Reverse
Transfer
What is
Reverse
Transfer?
The awarding of an associate degree
to students who have previously
attended a community college &
fulfilled the associate degree
requirements while working towards
a bachelors degree
Why is it
Important?
“Experts from the Center on Education and
the Workforce at Georgetown University
say that, by 2018, 308,000 of the expected
541,000 job vacancies in Oklahoma will
require postsecondary credentials.
Indeed, 57 % will require postsecondary
education by 2018.”
Lumina’s A Stronger Nation through education 2013 report
Why is it
Important?
Lumina Foundation, 2015 report: “A Stronger Nation through
higher education
Why is it
Important?
Nationally
only 56%
of early transfers
complete their bachelors
“Making the decision to transfer prior to finishing an AA
or AS is difficult and often involves monetary constraints
and/or required course access.
Adult transfer students especially can get mired in the
often disjointed and protracted journey toward the
culmination of their efforts.
I foresee this opportunity to receive acknowledgement of
the earned AA or AS degree as a way to help bolster the
transfer student’s psychological resolve to complete the
four year degree.
(UNC-Charlotte Female participant)
Why is it
Important?
El Paso, Texas
“Looking at student outcomes once
students earned their associate’s degree, a
substantial portion of the sample
completed their bachelor’s degree as of
Spring 2014 (n=1,740; 84%).”
Reverse Transfer and Degree Awarding Agreements to Help Transfers earn their Associates at a Four
Year School, R. Boren, D. Ekal, A. Vasquez, C. Westman, D. Hendry.
Why is it
Important?
“Very few (less than one percent) are
still persisting toward their four year
degree, and only 16 percent (283)
students left without completing their
degree at UTEP.”
Reverse Transfer and Degree Awarding Agreements to Help Transfers earn their Associates at a
Four Year School, R. Boren, D. Ekal, A. Vasquez, C. Westman, D. Hendry.
“I'm finding that the prospect of
having my official associate's
degree is helping me to push
me over the "2 year-hump" to
my bachelor's program.”
Email UNC-Charlotte Female
Most important the student
gets a credential they have earned.
Advantages to students:
• Possible career advancement
• Better jobs and increased income while in college
• Individuals with associate degrees have lower
unemployment rate than those with only a high school
diploma or some college
• Possibly meet general education requirements at 4-year
institution
Advantages to
Institutions
• Re-examine reasons students are not
graduating with the associate degree
Could indicate:




A need for review of articulation agreements
A need for new technology
A review of a particular course
A review for graduation processes
• Graduates for community colleges
• Some research indicates it is an incentive for
students to complete the bachelors
16 CWID States
495 CWID institutions
2940 degrees by 2014
7367 degrees by 2015
12 States – legislation
12 non-CWID States exploring or planning
9 non-CWID States piloting or implementing
•
•
•
•
National Student Clearing House
Began implementation in July 2015
www.reversetranfer.org
Phase 1:
– Facilitates the submission of files from the Host
Institution, notification of Degree Granting
Institution(s) and downloading of files by DGI(s)
As of 7-20-2015
NC has over
1,000 credentials
Number of Reverse Transfer Credentials in Twelve Initial
CWID States by June 2015
0
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Hawaii
Maryland
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oregon
400
800
1200
1600
249
68
275
1458
820
979
1362
189
0
665
1002
300
No Evidence Reverse Transfer Associate’s
Degree
Reduces
Student
Retention
100%
Retained in Spring 2014
96%
95%
93%
91%
90%
90%
91%
85%
80%
Received RT RT Eligible, no Earned AA or Ineligible for
degree in Fall RT degree in higher before
RT
2013
Fall 2013
fall 2013
Average
Retention
Rate
Fall 2014 to Spring 2015 retention rates of University of
Hawaii transfer student cohort; Retention rates include
students who earned bachelor’s degrees
Oklahoma’s Transfer
• 2013-14
• Public
27686
• 35%=9690
• Private
2979
• 35%=1042
NC’s Higher Education Structure
State Board of
Community
Colleges
Board of Governors
North Carolina
Community College
System (NCCCS)
University of North
Carolina System
(UNC)
58 community
colleges
16 public
universities and 1
high school
36 Private Colleges
and Universities
What are the
key concepts
that need to be
considered?
FERPA
What consent options do you consider?
• Add questions to admissions application
– Pros: Reaches a wide audience, raises awareness
about the program before enrollment
– Cons: Difficult to target, does not reach already
enrolled students
• Send link to web form
– Pros: Easy to set up, easy to target population
– Cons: Does not force response
FERPA
What problems do we want our
technology to solve?
Opt-in/Opt-out
• Obtain consent
• Only ask eligible population
– Avoid unnecessary questions/ confusion from students
– Save staff time
• All of eligible population
• Mandatory response
• How will you get students to opt-in?
