AACRAO presented its first transfer-focused conference, “Critical Issues in Transfer Credit,” on February 18-19. The one-and-a-half day session, held in Washington, DC, attracted 260 participants from across the U.S. and Canada.
Tim Bishop (D-NY), a third-term Congressman, who had served for 29 years in academic administration as admissions officer, registrar and Provost (at Southampton College in Long Island) before he ran for office, was introduced as “the only member of Congress who has conducted a transfer evaluation.”
Congressman Bishop, who serves on the House Committee on Education and Labor, had introduced an amendment during the reauthorization debate concerning the Higher Education Act (HEA), which successfully stripped the so-called “transfer mandate” from the HEA. Currently, colleges and universities need only provide clear and transparent explanations of their transfer policy, rather than following a Congressionally mandated transfer policy.
The House version of the reauthorization also contains language about diploma mills. The proposed language would require the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to develop a plan to address diploma mills as “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” as defined in the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 United States Code sec. 57a. The Senate bill contains no language about diploma mills, so a conference committee will have to meet, perhaps in the fall. Or, Congressman Bishop added, it is possible that the HEA will temporarily reauthorized for one more year leaving the actual reauthorization to be accomplished after the election of a new president.
George Gollin, Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a long-time and informed opponent of diploma mills, presented specific questions to ask and online resources to help, in identifying diploma mills. Dale Gough, AACRAO’s Director of International Education Services (IES), added numerous other helpful Web resources.Cliff Adelman, long-time researcher at the U.S. Department of Education and now a Senior Associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), urged changes in the law that tabulates graduation rates, which would count 90% of entering postsecondary students, rather than the current 60% -- “and without resorting to Unit Records,” Mr. Adelman declared. Currently, students who do not enter in the fall term are not counted; nor are those who study part-time, nor are those who transfer to a different school to get their B.A. or B.S. Adelman proposed an amendment to the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-542) “to produce a full and honest account of college completion rates.”
Judith Coughlin, Registrar at Anne Arundel (MD) Community College, who chaired the AACRAO Transfer Conference, presented (along with her colleague Nanci Beier, Assistant Registrar) on the varieties of transfer credit which must be assessed. Marc Harding, Director of Admissions and Enrollment Services, and Laura Doering, Senior Associate Registrar and Director of Transfer Relations, both of Iowa State University, presented on state-wide developments in that state, while Teri Hollander, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University System of Maryland, presented on developments there.
At a session moderated by Barmak Nassirian, Associate Executive Director at AACRAO, two journalists presented a media perspective on transfer issues. They were Doug Lederman, co-editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed, and Paul Basken, reporter, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
AACRAO Board Members Past President Angé Peterson and Vice President for Admissions and Enrollment Management Wanda Simpson were in attendance. Peterson and Simpson presented Congressman Bishop with a plaque in recognition of his tireless work on behalf of registrars and admissions professionals.
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