{"id":40775,"date":"2017-10-03T12:29:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T19:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=40775"},"modified":"2017-10-03T12:29:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T19:29:32","slug":"wow-thats-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/wow-thats-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Wow, that\u2019s a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Pop quiz: when a student transfers from a community college to a four-year school, which school decides which credits to take in transfer?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Hint: the word \u201ctake\u201d is key.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The four-year school decides. \u00a0The community college is at its mercy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I bring that up because it demonstrates why this<\/a> piece by Ames Brown, identified in Forbes as a managing member of Capital Counsel Management LLC, is so misguided. \u00a0It proposes using performance funding to reward community colleges that teach a lot of classes that transfer, and to punish those that teach a lot of classes that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
*headdesk*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Never mind that performance funding for colleges at the institutional level has been thoroughly discredited<\/a>. \u00a0Never mind that community colleges have come under increasing pressure to teach more of the A.A.S. and short-term certificate courses that _don\u2019t_ transfer, in order to place students into jobs more quickly. \u00a0Never mind remedial courses at all; he doesn\u2019t mention them once. \u00a0And never mind that \u201ctransfer\u201d comes in many flavors, such as the \u201cfree elective\u201d category that many four-year schools use to say that they\u2019ve \u201caccepted\u201d credits, but won\u2019t apply them to a given student\u2019s degree program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
All of those are true, and in combination, dispositive. \u00a0But let\u2019s just focus on the most basic issue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Four-year schools don\u2019t agree with each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Unless and until they do, punishing community colleges for internal squabbling in the four-year sector is like punishing Syria by invading Scotland. \u00a0It misses the point entirely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Some states have figured this out, and done some version of a mandatory transfer law for public institutions. \u00a0Those help, to some degree. \u00a0The two with which I\u2019m personally familiar, Massachusetts and New Jersey, both require four year public colleges and universities to accept an associate\u2019s degree in a bloc, and to cover the \u201cgen ed\u201d portion of the first two years. \u00a0But even in those, any given department can decide for reasons of its own to curtail or eliminate the courses in the student\u2019s major that it will accept. \u00a0And that\u2019s not even counting the private institutions that aren\u2019t covered by the transfer laws at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I\u2019ll give an example close to home. \u00a0My own college had to establish two different degrees in criminal justice: one an associate of science, and one an associate of arts. \u00a0That\u2019s because most of the four-year schools in the area with criminal justice programs, including Rutgers-Newark, give bachelor of science degrees, but the flagship campus in New Brunswick gives a bachelor of arts. \u00a0Courses that count towards one branch of Rutgers don\u2019t count towards the other. \u00a0In Brown\u2019s world, Brookdale should be punished financially because the different campuses of Rutgers don\u2019t agree with each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
What behavior that\u2019s supposed to incentivize here is hard to say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Reducing transfer to the course level is misleading, too, because the same school that will accept, say, a Spanish class towards a history degree might not accept it towards a biology degree. \u00a0Different degrees have different requirements. \u00a0If you switch from, say, history to engineering, you\u2019ll probably have more history credits than you need, and you\u2019ll have to play catch-up in math. \u00a0That says absolutely nothing about the quality of the history courses, nor does it suggest that the history courses aren\u2019t transferable. \u00a0They would have transferred without issue if the student had remained a history major.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
These mistakes are basic. \u00a0They\u2019re first-level stuff. \u00a0I understand that bringing the four-year schools to heel is a daunting prospect, and that there are arguments both ways on that. \u00a0But what he\u2019s proposing instead is simply nonsensical.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
If you want four-year schools to take transfer credits, talk to them. \u00a0We\u2019re busy teaching.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pop quiz: when a student transfers from a community college to a four-year school, which school decides which credits to take in transfer? Hint: the word \u201ctake\u201d is key. The four-year school decides. \u00a0The community college is at its mercy. I bring that up because it demonstrates why this piece by Ames Brown, identified in […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":40777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[13187],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-40775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-credit-transfers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWow, that\u2019s a bad idea - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wow-thats-bad-idea\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wow, that\u2019s a bad idea - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pop quiz: when a student transfers from a community college to a four-year school, which school decides which credits to take in transfer? 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