Higher education groups have urged four-year institutions to revamp how they evaluate credits earned by students transferring campuses, saying both four-year and two-year colleges must ensure that more credits count toward baccalaureate degrees, especially in a post-coronavirus economy.
In an appeal last month, six associations representing academe and its constituents asked colleges and universities to break what, for many, has been a longstanding practice of reflexively, and sometimes without merit, refusing to accept some credits earned by transferring students. Low-income students, including a disproportionate number of students of color, have been hardest hit by that practice, given their levels of enrollment in two-year colleges whose tuition and fees fall substantially below those of four-year schools.
The displacement caused by the pandemic may well worsen these problems. The higher education associations urged college leaders to recognize “the extra burden placed on students in this time.” They asked college leaders to clarify their existing policies, to be more transparent about what underpins those policies and to acknowledge that “traditional inequities are exacerbated in the current crisis.”
“It’s our way of telling institutions to be more flexible,” Mildred Garcia, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and a signatory to that appeal, told Diverse. “We understand that curriculum is in the hands of faculty, but we have to be as compassionate and flexible as possible. We have to think about what students are going through.”
Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, said that because of the coronavirus-fueled downturn in the economy, how and where to spend limited college cash will become an even greater conundrum for students and their families.
“The question with COVID is probably going to cut both ways,” said Jenkins. “It’s definitely going to increase competition for students. More enlightened institutions will see that [two-year and four-year campuses] both will be able to profit better if they work together.”
But in a lot of other places, there will just be competition, and the student will lose out, he said, adding, “It’s an unjustified barrier to their upward mobility.”
