A Challenge to Self-Fulfilling Systems: Recognizing Transfer Currency, Exposing Equivalencies, and Tracking Outcomes

[...]we see an increasing number of high school students exploring numerous opportunities for college credit, including dual credit, Advanced Placement (ap), study abroad, and dual enrollment, with some even graduating high school with an associate degree already completed. [...]though not in the scope of this manuscript, those with prior learning are at a lesser advantage. [...]the question is why have colleges and universities not evolved in how they treat students and their credits? Policymakers are calling for institutions to accept a considerable number of credits to reduce credit loss and the related financial implications to students (GAO 2017), but institutions cite (Cummings, et al. 2021) reduced income, impact on faculty load, reduction in achieving their mission, or becoming obsolete, while the impacts on their bottom-line perpetuate the continued push for bought credit. [...]while institutions may claim maintenance of rigor, curricular control, or accreditation standards, the true question is whether the institution embraces a transfer receptive culture (Taylor and Jain 2017). [...]one novel idea is to have these thresholds changed as students continue to lose substantial portions of their credits upon transfer. Extant data sources are already available through agencies and organizations such as the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Student Clearinghouse, the Common Data Set, VSA Analytics, and others to create comparative and performance dashboards.