Every academic year, millions of college students change institutions before degree completion, confronting the challenge of validating credits across colleges. Despite state-level efforts to legislate strategies for smoother transfers, actual credit recognition relies on non-state-regulated bilateral partnerships that are more (i.e., articulation…

The American Council on Education (2021) estimates that 38% of fall 2019 undergraduate students will change schools within six years. Of that group, only 13% are projected to earn a bachelor's degree (NCES, 2019). Clearly, there is a disjoint between the goals of transfer students and the programs that are in place to help them meet their goals.…

The rise in students entering higher education in England with vocational qualifications, or a blend of academic and vocational qualifications, has sparked debate about the correlation between qualifications and degree outcomes. Focusing on Sport and Exercise Science students and mobilising Bourdieu's theory of practice, this paper explores…

Each year, a large number of higher education students in the UK transfer from programs at further and higher education colleges to the second or third year of a bachelor's degree. The success of this movement is largely dependent on how closely the curricula of the two programs are aligned. Over the past two years, students from the Higher…

Cybersecurity education has grown exponentially over the past decade. This growth occurred at all levels of education -- from high schools to community colleges to four-year universities. At the same time, renewed interest in helping students transfer between higher education institutions has resulted in calls from policy makers and higher…

Objective: Transfer students face a range of potential challenges as they prepare to move from one college to another. Websites are critical resources for transfer students because they can be easily accessible sources of information concerning credit transfer, advising, articulation agreements, and additional transfer administrative policies and…

Public 2-year colleges were designed to serve students coming primarily from their local communities, hence explaining their "community college" title. This study focuses on an understudied factor capable of altering the local workforce impact of community colleges while also potentially strengthening their 4-year steppingstone function:…

Roughly 40% of first-time freshman enter college at two-year institutions (Ginder, et al., 2015) and between roughly 70 to 80% of students enrolled at two-year institutions report the intent to continue their education to earn a bachelor's degree (Jenkins & Fink, 2016; U.S. Department of Education, 2001). However, less than half of the…

Transfer policies and articulation agreements aim to provide seamless transitions between and across technical or community colleges and four-year institutions. While many articulation agreements exist at the institution- or system-level, states are increasingly setting statewide credit transfer requirements, ensuring all students enter their…

Within enrollment management, the word "pipeline" is a metaphor used to describe the structures and procedures of a student's educational journey between two institutions (Pitcher & Shahjahan, 2017). The process of moving through the enrollment pipeline is often facilitated by articulation agreements--documents outlining course…

Our preliminary experiment examined a potential pain point with ASSIST, California's database of articulation agreements. That pain point is cross-referencing multiple articulation agreements to manually develop an "optimal" academic plan. Optimal is defined as the minimal set of community college courses that satisfy all transfer…

This study investigated the transfer pathway between a rural university and a community college to understand what procedural barriers exist for student degree attainment within existing structures. Process mapping was used as the intervention to examine the influence of enrollment and student services processes and investigate the perceptions of…

Community college transfer pathways, whereby students begin their postsecondary enrollment at a 2-year institution, are an increasingly popular option for students looking to complete a bachelor's degree. Designed to increase transfer efficiency, articulation agreements between community colleges and 4-year institutions provide structured pathways…

Students who transfer between colleges risk losing credits and decreasing their chances of degree completion. Despite emerging evidence regarding the effectiveness of articulation agreements to address this challenge, it is unclear if these policies support nonlinear transfer pathways--including lateral transfer between 4-year colleges or reverse…

Maine's public universities and community colleges have a long tradition of working together. They are doing so now more closely than ever before given the needs of Maine students and employers and the institutions' imperative to achieve efficiencies and savings through partnership. As required by Public Law 2015, Chapter 261, the leaders of both…