'Waste of time': Community college transfers derail students

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/bachelor-degree-community-college-transfer-credits-cec0154f260c130fbbfcb593de77e4da

‘Waste of time’: Community college transfers derail students
By COLLIN BINKLEY

First came the good news. After taking classes at a community college, Ricki Korba was admitted to California State University, Bakersfield, as a transfer student. But when she logged on to her student account, she got a gut punch: Most of her previous classes wouldn’t count.

The university rejected most of her science classes, she was told, because they were deemed less rigorous than those at Bakersfield — even though some used the same textbooks. Several other courses were rejected because Korba exceeded a cap on how many credits can be transferred.

Now Korba, a chemistry and music major, is retaking classes she already passed once. It will add a year to her studies, plus at least $20,000 in tuition and fees.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students start at community colleges hoping to transfer to a university later. It’s advertised as a cheaper path to a bachelor’s degree, an education hack in a world of ever-rising tuition costs.

Among nearly 1 million students who started at a community college in 2016, just one in seven earned a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

One of the biggest obstacles is known as credit loss: when students take classes that never end up counting toward a degree.

....

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I know there are several

4 year colleges and universities in my area that loosely partner with community colleges to either guarantee acceptance into a 4 year program, or will pre-accept CC courses into a specific degree program.

[Freddie]

6. I think the Pennsylvania "state system" schools do that

West Chester, Millersville, etc. also I’m pretty sure graduation from a PA Comm. College is automatic acceptance into a state system school.

[wnylib]

26. The NY system does that, too.

Several state and private 4 year colleges and universities offer transferable courses at community colleges. Some community colleges in NY specialize in providing good academic courses geared for the first two years of a 4 year degree. Others specialize in job training programs that require a 2 year course of study.

[obamanut2012]

32. Yup, same in NC and FL

Dual enrollment.

[Happy Hoosier]

2. A lot of Community Colleges are kinda crap.

My wife has tales of woe here. She has transfers come from Ivy Tech, the Indaian Community College system, and her University used to accepts AA's from there automatically creditd their Freshmen and Sophomore English Courses. Only they BOMBED at her University. Simply put, the students didn't have the skills those classes implied. The school began refusing to accept the transfer credits, which pissed of the state and disappointed a LOT of transfers, but they eventually got Ivy tech to imporve the quality of those classes (barely). Now they will accept Freshman comp again, but even then, a lot of these students wind up having to get external help. Community Colleges pay crap and often overload the instructors. CC's don't typically attract the best qualified instructors, and the workload is just crushing even for those instructors who are pretty good.

[jimfields33]

3. That's disgusting especially for California to do something so despicable.

[Happy Hoosier]

4. The CC's need to improve.

It does students no favors to give them credit for sub-par courses and set them up for failure for the upper-division courses.

[jimfields33]

5. The state of California needs to get with the 4 year college and ask what the problems are

Then go to the two year schools and make the changes.

[Happy Hoosier]

11. Agreed.

My wife’s university helped the state CC system to establish a decent curriculum. Performance is still iffy, but better

[meadowlander]

22. It depends on the community college.

I did the Running Start program in high school which let you take community college classes instead of AP high school courses and then also have them count for college credit. Some of the courses I did I later taught myself when I was a grad student and the curriculum was exactly the same. Intro to Chemistry is Intro to Chemistry is Intro to Chemistry. Same with a lot of the math courses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Start

I went out of state but to a state university and they accepted all of my transfer credits.

I do think it is sometimes a bit of a scam depending on the community college but not all of them "need to improve". Where it gets dicey, in my opinion, is some of the online offerings and with courses that require a low student to teacher ratio (like comp) because an actual human needs to be grading and providing feedback on your papers and that's not happening with an adjunct instructor grading 200 papers a week.

I think you also get a mix with transfer students of kids who were always going to go to 4 year university and are trying to save a bit of money and kids who were marginally or not going to get into university on the basis of their high school grades who did community college to mature a little and decide what they want to do before committing to a 4 year program. That's a totally valid strategy but some of those kids probably do find that university just isn't for them. I don't think you can blame inadequate community colleges for that.

