Student Transfer (Part 1) – Why Students Transfer and Why It Matters

Heather Adams, Associate Director of Transfer Engagement at The Aspen Institute, joins us to discuss the reasons why students transfer and why it’s critical for institutions to think differently about the transfer students. We discuss the stigma around transfer students, the institutional bias against transfer students, and the insuffiency of transfer articulation agreements.

Transcript

Matt Sterenberg (00:01.354)

All right, Heather Adams. So we’re gonna start off with a very simple question, Heather. Okay. Why are students transferring?

Heather (00:04.477)Yay! All right, give it to me.

 

Heather (00:13.545)

Why are students transferring? Oh my gosh. Well, there are so many reasons why students transfer. So, you know, this could be like a three-hour episode, right? But I promise I will try to keep it short and sweet. I would say, you know, there’s saving money, there’s finding the right fit of an institution, it’s finding the right fit for the other life goals that students have plans for, like family and working and just life in general. People are mobile.

They move and they shift and we move and education does too. And so institutions aren’t particularly set up for that, but the reality is, is that we all are transfers. We’re either a transfer now or we will be, or we were with dual enrollment and all of this mobility that’s happening in our student communities, we have to be prepared for that. So I would say generally there’s probably two or three types of transfer.

If we’re talking about community college transfer to a receiving institution, there are generally folks, students who sort of set out to do that, right? I’m going to transfer. I’m going to go to a community college for a few years. I’m going to save money, figure out what it is I want to go do and where I want to transfer, and then make a plan to transfer to whatever four-year institution they’re interested in. There are also folks like me, for instance, who never thought I would actually go to college and found community college sort of later in life just from interest in taking courses and it changed my life. And then I kind of went on this trajectory of transfer. Often people don’t get into the school they thought they were going to go to or they can’t afford it. And so transfer becomes a great option. But there are unfortunately a lot of issues with transfer and it does need major reform. It can work wonderfully when it works. And unfortunately, it’s full of hurdles. And I think as institutions, we have a lot that we can do to make sure that the onus is not on the student and that it is easier to navigate.

 

Matt Sterenberg (02:24.67)

I think that’s a really good framing because when we think about transfer, we can slice it into a few different buckets, right? Like you said, there’s community college students, they enroll in community college, they know they’re going to transfer. There’s a student that enrolls in a four year, you know, they weren’t planning on transferring, but they, for whatever reason, like you mentioned, financial or major change, or they want to live closer to home, they want to transfer. And then there’s just this other bucket.

that’s basically transfer credit. So I’m not transferring institutions necessarily, but I’m just looking for transfer credit. And so I think when we’re talking about transfer generally, we kind of have to define like what kind of transfer we’re actually talking about, because there’s different approaches to each, different solutions, different reasons. I think we have to kind of put them in their own categories. Like,

Transferring credit applies to all of them, but it’s kind of its own bucket, its own problem, its own challenge. And thinking about the reasons that students might move from one institution to the other is kind of its own separate discussion that you said we could do a three hour podcast on as well.

 

Heather (03:24.193)

Mm-hmm.

 

Heather (03:40.005)

Exactly. No, I think you’re right. And I think a lot of when you say the word transfer, you do sort of have to define it a little bit because there’s reverse transfer as well. And there are now with dual enrollment, we just are seeing so many students coming from high school into a four-year institution with a lot of credit. But you mentioned something about how they’re all sort of different. They’re about credit, but

The student experience is different too. We were just having this conversation with some colleagues last night about transfer and how we have to have transfer-specific advising and all of these kind of practices that work really well for the unique experience that is transfer. Then we started to talk about dual enrollment students who haven’t actually, they’ve taken college courses, but they’re high school students and they may have never even stepped on a college campus because they might have taken those college courses at their high school. And that’s a completely different…experience. We don’t want all of a sudden putting that student into a four-year institution as a junior just because they have the credits that get them there. That’s not fair to the student because they’re still a student who’s just graduated from high school. So the experience is so different. So as practitioners, we need to really understand those nuances and see the differences rather than just making these kind of proclamations or assumptions about what transfer is.

 

Matt Sterenberg (05:04.054)

So thinking about those buckets, well, first, before we get there, I do wanna hear about your background because you’ve really dedicated your life to this, you know, what many people would consider, for you, it probably feels like this really big thing, but for what many people would consider this niche, you know, transfer student experience, why is it so important to you? And how did you really start investing in this? What was the, what’s the Genesis story of your work in transfer?

