Transfer Credit - Background

Background

When a student transfers, he or she usually provides his or her academic transcript(s) which lists the course taken, grade and other attributes from each institution they attended when applying for enrollment. Each transcript and the listed courses are tentatively evaluated to see if any of the courses taken satisfy the requirements of the receiving institution.

Transfer credit is not official until an academic officer of the college or university provides a written verification the award has been accepted and applied on the academic transcript meeting the degree requirement. Transfer credit is not guaranteed when a student transfers from one institution to another. Often, some prior course credit completed at another institution is not counted toward the degree requirement, extending the student's time to graduation.

Unanticipated factors and the general mobility of our society create numerous circumstances under which students must move from one institution to another without prior planning. Reasons for such movements can range from mismatches between students and institutions, employment, military movement, to geographic relocations by the families. The fundamental challenge with college transfer, whether planned or unplanned, is to aggregate coursework conducted at different institutions with different academic policies, different curricula, and different levels of expected rigor into an academic credential that the issuing institution can stand behind. College transfer is complex, because disparate and sometimes non-comparable coursework is brought together, often without prior involvement of the institutions from which the student enrolls and expects to graduate.