[inthewind21]

31. Exactly

I often wondered, what kind of Algebra are they teaching here that is different to the algebra I took in CC? What exactly is a "sub-standard" English class? It pretty much is what it is. You know it and can pass it or you don't.

[Happy Hoosier]

35. That's key!

The CC's need to meet a minimum cirrculum standard, and they must ensure the students who pass have the required skillset. Some of these kids were coming in with decent GPAs from the CC, but could barely string a sentence together. They had the "credit" but not the skills. That's on the CC's and totally unfair to those students who didn;t get the education they paid for.

And yes, the quality of students coming from CC's varies drastically. My daughter's boyriend, for example, spent his first year in a CC, and he transferred to her UNiversity. He's brilliant and would have thrived at a traditional 4-year school. He was at the CC because it's what he could afford. But it doesn't do the the marginal kids any good to give them B's when they can't even do C work. Give them the remedial education they need to make it, or at least don't give them false hopes for their future if that path just isn't for them.

[Zeitghost]

19. I've been through the California CC and CSU systems

And they are extremely clear on what you need to do to transfer and bend over backwards to create programs designed specifically to transfer to the local CSU school.

[obamanut2012]

33. Thank you, exactly

I know LACC and Sacramento City College are especially good.

[underpants]

7. That sucks. Virginia has a pretty good system with CC's

Any student who finishes 4 semesters and has at least a B average automatically gets into any public state school - Tech VCU William & Mary even UVA.

[exboyfil]

13. Getting in is only part of the story

Many majors like engineering have a critical path. Students have to make sure that they have satisfied the first four semesters in that critical path if they want to graduate in two years once getting to the university.

Living on campus and paying university tuition is very expensive. Whatever lower or middle class families can do to minimize that time is essential to avoiding even more crippling debt.

[meadowlander]

41. Where it worked really well for me was knocking out all of my core prerequisites not related

to my major. I think when I started my university required calculus, two out of three of intro to chemistry, physics and biology, and a few other things.

I was never going to be a math or science major so it helped to get those out of the way before I enrolled so I could really focus on classes I actually cared about in my first year. University is a big life adjustment so anything you can do to lessen the stress as you adjust is a good plan in my book.

I also found at the community college the science class sizes maxed out at 30 or 40 whereas at the university you had the monster 200 to 300 people lectures and then a lab with a grad student with really variable quality in teaching ability. I know a lot of other first year university students really struggled with those courses whereas I didn't find them quite as hard at the CC.

The truth is students with the aptitude and motivation will do well wherever they study and students who lack one or the other (or both) won't. I totally get that the big universities want to protect their brand but I don't see an issue with kids transferring credits from decent CCs for the core first year classes, especially ones that are less critical to what they actually want to study.

[Hekate]

8. Aw crap. Our grandson is heading toward CC this Fall, so fingers crossed. Big plus is SBCC ...

…has an arrangement for a golden transfer to UCSB — I’ve never heard of credit loss, so I think we have to do a bit of research on that. (SB is Santa Barbara, just to be clear)

[exboyfil]

10. Look for articulation agreements

Determine what your grandson in going to major in and make sure all the classes satisfy along the critical path for college graduation.

It is particularly important to not get out of sequence (for example if you show up without Calculus I credit, it will be seven or eight semesters to finish an engineering degree).

[Hekate]

16. Thanks, I just spoke to hubby about that & he called it "correlation" -- said info for each class ...

…tells you where it will transfer to in the California system — at least it did for SBCC. Now, some of his info is 10 years old, because he retired from SB City College 10 years ago, so I know he will be checking to see what’s gone wrong with the CSU Bakersfield student and how far that has spread.

We only talked to our grandson in the past month about college costs, and he was immensely relieved to hear we wanted to help. He thought he was going to have to take out loans, and we hope to avoid that. The kid is doing everything right so far — working, saving, bought his own used car; gets along with both sets of parents, always a good thing — so he will have a place to live and save a bundle on housing costs.

[exboyfil]

17. You are wonderful grandparents

I wish your grandson the best. I hope to help my grandchild in 17 years (my older daughter is expecting my first grandkid in September). I fully paid for both my daughters' college (a bit of a challenge given that I am a mid-level engineer with a homemaker wife). I hope to help my grandkids as well.

Education is very important to me. I am the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college.

