Within the BC Transfer System (BCTS), decisions to award transfer credit are important to the overall success of the system. When courses are deemed to be equivalent, the ability to transfer credits from those courses facilitates students' mobility and academic success, in addition to creating cost efficiencies at the participating institutions.…

Field courses are a critical component of many post-secondary programs in British Columbia and an important option in many others. They are widely recognized for their pedagogical value, mostly because it has been found that students generally achieve more high-level learning, and they retain more of what they learn, in a field-course setting than…

Flexible pre-major agreements (FPMs) have been a feature of the British Columbia (BC) Transfer System since the early 2000s. A flexible pre-major is a discipline-specific transfer agreement whose content and structure is developed by an articulation committee and accepted by participating institutions. FPMs consist of "a set of flexible…

This report provides a snapshot of the state of experiential education (EE) in BC higher education and identifies examples of practice as well as challenges. Twelve BC Transfer System member institutions and over 70 educators and administrators provided their insights on EE through a series of institutional conversations. Three main areas of…

Interdisciplinary programs have significantly increased in scope and scale over the past several decades, including those in British Columbia. The nature of these programs creates unique challenges for transfer and articulation processes that rely heavily on disciplinary expertise and review; these challenges are complicated by the fact that…

In recent years, there has been increased interest within British Columbia in the issue of whether or how trades qualifications might transfer into academic post-secondary programs. Some BC institutions have already started, or will be starting, programs which incorporate this form of transfer credit. Colleagues at British Columbia Council on…

For a number of years, the Student Transitions Project (STP) has tracked the students in BC's public colleges, institutes and teaching intensive universities (CDW institutions) who are eligible to transfer (ETR) to any of the four research intensive universities in BC in the subsequent year (i.e., students who have completed or enrolled in at…

All institutions review and update their programs over time, offering specializations based on departmental philosophy and expertise. With the increased number of degree-granting postsecondary institutions in British Columbia (BC), universities and colleges are under pressure to devise unique approaches to majors. This can mean that pre-major…

This report provides advice for program areas contemplating the development of a Flexible Pre-Major (FPM) in their discipline. The FPM is another means of aiding student transfer in a system that expects and encourages significant student mobility. The FPM addresses a problematic area for academic students: that of completing the lower level major…

Over the last several years, there has been a wealth of new data on student mobility in British Columbia's postsecondary system. Quantitative information from the Student Transitions Project (STP) has allowed current and prospective students, the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT), public post-secondary institutions, the Ministry…

This discussion paper outlines processes, as well as opportunities and constraints, for "enabling" BC Transfer System institutions to enhance transfer credit information in the BC Transfer Guide, making it more reflective of institutional practices and student mobility. BCCAT's focus is increasing the availability of transfer credit…

Because of its diversity, the BC post-secondary system offers many routes to credential completion. However, to capture the dynamics of institutional attendance requires a long view of individuals' journeys through the various post-secondary institutions over time. In this report, the authors employ data from the "Paths on Life's Way"…

In June 2008 the British Columbia Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT) approved a new policy to publish in the BC Transfer Guide block transfer agreements (BTAs) between BC Transfer System member institutions and private post-secondary institutions accredited by the Private Career Training Institutions Agency (PCTIA). This new policy was…

Many jurisdictions have implemented new models of transfer, building on the bedrock of course-to-course articulation, in attempts to address mobility issues and ease transfer for students. The British Columbia (BC) postsecondary system has in the past considered proposals for new models of transfer. System-wide consultations have resulted in the…

The Student Transitions Project (STP) has demonstrated that students are moving in multiple directions between institutions, not just in the traditional college to research university direction. Every institution plays a role as both a sending and receiving institution to varying degrees. However, little is known about the transfer behaviour of…