Transfer Credit Woes - Regional vs. National Accreditation

Re: Re: Transfer Credit Woes - Regional vs. National Accreditation

Now that is unfair. While I can appreciate Bill's argument that schools who do not "join" the association are not entitled to have the benefits of transfer credits, this is an example where they are members of the same accrediting association. The notion that membership in the association means that you subscribe to the same quality standards and should allow for transfer of credits obviously has exceptions.

 

Re: Re: Re: Transfer Credit Woes - Regional vs. National Accreditation

You are correct that it is not really fair but.......As I say, it was a territory issue. They reached an agreement but there are still stories of problems and it *mostly* (I say mostly because there are often issues raised of Comm College quality) to the issue of dollars. The University has seen a small decline in students and everyone including a State University in another state is competing for the same high schol grads. Community College is much less expensive so many students decide to start there first and were in essence punished by the local state university not accepting many of their credits.

North

 

I don't know where you're located, North. Here in California, Community Colleges charge only $11.00 per credit. That is really an excellent deal. Further, some of them are highly respected.

Recently I discovered that in order to take the exam to be a Registered Nurse (RN) in California, one only has to have an A.S. in Nursing. A few of the colleges offer that program and many students have gone on to become nurses. Sufficed to say, the universities are not going to be thrilled about this. Most students do the two year program, secure their licenses, then go on to do the Bachelors at universities without having to worry about clinicals and the like.

Back the original point: If the accrediting association sets the quality standards and the community college is following that standard, then the universities should accept the credits. That problem doesn't seem to be pervasive in this area though.

 

This is an interesting discussion. Something to keep in mind is that among RA four year schools there are quite a few problems with "transfer credits." Schools do sometimes offer radically different courses under similar names, and some schools have highly integrated programs that require you to take the "entire series" from them.

As an example of what I refer to, my brother is attending UIUC, he took financial accounting his senior year in HS from the local RA university, and while he was able to work out a deal with the department chair at UIUC that they will accept both financial and managerial accounting as meeting the requirements assuming he took managerial this summer back home, he would have otherwise had to take retake financial accounting at UIUC.

Another example would be my wife, when she transferred credits from Wellesley College and USM to the local Uni, she lost a ton of general education credits due to transfer difficulties, and had to really fight to get others counted correctly. She was previously a linguistics major as well as being in various Honors programs, none of her linguistics credits count at her new school for anything except credits taken, and her honors courses were a mess to straighten out.

 

Here's a website that somebody might want to play with: ASSIST.

http://www.assist.org/

It sets out all the articulation agreements between California's community colleges and CSU and UC.

You click on 'start', then choose a school you are transferring to or from. Let's say SF City College. Then it asks you to choose another school, so let's choose UC Berkeley. Then it prompts you for a major department, so let's choose physics. (Berkeley doesn't mess around in physics.)

It seems that UC Berkeley finds:

CCSF Math 110A Calculus I equivalent to Berkeley's Math 1A

CCSF Math 110B Calculus II equivalent to Berkeley's Math 1B

CCSF Math 110C Calculus III equivalent to Berkeley's Math 53

CCSF Math 130 Linear Algebra and Diff. Equations equivalent to Berkeley's Math 54

CCSF's Physics 4A,B,C Physics for Scientists and Engineers sequence equivalent to Berkeley's Physics 7A,B,C sequence.

This one has a footnote that CCSF covers the material in a different order, so you have to transfer the sequence, and can't do it class by class, because you might end up covering some stuff twice and other stuff not at all.

CCSF Chem 101A and 101B are equivalent to Berkeley's Chem 1A and 1B and so on...

 

transfer of credits

It looks like there is no gurantee that transfer credits will be accepted from on regionally accredited college/university to another regionally accredited college/university.
Does this make regional accreditation less valid?
All the best!

 

Re: transfer of credits

But the non-acceptance is not due to a matter of policy, like it is with credits and degrees from nationally accredited schools. If credit from one RA school doesn't transfer to another, it isn't because the receiving school doesn't accept them from schools accredited by that RA. Other factors (like applicability, transfer credit limits, perceived quality of the courses, etc.) are at work.

This is a huge difference.

 

Yes, however, it seems there are some exceptions. With that university not accepting a good bit of transfer credits from a community college (as a punishment for trying to save a couple dollars in tuition) that was mentioned several posts ago. Granted, they have the right to accept/not accept whatever they want, but, it kind defeats the purpose of having a regional accreditation (I feel anyways). I think if a university/college/whatever wants to choose what ever credits they want from another RA school due to reasons OTHER than program applicability, fine... If they want RA accredidation, however, I feel they should be obligated to accept credits that qualify. I don't think that could happen though. They can claim that they feel that the course description didn't match their course description.

Maybe they should have what they use in the military at ALOT of schools. Have some sort of SOC (Service Oppurtunity College I think it stands for) agreement for civillians. Each school would conform to course standards of some type and would be assigned a universal code for each course (Ex. Calculus I would be CAL101 and would be the same depth of calculus nationwide).

BR,
Bill

 

My understanding is that the Cal State Universities were originally colleges with the goal of educating teachers (CSUDH was originally named something like "California State College Palos Verdes". Their original campus is now occupied by Marymount College.

 

Bill - There is an answer to what you're calling for - it is called an articulation agreement. These are sometimes done between pairs of colleges and other time done on a larger basis. For example, in the state of Michigan there is a state wide agreement covering the transfer of general education credits between community colleges and 4 year schools. Many 4 year schools have arrangements with "feeder" community colleges that set of equivalency between the community college's courses and the 4 year school's coursework.

This aside - realize that every school has the right to set their own requirements for graduation. If a school wants to accept credits in transfer - that is there perogative. Indeed, if a school is too tough on transfer credits they'll miss out on some potential transfer students. But no one can force a school to accept transfer credits. If a school is going to award the degree - they can set the requirements. If you don't like the school's policy - find another school.

As for Calc 101 being Calc 101 everywhere - that's a lofty goal. However, calc 101 at an open admission community college isn't Calc 101 at Stanford or Michigan. There may be a lot of overlap - but don't kid your self about the quality of students in these two settings. Hence, Stanford has the right to say they won't accept the credit in transfer. Likely it would be suicide for a community college transfer student to step into Calc 2 at a top flight school.

Regards - Andy