 

Heather (05:34.429)

I love this. Well, not to be too dramatic, but what I said before is, you know, community college really changed my life. I had a whole other career before this and I was actually an actor for about 20 years. And I went to community college occasionally to take a course or to stay kind of interested in curious and things because I’m a curious person. But I

On set, I was talking more about community college and why to go to community college, how to plan your community college transfer. I was playing a mother once and I was talking to the actors who were my children and helping them with college applications. And I didn’t even memorize my lines for the scene that day. So I thought, my priorities seem a little off here. I think maybe I’m a little more passionate and interested in.

In higher education and specifically this community college mechanism for economic mobility and social change. And so I after I’ll really

 

Matt Sterenberg (06:43.134)

I think it’s funny just real quick, like you’re in a scene and you’re like, do you mind if I improvise a little bit? And they’re like, sure, go for it. We’ll do a few takes of that. And all of your scenes are about transfer credit. And they’re like, I don’t know if this fits the narrative of the person, the romcom feel we’re going for.

 

Heather (07:01.729)

But this was my life. This is so silly, but I know it sounds like, oh, it’s Hollywood or whatever, but I would be in a trail. I would just be surrounded by textbooks. They would be like, okay, we’re ready for you on set. I’d be like, wait, one minute, I’m not done with this chapter? I really need to finish. I mean, it became a problem. So community college fit this need because I traveled a lot and I worked with my community college faculty.

 

Matt Sterenberg (07:21.218)

Yeah.

 

Heather (07:30.561)

Who were so flexible and understanding and approachable and accessible. And it was working around kind of my weirdo schedule as an actor, but it soon became really obvious to me that the professional purpose that community college transfer really set for me was so much stronger than anything that I had ever felt in the other industry.

I was so, I’m more excited every day talking about transfer than I ever was driving to an audition or going to set. So that says something. I had a fun life. Like it was, it was, it was a wonderful time and I learned a lot and I actually think it was really, in terms of transferable skills, a great, a great foundation for what I do now, which is, you know, I trans, so I went to community college, I transferred to UCLA and at UCLA, I was lucky enough to be the founding director of the Transfer Student Center there and just work with thousands of transfer students and daily hear and understand what transfer students were going through and work with them to build this center. And that was just sort of a thrill of a lifetime because I got to, one, take my own student advocacy that I had in community

 

Heather (08:52.077)

to help them realize theirs. And I loved that, I loved that. And now, and what I wanted to do is be able to bring that impact to more students. And so now my job at the Aspen Institute is transfer engagement. So I work with institutions, community colleges, and receiving institutions or four-year institutions. I try to stay away from two-year and four-year as names. In terms of language around transfer, I think, you know,

 

Matt Sterenberg (09:15.516)

Mmm.

 

Heather (09:21.685)

Two plus two is wonderful. It’s a lovely ideal. It rarely, it doesn’t really succeed. And a lot of students just really can’t possibly do something in two years. It’s not practical. They have other life goals. Life happens, things happen. And sometimes that beautiful two plus two doesn’t fit the narrative. So I usually say community college and receiving institution or university to mean the four year. Just FYI, if you hear me saying that a lot. So in this role, I get to work with any college who’s willing to work with us really, or work with me, but mostly colleges who are really focusing on good policy and practice for transfer and want to strengthen their partnerships with their local institutions. And so this can be community colleges or receiving institutions. And we do professional development for college presidents as well as their teams on how to do that, how to really institutionalize the partnership so that the practice and policy that they implement lives beyond just the transfer person or that team that creates the policy, but really has sustainability long-term to improve the transfer experience and then ultimately to improve student out.

 

Matt Sterenberg (10:43.906)

So in your role at the Transfer Center, what was most surprising to you as you look back at that experience and learning about transfer students, what stuck out to you as being the thing that you’re like, wow, I really, I had my own experience as a transfer student, but maybe I didn’t understand this as much as I, because again, the question we’re trying to answer is, why do students transfer?

What was most surprising to you about the makeup of those students or the stories of those students that you were serving?

