Where Are Students Transferring From?

"Transfer and, more generally, obtaining college credits from multiple sources, are far more common than many people realize: Over 50 percent of bachelor's recipients have credits from colleges other than from where they're graduating. Transfer is also far less successful than many people realize: Although about 80 percent of community college freshmen plan to earn at least a bachelor's degree (for which first they have to transfer), six years later only about 16 percent have attained that goal."

"What you see are blue dots all over the United States. Each dot represents one college or university (let's call it the sending institution) for which another college or university (let's call it the receiving institution) has one or more rules (equivalencies) regarding how to count the course credits that a student might seek to transfer from that sending institution to that receiving institution."

"What you are seeing in this diagram are some of the actual data loaded into the national version of Transfer Explorer (inspired by the City University of New York's Transfer Explorer, also known as T-Rex). The national version of Transfer Explorer is a website that publicly and freely shows how course credits transfer among, and count for requirements at, United States higher education institutions."

More than half of bachelor’s recipients hold credits earned at institutions other than where they graduated. About 80 percent of community college freshmen plan to earn a bachelor’s degree, but only about 16 percent attain that goal within six years. Transfer Explorer compiles actual course-equivalency rules that receiving institutions have applied to credits from sending institutions. The national Transfer Explorer displays those equivalencies visually as blue dots representing sending institutions across the United States. The initial dataset shown derives from the first 19 receiving institutions in Connecticut, South Carolina, and Washington. Geographic dispersion of sending institutions demonstrates the nationwide complexity of credit transfer.

Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs