It's Time for Texas to Eliminate the Credit Transfer Hurdle

This article originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle on 1/31/2013.

Texas community college students today face serious obstacles. Many are eager to attend a four-year school but confront two burly barriers: money to pay for it and the nightmare of credit transfers. On average, community college students waste one year of schooling through taking courses that won't transfer to a four-year school.

This is not simply a Texas problem. The country loses many millions of dollars annually because of inefficient credit transfer systems. This need not be. If we can get a man to the moon, surely community colleges and four-year schools can work out a process of seamless transfer. What is needed is the will to do so.

Texas is taking the lead on this. We presented a position paper to Raymund Paredes, commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, recommending a pilot program with a simultaneous dual-enrollment process. We have in mind for the pilot the Dallas County Community College District and the University of Texas at Dallas. The commissioner "heartily endorsed" the pilot concept.

The time is ripe. Rep. Dan Branch, D-Dallas, chairman of the House Committee on Higher Education, has proposed HB 30, which advocates "transfer compacts." Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, new chairman of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, has expressed his support of "early college high school" and Gov. Rick Perry is championing a "$10,000 degree" model. The 2011 passage of Branch's HB 9 advanced a new system of metrics incentivizing the transfer of community college students "to a general academic institution." HB 9 "recognizes the growing role of community colleges" as gateways to four-year degrees.

Jorge Klor de Alva, coauthor of the American Enterprise Institute's study "Cheap for Whom?," concludes, "If the country is to retain its competitive edge, it must reverse the current policies that result in providing the lowest levels of taxpayer support to the institutions that enroll the highest percentage of low-income, nontraditional and minority students - the fastest-growing segments of the population." More than half of postsecondary students in Texas and nationwide are nontraditional - aged 25 and older and working full time. What's more, for grades K-12, over 50 percent of Texas students are Hispanic.

A word about elitism and academic rigor: One of us (Trowbridge) taught at a Texas community college for 12 semesters and can attest that there are many bright students in these schools who are kept from attending a four-year college almost exclusively through lack of funds. The proposed simultaneous dual-enrollment pilot with DCC and UT-Dallas would permit students who complete their associate degree program at the community college to proceed seamlessly to the partner four-year school. Working together, faculty members from the two institutions can resolve academic rigor concerns, including expected course outcomes and accountability.

To better ensure the pilot works as planned, the THECB commissioner should be given responsibility for evaluating the dual-enrollment program authorized by the legislative bill that Rep. Branch is championing. This pilot program is shovel-ready because of the work already done last session by Branch. Of course, the dual-enrollment program needs to be rigorously evaluated for its effectiveness in relation to cost, its impact on the number of credits transferred and its effect on student persistence and completion. To increase transparency and accountability, the commissioner should set the standards for this evaluation and ensure that it is conducted by persons not directly involved in the program's administration.

There is an immeasurable beneficence to this dual-enrollment symbiosis: It would serve as "The Texas Model" for the rest of the country, and more importantly, it would be of great benefit to countless motivated kids who could not heretofore afford to get a four-year college degree. There are too few instances in which the political stars align to create a win-win piece of legislation. Happily, this is one of those moments.