 

Heather (11:17.613)

I think the most, well, I think you sort of framed it in your question. It’s the assumptions that we make, right? I had a very distinct experience, and there are some commonalities, I think, in some of the transfer experiences that you hear if you’re listening to student stories about transferring. But I think the thing that unites transfers is oddly just how diverse they are and just how many different rich life experiences they come from. They have the goal of transfer or the shared goal, shared experience of transfer, but their life experience just runs the gamut. I think it’s really easy to make assumptions about transfer. Now, we’re talking about younger students from dual enrollment. We’re talking about-students coming back to college, returning with some credit and no degree. You know, it just is such a rich culture and community. And I think as institutions, as four-year institutions, we’re lucky to have those students on our campus. Like they bring such knowledge and social and cultural capital and motivation and kind of scrapper mentality to our institutions.

And so, while I knew that about transfer, I think working with thousands of transfers, you just see it every day. You’re reminded, wow, everyone’s coming from a different place. Everyone’s having a slightly different experience. So we have to focus on the thing that unites all transfers, which is the process and this goal of a bachelor’s degree.

 

Matt Sterenberg (13:08.486)

You mentioned at the beginning that we really need to think about this less from the perspective of here’s our group of transfer students and start thinking about everyone’s a transfer student. Either they have transferred, will transfer, will transfer or are transferring, right? Whether it’s credits or

So just even thinking about our language, because obviously the language you use is important to you. Do we use two year, four year? Do we say community college versus receiving institution? Even saying, oh, these are our bucket of transfer students, is that going to be an outdated way to even think about this? Because at some point, I don’t think it’s going to all of a sudden revert back to you go to a.

 

Heather (13:40.182)

Mm-hmm.

 

Matt Sterenberg (13:56.582)

uh, for your institution and all of a sudden you’re just, we’re going to go back to you attend one place and you’re done. I think we’re past those days because of dual enrollment, like you mentioned and all the other reasons. So as we think about. Like creating a transfer center, like, is it going to be an outdated way to even think about it in the future? Mike.

 

Heather (14:17.885)

Hold on one second. I might have lost you, but there you are. You’re back. Yeah, you’re back. I heard everything that you were saying, but yeah. But I think… Am I okay? Can you hear me well? Okay. So I’ll answer that question then. Or do you want to rephrase it in case it messed up on both ends?

 

Matt Sterenberg (14:22.506)

I’m back. Oh my gosh.

 

Matt Sterenberg (14:32.414)

Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah.

 

Matt Sterenberg (14:41.01)

Um, so just thinking about even creating a transfer center or, you know, bucketing transfer students, is that going to be an outdated way of thinking about it? Just thinking about holistically incorporating and just assuming that someone’s going to have some version of transfer. How do we think about this? Not this year, but in 10 years and 15 years to really make this the most impactful at institutions.

 

Heather (15:11.497)

I love that you asked that question because it’s a philosophical question I think about a lot as a person who created a transfer center and as a person who’s sort of very into my transfer identity and how that intersects with a lot of other identities. I think it’s a couple of different things. I think it’s sort of yes and, right? So yeah, I absolutely think at this point.

One of the problems in higher ed is that we’re not thinking about students as just everybody. Everybody’s a student. It’s a lifelong learning process. You may get an AA now. You might need a bachelor’s later. You might get a PhD. Who knows? You might just… You know, we don’t know. And so everyone has the potential to be a transfer student. I think the issue becomes that we’re not there yet in terms of our attitudes, beliefs, and understanding of transfer.

For instance, sometimes I’ll talk to an institution and they’ll be like, oh, well, like we’re majority transfer. It’s great. They have the same experience as incoming first time in college, full time students. And yeah, we’re good. And then you go and you talk to the students and you realize they’re still basing it through this lens. They’re still basing their policies and practice through a lens of a very young person graduating from high school and coming right to college. And

So we’re not there yet culturally in terms of this transfer inclusive culture to be able to get rid of the word, say, or not talk about it. If truly we were working with students as individuals in terms of their education trajectory, and we were working with an adult student differently than we were working with maybe an 18 year old dual enrollment student.

Until we’re really there, I don’t think we can say, we serve all students and we’re great. And we know what first gen students need and we know what black transfers need. And we know, I don’t think we’re there. So I think it is important for, you know, and this does not mean that every student is going to identify and want to be a transfer student loud and proud. I come from California culture. We wear transfer pride like a badge of honor.

 

Heather (17:30.961)

It’s, we have t-shirts, you’ve probably seen me in the iHeartTransfer t-shirt. And it’s a, it’s a point of pride that I, you know, I went to two institutions. I have an identity as a community college student and a UCLA student. These are my strong accomplishments in life that I’m proud of. And we really hype, we really preach that I would say, or I do. But that’s not going to be the case for everybody. There’s certainly students who are like, yeah, I transferred, but it’s not an important part of my journey to me. However, their college experience is important, and it’s important to the institution. And if someone’s not having a great college experience or doesn’t feel like they belong or doesn’t have targeted and tailored resources and support, there’s going to be no campus loyalty and they’re not going to have a good college experience. And this is happening. I mean, you can see it when you interview students and you talk to students. There are some schools that do it really well and really excellently. And then there are others that are not necessarily taking the time to think about what that difference is and blow things up and recreate them for transfer. Another example is orientation. We do an orientation for every student. Often you’ll have a first

 

Heather (18:55.805)

And then you’ll go, oh, well, we need a transfer orientation. So let’s just like shrink the one that we do for freshmen and like make it a day. And maybe, I don’t know, have like a transfer resource there. It’ll be fine. Rather than maybe blowing up that orientation, talking to students who come into your institution to see how the transition is, what they wish they’d known when they came in and maybe rebuilding an orientation that actually serves the students you’re trying to serve. And now that’s really hard to do you’re going to probably say, well, Heather, you told me all transfer students are different and they all have different experiences. Sure. It’s hard to do. But if you are tailoring a program or an event to a student’s experience and a student’s potential identity, you’re going to get more closely connected to that student, and that student’s going to feel like they matter to the institution. And they’re going to meet other students with shared experiences and shared goals. And that helps Sense of Alarm.

 

Matt Sterenberg (19:53.75)

Yeah. And even thinking about the orientation, you’re bringing me back to when I was an orientation leader at my college and it was that we had this separate bucket of, it was like, this is the transfer orientation. Like you don’t need to go to this session because this is about, you know, going to college, you know, your first time in a college. And so there was this segmentation and going back to the buckets we talked about earlier, why not have someone that’s coming from?

 

Heather (20:00.661)

Oh, okay.

 

Matt Sterenberg (20:23.314)

you know, a community college, a different type of orientation for them. Or you can think about it from an age perspective, right? Are you going to be living on campus or are you not going to be living on, living on campus? Like there’s a whole, yeah, whole other set of things you can slice and dice, but you’re, you’re kind of segueing very nicely into we’re talking about why students are transferring.

 

Heather (20:34.977)

Commuters versus residential. Yep.

 

Matt Sterenberg (20:46.59)

And then also in part two of this conversation, how do we improve the transfer experience? But we have to kind of identify like, why do we need to improve it? So I kind of think about it in two ways. One is the stigma and you’re hitting on that a little bit. I want you to elaborate. And then there’s just the process of transfer. So there’s kind of the operational component and then the stigma component. You’re really, I want you to touch on the stigma component first, where again, we’re segmenting them.

 

Heather (21:06.215)

Mm-hmm.

 

Matt Sterenberg (21:15.574)

We’re not really putting in a lot of the resources. Why do you think that exists? And where do you see this rearing its head at institutions outside of kind of the, you know, haphazard orientations that we put students through?

 

Heather (21:31.649)

All right. So this is Heather Adams’ point of view about kind of where this stigma comes from. I mean, there’s a history of community college stigma. I think it stems from elitism and not valuing all forms of education. That doesn’t mean that everybody who doesn’t understand transfer has a problem with being an elitist at all think a lot of it is lack of understanding. A majority of folks who run higher education institutions, faculty, they didn’t transfer. They didn’t go to community college. So often, you’re not thinking about what that experience is. And at the receiving institutions, we have, I’ll take a lot of pride in the culture of our institution, what our institution offers.

And all too often there’s a comparison of, well, at our institution, they’re going to get this experience, which then automatically undermines the other experience of the other institution they went to. And that could be a lateral, you know, a transfer that goes from a four-year institution to a four-year institution trying to find the right fit. That doesn’t necessarily also…exclude that, but I think particularly with community colleges that were thought of as junior colleges, they were thought of as, you know, technical colleges, sort of where you would go if you couldn’t cut it in a four-year, you know, all these horrible judgments.

 

Matt Sterenberg (23:07.39)

And even in four years, I see this a lot. Like each four year institution thinks that they’re so unique. When I worked in college admissions and it was like, if you come here, your experience is gonna be so good. If you go anywhere else, it’s not gonna be good. It’s like, the reality is students could go to so many different institutions and have a wonderful experience. I just think the brand of an institution is how they’re attracting students and they start believing in their own brand so much that they don’t we’re so rigorous for instance you know our faculty are so much better than and I think we lose sight of just the value that is created outside of the walls of this institution.

 

Heather (23:41.517)

100%.

 

Heather (23:58.985)

100%. And it ceases to become about the student and it becomes about you as the institution. And that’s not the point, right? If the point is for us, everybody in higher ed, to see students succeed, which is why I would imagine most people got into this industry or this field, then it always has to come back to that. And I don’t want a student. You don’t want a student at your institution who’s miserable, who doesn’t feel like it’s the right fit.

And so there’s no competition. And I do think we feel that. Maybe especially now with enrollment and kind of the tumult that’s happening with college enrollment at the moment and where some colleges are up, some are down, colleges are closing, people are moving around. It’s a little nuts right now. So it’s hard not to feel anxious about it. But the reality is there are plenty of students. I mean, there are…something like six million students in community college right now, many of whom are highly qualified, highly successful, highly high GPA students who are excited to go to these four-year institutions that have such pride in their own selectivity. But those institutions aren’t necessarily looking community college as that equal or as that place for a focus. And it’s that value statement that I think you talked about before. I mean, maybe I could dig into a little data. This is going to be a little wonky for a minute, but bear with me.

 

Matt Sterenberg (25:40.49)

Yep, let’s do it. Let’s get into the inner Heather Adams policy wonk. Let’s do it.

 

Heather (25:45.857)

Yay. This is so fun. All right. So this is the problem. Why we need to improve community college transfer is that too few community college students attain bachelor’s degrees. Alright. So we know that about 80% of community college students, students that are entering community college indicate that they want a bachelor’s degree. Six years later, only 31 percent have made that leap to a receiving institution. So 80% say they want to, six years later only 30% actually transfer, and only 16% have attained a bachelor’s. And this is, yeah.

 

Matt Sterenberg (26:28.55)

So we have 80% of people, eight out of 10 people, I want to go to another receiving institution. I want to get a bachelor’s. Three out of those 10 people actually do it, actually make the leap. And then six years later, almost two of the 10 original people, not quite, right, between one and two of those people have a bachelor’s degree.

 

Heather (26:36.01)

My goal is transfer.

 

Heather (26:57.049)

I mean, this might not be new news to the folks that are listening to this podcast because we’re in it and we’re seeped in it, but that’s a devastating gap between aspiration and reality. There are many numerous reasons probably why that gap exists, but one that really stands out is that students lose 43% of their credits in the transfer process.

So even though I don’t believe transfer is just about credit, that’s a huge force that’s wasting, you know, students are spending money and time and energy towards wasted credit, basically. Now, some of that might not be wasted if you talk to the student, they’re like, oh, I wanted to take that class. It was interesting. But a lot of it comes from…the lack of connection that we have in partnerships between community colleges for years. And so at the same time this is happening, there’s this growing demand for bachelor’s degrees, right? We need a bachelor degree educated workforce according to Georgetown Center on Education in the workforce. I think it’s something like 60% of good jobs, like high paying, sustainable wage jobs in the US require a bachelor’s degree. And that I think is only projected to increase in the coming decades, and I can send people any of that data if they’re interested in the reports. This does not mean that there aren’t plenty of jobs where you can get a certificate or an associate’s degree and also make a sustainable wage. It just means that the majority of them are still going to require in the future a bachelor’s degree or higher. And right now, community colleges enroll about a third of all.

U.S. undergraduates. So that’s like 6 million students, I think I said before. And that, of course, well, not of course, but if you don’t know, it’s disproportionately numbers of underserved students. So students from the bottom half of the income distribution, Black and Hispanic students who are more likely to start in community college than their peers, first-generation college students, adult students, students with children. So, you know,

 

Heather (29:16.917)

talk about diversity of experience, the community college is where it’s at, and research says this is community college is where they’re going. Right? And so yet just 16% of the lowest-income young people between the ages of 18 and 24 have a bachelor’s degree compared to 62% of their high-income peers. 16 low-income young people have bachelor’s compared to 62% of high-income young people.

And of course, there are racial disparities, black and Hispanic adults ages 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees at rates of like 10 to 17% below the national average, which is 38, 40%, not very high anyway. So this is a problem. It’s a moral imperative. It’s a social imperative. It’s an economic imperative. If you talk to business people and workforce industry, it’s a serious workforce problem.

In a lot of communities where there might not be a lot of bachelor gain, we’re talking about regional and state impact. If your state doesn’t have a lot of people with bachelor’s degrees or your region doesn’t and there are new industries moving in, is your local community being served? Or are people coming from other places who have bachelor’s degrees and taking on-on those jobs. So to me, it has just national implications of the impact. And the sad thing, Matt, is that this has not changed in decades. And part of it is because we need a revolution in higher ed, I think. I think we’ve been thinking about things the same way and doing them the same way. And you know what that does, right? You just try to keep, you want change, but you keep doing it the same way. But these numbers haven’t budged in decades. And so something has to happen. Institutions have to take a look at this because transfer can be the answer to a lot of issues, a lot of problems. Return on investment, return on mission, workforce, transfer as a workforce imperative, transfer as a diversity imperative if you’re looking for different types of students at your institution.

 

Heather (31:39.213)

or an economic regional imperative if you’re kind of a local school serving your local region. As you can tell, I’m passionate about it. I do think transfer is the answer.

 

Matt Sterenberg (31:50.394)

Well, I think you highlight the problem. Well, you highlighted the problem so well, right? So like the question we start off with is, why are students transferring? Why do students transfer? And we kind of are pivoting into why students aren’t transferring, right? Why aren’t they going from a community college to a receiving institution, right? To a four year, because we have all these students that wanted to do it or thought that they would.

And I think there’s like a social impact on someone not fulfilling what they thought that they were going to do. There’s something there. And then you talked about, well, the lost transfer credit. And I think that speaks to like a broader, a broader issue in higher ed today, which is if you went to two years and four years and you said.

How are you doing this today? Very few of them are gonna say, we’re actually really bad at this. They’re all gonna have their reasons for it. And I think a lot of them are gonna highlight, well, we have articulation agreements. And the way that I think it’s one man’s opinion, right? But articulation agreements are inside baseball, right? It’s agreements between this institution and other institutions. Some states do it really well, some states don’t do it very well. But…

 

Heather (32:51.018)

Yeah.

 

Matt Sterenberg (33:11.954)

it has to flow back to the student. If we’re gonna make any real impact, it’s gonna have to be, as the student I have to understand what this means for me. Not when I make the transaction of sending my transcript, let’s say, to the receiving institution, then I find out how many credits I’ve got. I wanna know how close I am today as a motivating force for me to actually begin enrolling because I think a lot of this happens after the fact. Right. It’s like, hey, come on to our campus. We’ll let you know how far away you are from your major or whatever else. And it’s like, as a community college student, wouldn’t it be that much more impactful? Here’s my dream, Heather. Okay. You have all of your academic records, you upload them somewhere and it spits out how much time you have left according to the

 

Heather (33:59.309)

Tell me.

 

Matt Sterenberg (34:09.354)

hey, if I go to this institution and study this, I have this much time left and here’s how much it’s gonna cost me. But until we get to like a real system that’s gonna communicate better with me to motivate me, the only solution in my mind, well, I don’t wanna give that away because that’s part two of our episode. But does that make sense like in order to communicate back to the student?

 

Heather (34:16.undefined)

Mm-hmm.

 

Heather (34:32.748)

100%.

 

Heather (34:37.025)

One, I love how you framed it and I like the inside baseball analogy. I think of it as, you know, like an articulation agreement is a legal document. Like, that’s all it is. It’s not a living, breathing experience of a student or an experience of the folks working with the students. So to me, to keep that, the premise of the centering the students, it’s about the partnership, right? That piece of paper doesn’t create a partnership.

That piece of paper literally just protects you legally and says, you will do this. That doesn’t, that’s great. You need it, but that’s not the work. The work is not the MOU or the articulation agreement. The work is institutionalizing processes that work for students and really taking a hard look at what’s not working and how students are navigating and how we can make it more…easier to navigate and more streamlined. So yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Articulation agreements are not enough. It’s a great first step. It’s a great first step. And hopefully it leads to a deeper partnership that then can lead to some of the awesome improvements that we’re going to talk about in our next episode.

 

 

There’s always more to learn.