Kentuckians typically have state teams to root for during March Madness when the NCAA convenes national championship tournaments in men’s and women’s Division I college basketball. However, this year, Kentucky-based madness gets underway before the tournaments.
On March 6, Kentucky higher education officials are offering community and technical college students the opportunity to participate in ‘Transfer Madness’ — an online college transfer fair designed to help participants learn about admissions and enrollment in the state’s four-year institutions. During the college fair, students will be able to chat online with transfer advisors, watch live video presentations, research financial aid and scholarships and download materials.
“We want to use this event, or a series of events, to give students an easy way to learn about as many different four-year institutions as they are anxious to explore,” says Robert L. King, president of the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE).
Transfer Madness will be “the first entirely online, statewide transfer fair” where students will be able to have their questions answered at a “time that suits their family and work schedules,” according to a Kentucky higher education statement. Twenty-six schools, including public, private and for-profit colleges, and seven partner organizations will participate in the fair.
While officials are touting the day-long event — scheduled from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST — as a showcase for innovative and efficient digital technology, they are also calling attention to how the state has aligned courses at two-year schools to seamlessly meet the standards of Kentucky’s four-year colleges and universities.
King explains that in recent years, executive and legislative mandates had put Kentucky on a course to develop a seamless path from the state’s community and technical colleges to the four-year institution. “Going back to 2009 when I first arrived, one of the things that legislators I met with repeatedly said to me was that they were concerned that transfer, particularly of credits, was too difficult,” he explains.
The state “began a very intensive effort with the chief academic officers at the community and technical college system, as well as with all the provosts from the four-year public institutions” to create “what we hoped would be a fairly perfect alignment between courses that a student would take to earn an associate of arts or an associate of science degree at a community and technical college and courses that a student might take in the same disciplines at a four-year institution in [his or her] freshman or sophomore year,” King says.
