions to ensure accuracy and reduce bias.
Beyond potential AI reform, the accreditor SACSCOC (soon to be the Commission on Colleges and Universities) recently launched the Transfer Credit Consortium, aimed at occasioning faculty-led partnerships between institutions sending and receiving transfer students to minimize credit loss, maintain momentum, and expedite time to degree and completion.
It’s a similar model to the Aspen-AASCU Transfer Student Success Intensive, which has convened four cohorts of community colleges and a neighboring, transfer-receiving four-year college or university.
Dual credit is an area of growing importance as two- and four-year institutions take on transfer credit reform. As CCRC pointed out in March, we risk a system of “random acts of dual credit” wherein high school students take courses not aligned with their degree plans after graduating from high school.
Complicating matters further, more high school students have the opportunity to take dual credit courses from both community colleges and four-year colleges and universities. In one sense, this further democratizes access to higher education. Yet in another sense, it risks further tangling an already entangled process.
Where To From Here? State Policy and Transfer Credit Reform
Credit transfer reform is most likely to occur when the issue is approached at the state level with a blended focus on policy and practice.
Maryland is an important state to watch as it assesses results from the Maryland Transfer Intensive, a multi-year initiative delivered by the Maryland Higher Education Commission and the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. 25 two- and four-year colleges and universities in the state convened over the course of a year to explore transfer-related data, leadership engagement, and effective institutional and partnership practices.
How much impact state reform efforts based primarily in practice will have is uncertain, as Schudde and Jabbar’s research indicates. Guaranteeing transfer credit, requiring at least one in-state transfer-receiving institution admit a transfer student, and potentially excluding flagship universities from state policy reforms: policy reforms like these proposed by Schudde and Jabbar are likely needed to reinforce practice-based reforms that emerge collaborative efforts.
There is no shortage of other state-level policy recommendations and considerations to draw from.
Aspen, Public Agenda, Sova, and CCRC offer joint policy considerations focused on centering and incentivizing transfer credits in areas like enrollment and financial aid.
The Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice offers similar recommendations and also encourages consideration of alternate measures: competency-based education, credit for prior learning, and reverse-transfer.
The American Council of Education follows a similar line, adding the use of innovative technology to help with course credit review and ensuring maximum transparency around the transfer process.
Results from The EDU Ledger offer an important reminder: plan for and ensure that you are regularly communicating about credit transfer reform efforts so practitioners know what’s happening and where they can potentially plug in to help.
Dr. Ryan Knight builds communities of practice around governance, leadership, and teaching and learning. He is the founder of Teaching to Transform, through which he offers support and organizational development around executive communications, teaching and learning, AI, and more. He also serves as Associate Director of the Community College Association of Texas Trustees, which is part of the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC). Ryan has previously worked at Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (NC State University). He lives in Austin, TX. He invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn.