–Is there a common technology
application that can be leveraged (eg.
single sign-on or ERP system) so that
each institution does not have to have
their own process and code?
–Would you standardize processes and/
or wording across institutions or have
each create their own?
8000
Number of Students
7000
6000
4762
+505
5000
4000
3648
+1114
2487
66%
+1161
3000
2000
5267
31%
1000
0
1st Contact
2nd Contact
3rd Contact
4th Contact
North Carolina (n=~8,000)
North
Carolina’s
Experiment
Messaging
Methods
Consent
Initial Results from Survey
• Yes - 50%
• No - 41%
• Deferred - 9%
Of those that said no:
 14% - “I do not understand the RT program and its benefits”
 8% - “I do not feel comfortable sending my course information”
 42% - “I would prefer to wait and get my bachelor’s degree
than get my associate’s degree now”
 19% - “I do not think I qualify”
 17% - “Other”
Residency/Accreditation
Admissions
Financial Aid/Scholarships
Graduation
Performance Funding
Who gets the student to review?
Benefits of an A.S or A.A or ?
Articulation Agreements
What courses/grades are acceptable?
Upper Division Courses
Equivalencies
MOU’s
Transcripts
Degree Audit
Culture
What technologies need
to be considered?
• What criteria will you use to match students
from the 4-year colleges/ universities to the
community colleges and then back from the
community colleges to the 4-year colleges/
universities?
– If you use SSNs, do you have these for every
student?
– Do you have a statewide unique ID?
– What would you do with multiple matches?
What problems do we want our
technology to solve?
• Limit burden on universities
– Creation of transcripts
• Automated, sustainable process
– Short-term project funding
• Limit burden on community colleges
– Articulating of credit
– Larger quantity of transcripts to process
How do policy
decisions
affect IT?
• Can we program just for this population if needed?
• How is it stored in the system that the student is
participating?
• How is it currently used by others?
• If we change this how does it affect others use of it?
• Or could we add a value/attribute instead of changing
or adding new fields?
• Do we know what table this could/would be located
in?
What did
North Carolina
do?
What is the Student Data Mart (SDM)?
• All 16 UNC universities
• Implementation began in 2013
• From flat file system to using web services to pull data straight from
institution ERP (Banner and PeopleSoft)
• Data about students, courses, programs, faculty, financial aid,
facilities, degrees awarded
• Information used for federal (IPEDS) and state reporting, to address
legislative and other information requests, research, data-driven
business process improvements, and Reverse Transfer transcripts
• Started with campuses in Reverse Transfer grant
How do you decide what population to
send to the community colleges?
• Files from NCCCS (2001 forward):
– More than 16 credit hours at a single community college
• Student Data Mart
– Opt-in= Y
– Between 50 and 90 cumulative credit hours
– If the student has over 90 credit hours but has never been
sent
– More than 16 (SACs accreditation 25%) credit hours at a
single community college (if not identified from CC files)
• Community colleges will likely see an
increase in transcripts to process. How
can this burden be lessened (eg.
common transcript formats, course
crosswalks, automation of degree
processing)?
• What processes can be centralized and
what will have to be done by each
institution?
Crosswalk
• NCCCS has common course library and UNC does not
• Crosswalk UNC courses to community college courses
• Started by pulling and summarizing equivalencies from
CCs
• CCs met and agreed on “suggested” equivalencies
Degree Audit/Program Evaluations
• Colleges were able to run batch degree audit
evaluations for all students included in download
• Degree audit results were queried to determine what
requirements each student was missing in a report
• Manual comparison of Reverse Transfer Report and
Missing Credits Report
Missing Credits Report
How are we scaling up to a
state-wide program?
Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4
Transcript Term
Community Colleges
(out of 58)
UNC Institutions
(out of 16)
Spring
2014
15
Fall 2014
Fall 2015
34
Spring
2015
58
8
8
11
16
58
Scale-Up
• Video Taped Training
• Training Manual
• Training Sessions
• Webinars
Lessons Learned
• Involve a wide range if individuals for
feedback from the beginning (UNC and CC
registrars, transfer office staff, IT, advising staff
and any others affected)
• Focus on increased automation/ sustainability
from the beginning or you will regret it
• Take the time to do it right: get lots of
opinions, Test! Test! Test!, pilot
Lessons Learned
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Full-time Director to coordinate
Policy consistency
Individual campus visits and training
Communication is key
Point Person for Student Questions
Math
Curriculum Alignment
Resources
• http://occrl.illinois.edu/projects/cwid/
• www.northcarolina.edu/reversetransfer
• http://degreewithinreach.org/
Michelle Blackwell
emblackwell
@northcarolina.edu