By Autumn Walden, Editor, AACRAO Connect, Content Strategy Manager, AACRAO
For practitioners, transfer articulation can feel like a behind-the-scenes administrative grind, but for students, it lies between life-achievement momentum and utter frustration. When credit is not clearly assessed, applied, or explained, students lose time, money, confidence, or progress toward a credential. A widely cited U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that transfer students lost an estimated 43% of their credits on average, underscoring why credit assessment and clear institutional policy remain central to student mobility.
The AACRAO Transfer Articulation 101 course is designed for individuals who are new to transfer and articulation, offering a basic overview of requirements and introducing issues institutions face today. The on-demand course takes approximately 45 to 120 minutes, depending on the learner’s previous exposure, and aligns with the new AACRAO Competencies: Credit Assessment and Write, Interpret, & Implement Policy.
“There are numerous things that someone new to the topic of transfer and articulation needs to understand, such as the rules for accepting transfer credit differ from institution to institution …” shared Dr. Marc Booker. “However, what someone new to the profession needs to know as to why it matters to the student experience is that poor transfer policies or overly rigid acceptance practices hurt the student and institution. When a student has to repeat coursework where they already have the skills and knowledge from prior academic experience, it increases the debt burden on the student, delays graduation, and diminishes the reputation of higher education institutions in the public eye.”
“What, when, and how we review and award the credit can determine a student’s path,” added Dr. Seth Marc Kamen. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but the reward is worth it.”
In this Q&A, learn from Dr. Booker, who authored the course, and Dr. Kamen, who will present on state systems and credit mobility at July’s The Assembly, as they clarify common misconceptions, explain how credit assessment connects to institutional policy, and offer practical context for professionals in admissions, registrar, advising, financial aid, student affairs, and enrollment management who support transfer students.
How do the new AACRAO Competencies align?
Dr. Kamen: Credit Assessment and Write, Interpret, & Implement Policy: The competencies are about having the knowledge to do your job well. Credit evaluation is a complex system that relies on standardized processes and consistency. Policies, technology, curriculum management, and assessment rules (like those from a governing body or even your faculty) all impact and influence every decision made.
How does the course help learners understand the connection between credit assessment and institutional policy?
Dr. Booker: This course helps learners understand the connection between the macro factors that affect the acceptance and application of transfer credit and how institutions ultimately have the locus of control in making transfer policies. That said, the course also highlights the importance of how institutions should be intentional and fair in how they create their policies and apply them to students. This includes how both institutions and students have rights in the transfer process, which includes the institution’s right to make policies that best serve its institutional goals, but conversely, students have many rights as well.
Student rights include getting fair and consistent application of policies no matter if the student enters as a transfer student or a first-time enrollee, and that students have a right to get clear results and information about how their credits did – or didn’t – apply. This course tries to highlight that credit practices should be objectively aligned to balancing institutional needs and the student academic experience, and that policies assessing how external learning is applied towards degree requirements should be thoughtful and measured and not created as blunt instruments.
What is one common misconception about transfer articulation that this course helps clarify?
Dr. Booker: One common misconception that this course helps to clarify is that transfer decisions should be focused solely or primarily on institutional accreditation. Although institutional accreditation is a factor that can be used to help make a transfer credit decision, if it is a sole filtering function, this can lead to problematic outcomes or miss opportunities to recognize valid learning from another academic source. Institutional accreditation can absolutely be used as a signal for academic quality, and used as a basis to strengthen credit reciprocity, but if it is the only thing an institution is looking at (or making decisions on) they are falling into an area that the learning mobility community has been trying to reconcile for decades.
Even today, there are still some institutions that make decisions solely along these lines, and the decision to award (or not award) credit needs to be more varied than that. Unfortunately, accreditation and its role in the transfer process is often misunderstood, and this course tries to give learners a foundation about the vital importance accreditation plays, but also tries to set the record straight, as institutional accreditors often give schools broad authority in determining what is acceptable to apply towards degree requirements as long as institutional credit residency is met.
For someone new to the topic, what is one thing they should understand about transfer articulation and why it matters to the student experience?
Dr. Kamen: Articulation is about giving students credit and saving them time and money toward a degree. What, when, and how we review and award the credit can determine a student’s path. It’s a lot of responsibility, but the reward is worth it.
Dr. Booker: There are numerous things that someone new to the topic of transfer and articulation needs to understand, such as the rules for accepting transfer credit differ from institution to institution because it is an academic process at its core, and institutions have the right to make choices that uniquely fit their institutional mission and goals. However, what someone new to the profession needs to know as to why it matters to the student experience is that poor transfer policies or overly rigid acceptance practices hurt the student and institution.
When a student has to repeat coursework where they already have the skills and knowledge from prior academic experience, it increases the debt burden on the student, delays graduation, and diminishes the reputation of higher education institutions in the public eye. This is why learning mobility is so important, as it has the chance to increase the number of credentials earned and reverse negative commentaries about higher education and institutional cost.
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