[Hekate]

27. We are also 1st generation college grads, with blue collar parents who were readers & believed in...

…education for their kids. Aside from that, our other piece of luck was that post-WWII California also believed in college education.

That was then… taxpayers and legislatures have to be willing to make it so, and we just didn’t anticipate how bad costs would get.

I mentioned hubby retired 10 years ago — for all of 2 weeks, lol. He fell into a job that a tech company couldn’t fill for nearly a year, and has been there ever since. I don’t know what finally got him moving toward college funding for this generation, but maybe it was the realization that we might as well give the money away, since we’re pretty much the same people we always were regarding spending on ourselves. That and company politics, and AI — he has a strong feeling his job will be gone in the next 12 months. He’s 76.

Now all we have to do is a set-aside for the 12 year old and the 6 year old, and I can sleep at night.

Congrats on your impending grandpa-hood. All the best. 💕💕

[obamanut2012]

34. SBCC and UCSB work together

Like SCC and Sac State do, too.

[petronius]

23. Use assist.org for the California CC to public university articulations

And if something isn't listed, consult an advisor and have them confirm with the destination school. (Don't guess based on the catalog description, which is sort of what I suspect happened here...)

[Hekate]

28. Thanks!

[exboyfil]

9. In Iowa we have articulation agreements

These lay out how all the community college courses transfer into our state university system (my daughter's private nursing school also had such an agreement).

I watched all the courses my daughters did in high school to ensure that they would transfer for the appropriate satisfaction of the degree requirement. My daughter had to appeal one course (a Geography course) because the equivalent did not exist at Iowa State (it wasn't a problem).

We never dealt with the admissions or counselors at the community colleges where my daughters took their courses, but the high school ones weren't very helpful. I even had an English teacher say she didn't care her AP English course wouldn't satisfy a state college requirement.

I was the first person in my family to go to college. I made a lot of mistakes. I took an active interest in my daughters' college. Through their efforts and my shepherding, my oldest was able to finish her BS in Mechanical Engineer from Iowa State in two years after high school graduation and my younger daughter was able to finish her BS in Nursing from a hospital affiliated nursing college 15 months after high school graduation.

[Happy Hoosier]

36. An ME degree in 2 years after High School....

.... is very impressive! So is that nursing degree! Oh my! My undergrad was a BSME, and I didn't get it two years! You must be very proud of your daughers!

[Coventina]

12. THIS IS AN UNFAIR HIT PIECE ON COMMUNITY COLLEGES!!!!

I am a PROUD CC faculty member.

Our state colleges, ESPECIALLY ASU, use every trick in the book to disallow transferring credits.

Why? Because they want the students to pay and pay and PAY!

They resent the high quality, low cost of our classes and look to undermine us every step of the way.

They frequently "redesign" their classes so that previous automatic transfers won't apply anymore.

They constantly are acting in bad faith to deny the validity of students' credits.

DON'T FALL FOR THIS SCAM!!!!

It is a scam!!!

How do you suppose all those shiny new buildings on ASU's campus were built? Hint, it has nothing to do with the support of education by Arizona lawmakers.

$700 to park on campus as well, while our parking lots are FREE!

Please, DU, don't take this article on face value, this is part of a systematic attempt to deny high quality, affordably higher education to the American public.

[exboyfil]

14. You are so right

That is why Iowa has articulation agreements. The universities whine about them, but they keep the universities honest. I would advise any family limited by funds and unwilling to take on even more crippling debt to do as much of a degree as possible while still at home. Unfortunately for many degrees this is very difficult. For example at Iowa State they used to offer several of the required freshman and sophomore engineering and allied courses online. They stopped doing that. Our local community college doesn't offer an equivalent for some of them. So you might have two years of college credit, but still be five or six semesters from graduation along the critical path.

Thank you for being a CC faculty member. Community colleges are wonderful opportunities to save money. I would also advise to do the community college course over the AP equivalent because typically the CC course transfers better (assuming the AP doesn't enhance admissions or scholarships).

[shanti]

21. California has

articulation agreements too, so I'm puzzled by this story. It's the way I did it - CC-CSUS. All of my units in CC counted.

Unless they're changing it now...

