Texas leads in national push toward so-called reverse transfer

ACC graduate Jordan Rusk, left, of Dickinson gets a little help with her mortar board from her husband Brad Rusk before the Health and Medical Commencement on May 14. ACC graduate Jordan Rusk, left, of Dickinson gets a little help with her mortar board from her husband Brad Rusk before the Health and Medical Commencement on May 14. Photo: ACC Photo: ACC Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Texas leads in national push toward so-called reverse transfer 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A funny thing happened on Reddit this summer: A link from the National Student Clearinghouse, a higher education research group, went viral. The post to a “Life Pro Tips” forum encouraged users to check out the Clearinghouse’s reverse transfer initiative.

Here’s how the exchange works. Say a student starts her post-secondary education at a community college but transfers those credits to a four-year university before earning an associate’s degree.

If she attended institutions that participate in the Clearinghouse’s program, she can ask the university and college to track her credit completion at the four-year school.

She’ll then learn automatically when she has enough credits to retroactively earn an associate’s from that initial institution – and then get the degree.

The post drew more than 100 people to contact the Clearinghouse about the process, the group said in a press release. But what is a novel initiative elsewhere in the U.S. has already been somewhat standardized in Texas.

State law requires universities to track every student who transfers from a community college to that university with 30 credits – half of what’s necessary to earn an associate’s degree. After students complete about 30 additional credit hours at the university, that institution gives the community college the student’s transcript to review for an associate’s degree.

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Some programs have a lower benchmark for who is tracked than the state Legislature requires. In El Paso, the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College have an automatic reverse transfer system that requires fewer community college credits to participate. The Clearinghouse highlighted the schools’ program in recent promotional materials.

“Students who transfer to UTEP with at least 25 percent of an associate degree completed are tracked and then notified when they have earned enough credit to be awarded an associate degree,” the American Association of Community Colleges wrote in a 2014 outline of how to implement automatic graduation programs.

Coordination at that level can be challenging. In 2015, Texas universities participating in a reverse transfer initiative found that there were limited fiscal and human resources and no mechanism for consistent communication between universities and students, creating some challenges for systems.

Lone Star College graduated more than 1,000 reverse transfer students in the 2014-15 academic year, of about 7,600 transcripts received, according to that report. About 680 more needed two or fewer classes to earn an associate's.

There are 2 million students nationwide who attended college for two years between 2003 and 2013 without earning a degree, according to 2014 research from the Clearinghouse. Separately, 78 percent of students who transfer from a community college to a university do so without a degree.

“As more students choose less-traditional paths to a college degree, the population of those who stop out along the way stands to grow,” said Doug Shapiro, executive research director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, in a statement. “Many colleges and national organizations are interested in drawing this population back to complete their degrees, but research to inform these efforts is still emerging.”

The Clearinghouse says the second phase of the program’s development will allow students to securely access their academic information online through the national group.