[haele]

37. I'm puzzled also. All my credits transferred, even the military equivalent ones.

SDCC (San Diego Community College) system to SDSU system. SDCC was pretty much free between Pell grants and Employer education benefits. There was a cap of transferrable credits, but the SDCC counselors worked with the students to ensure they had the least amount of financial stress when transferring credits to either SDSU or UCSD.

Admittedly, this was 7 years ago, but unless the UC and/or CSU system administrators went for a tuition money grab scam, it kept the last two years of my BS program down to $42k total, even after all the "specialty degree" fees they pile on to the (then $185) per credit costs. Such as - an extra $150 to $250 for half your classes added as a "lab" or professional lecturers fee, an extra $200 -$400 fee for user software licencing for GIS or some other bundled commercial SAAS program needed for just one class. Not to mention the cost of the textbooks, even used or online versions.
That's what gets you. The fees and extra costs.
15 classes in two years at a total of around $42k charged to Federal student loans. With interest, they ended up costing almost $60k.
If I had gone to UCSD or SDSU from the start as a freshman, the tuition and fees alone would have cost between $90 - 120k.
7 years ago, even after the Pells and Employer Benefits. It's far more expensive now.

Haele

[Zeitghost]

38. No major changes I know of

And if anything, things have gotten better in the years since I have been there.

[FSogol]

15. +1, Exactly. n/t

[Raine]

30. Absolutely! nt

[Midnight Writer]

18. I took proficiency exams when I applied for college and got four semesters of credit.

Couldn't these universities test the students in the areas in question and determine from that if they have the pre-requisites to move forward?

[TheBlackAdder]

20. In NJ, Community Colleges work directly with specific Universities like Rutgers and Drexel.

.

You essentially pick your university degree and the county college directly maps 100% transferable courses.

You get a 2-year degree and if you want to continue to the university, you enter as a junior.

.

[honest.abe]

24. Community colleges are not a "waste of time".

They provide a great benefit for students who cannot afford 4 years at a major university. The student should have checked to make sure the classes she was taking would transfer to her university of choice. That should have been made clear before she even started classes at the CC.

[central scrutinizer]

25. Oregon public universities recognize block transfers from CCs

The block transfer takes care of general education requirements and composition courses. The block transfer is taken as a whole package. It is not taken apart and evaluated course by course. Also many courses have the same number and curriculum in all CCs and public universities. Math 251, first term of scientific calculus, is the same in all state schools.

[inthewind21]

29. Yep

Happened to me.

[dembotoz]

39. 2 of my kids did the cc thing....credits transfered and saved lots $$$$

there was a list of classes where transfer was not an issue. Just stayed on the list.
Printed in black and white.
Not everything at the cc would transfer...The local cc was heavy into the trades for apprenticeships. Obviously there is no welding major at the university so that would not transfer.
But ask the right questions from both schools prior and you should be ok

[Silent3]

40. I don't know if it's a matter of subject matter, particular colleges, or just passing years...

...but I took a number of community college courses in NJ while still a high school student and I managed to get credit for nearly all of that at University of Lowell (now University of Massachusetts at Lowell), credit applied to my eventual computer science degree.

On top of that I'd done a bunch of writing for some computer magazines and got credit for my English Composition requirement based on that real-world work experience.

Maybe University of Lowell was particularly generous, or maybe times have changed.

[meadowlander]

42. Post-Covid school disruptions and with the rise on online learning over the past 20 years

I do think that there are some sketchy programs so it doesn't surprise me that some universities are cracking down a bit. As the curriculum gets dumbed down to suit a mass market online audience, cheating becomes a lot easier and core critical thinking and self-directed research skills are no longer emphasized.

As people have said up-thread, it's on the student and their family to do their due diligence and find out what will transfer or not before taking the class.

Lots of colleges and universities have pre-arranged agreements on what will transfer or not. I didn't have any problems transferring enough CC and AP credits to an out of state college to cover most of my first year in the 90s.

My mom used my dad's veterans benefits to take some CC classes in the mid 2010s and some of them were pretty sketchy like the online "intro to film" course which was mostly just sitting around watching movies and then chatting about them with one five page paper at the end of the semester.

I can see a university with a reputation to protect not being happy to accept any and all CC credits as the equivalent especially if the course is a central prerequisite to the degree path that the student has chosen.