Part of SUNY’s mission is to “provide educational services of the highest quality, with the broadest possible access, fully representative of all segments of the population.” It is incumbent upon SUNY to reduce barriers faced by all students but specifically those from underrepresented populations and lower income students who have been shown to be disproportionately disadvantaged when transferring. Transfer practices, including our admission and transfer credit acceptance practices, should be structured so students have a guaranteed equitable and clear path forward from the moment they begin their studies. In keeping with our mission as a public institution, SUNY should assess policies through a social justice lens to be assured we are not introducing obstacles that unnecessarily extend the time to the degree, result in added cost or create complex systems and requirements that disproportionately impact any student group.
As made evident by the myriad documents and reports that identify transfer procedures and processes nationally as being broken and showing that only a small minority of entering community college students earn a bachelor’s degree, every effort should be made to make the transfer process clear and consistent, so students know what to expect and when, and have adequate support at each step of the process. The following recommendations present an interconnected set of tools and actions, and an approach based on shared business practices, to provide for clarity and consistency SUNY-wide.
Operationalizing, describing and communicating uniform admission and transition checklists, and promoting a common understanding of the transfer process, policies and procedures requires creating shared tools and communication models. A centralized transfer support portal can help by representing the transfer process consistently and by serving as a central resource that connects students, faculty and staff with meaningful support and resources. (See a diagram of the proposed structure in the appendix.)
A working group of campus experts in advising, registration, and admissions will be established to work closely with the Student Success Office and Enrollment Management to create a web-based portal that draws together key resources. The portal will be where uniform checklists and processes can be articulated and made concrete, and where associated resources and support will be consolidated. The result will be an accessible tool specifically tailored to help students navigate the transfer process by providing them with clear, consistent steps and the ability to see their progress within them. This would be continually supported by providing additional training for campus advisors and admissions staff so that campuses have a greater degree of commonality in practice and a shared understanding of processes and support principles. The portal should provide information and a view of the full process, from exploration and advisement, to aid and acceptance.
|
Resource |
Description |
|
Student Transfer Checklist |
Provide both a static and interactive student checklist so students can identify typical transfer steps and track their own progress. |
|
Transfer Equivalencies |
Provide a barrier-free, one-stop transfer equivalency look-up tool so students can determine how courses transfer from one SUNY to another. |
|
SUNY Transfer Paths |
Provide an improved and consolidated SUNY Transfer Path tool, complete with Core Course information. (See “Maximize Credit Acceptance and Program Applicability”) |
|
Transfer Profile |
Allow students to create and maintain a transfer profile via SUNY Federation to promote early engagement and advising. (See “Maximize Credit Acceptance and Program Applicability”) |
|
Embedded FERPA Release for Cross-Institutional Communication |
As a multi-campus University, SUNY must obtain FERPA releases for students to share information with other campus partners, except where there is a FERPA exception satisfied. While an application to transfer to another institution permits the sharing of data, exploration and inquiries do not. Consequently, we need to provide students with a means to permit or restrict access to their data based on their interest in communicating/sharing with a transfer campus. |
The above model and recommendations are also integral to recommendations 2.2 and 2.3.
Given that transfer is often described as a “maze” or “obstacle course,” SUNY should coalesce around a shared and consistent vision of what steps and requirements must exist to apply for transfer. Despite differing capabilities, resources, and systems across SUNY campuses; establishing a consistent, system-wide, student-facing set of steps to facilitate the transfer process is a realistic goal.
SUNY will standardize the outward-facing aspects of the transfer admission and associated processes to the greatest degree possible. Despite different capabilities, timelines, tools and systems SUNY-wide, there is a marked degree of alignment between campus business processes, and similar approaches to advising and onboarding. There is such commonality that the Task Force recommends the establishment of a uniform transfer admission checklist, where campuses would adhere to shared, high-level transfer business process steps and approaches. Fundamentally, the goal is to create a common SUNY-wide practice so resources can be more easily created, campus support staff have a shared set of expectations, and students can have a clear, consistent roadmap.
Establishing a common framework as a model and ethos will make clear the collaborative nature of proposed transfer processes and will help to define the roles and expectations of the four-year and two-year campuses in ensuring the student’s successful degree completion and transition.
SUNY and campuses will develop and support a common transfer support plan that incorporates the following objectives:
| ASSOCIATE DEGREE | |
| 1 |
Four-year campuses will create a communication plan or contact practice for prospective students who have been identified via the recommended portal and transfer profiles. Four-year and two-year campuses should work in concert to provide seamless communication. |
| 2 |
In concert with the two-year campus, the four-year campus will establish and utilize dedicated pre-advising staff (navigators) to provide basic guidance and information related to transfer as a prospective student. |
| PRE-ADMISSION THROUGH BACCALAUREATE DEGREE | |
| 3 |
Once a student has sufficient credits and has expressed intent, the four-year institution and two-year institution will coordinate to facilitate a transition from, pre-advising support to a program-specific advisor on the four-year campus, who will work with advisors on the two-year campus. |
| 4 |
Campuses will establish advisor-to-advisor communication or meeting practices to facilitate discussion between two-year and four-year advisors, with the goal of guiding the student when they near graduation and transfer. |
The goal of this basic framework is to reinforce the notion of creating a systematized, standard set of practices on campuses to reliably and consistently perform outreach and support prospective transfer students from the outset. The intent is also to foster an environment where students are supported from their first day at a community college to achieve the completion of their associate degree, while also considering next steps, versus early transfer. The goals of the pre-advising support staff (or navigators) will be:
(1) To be a direct contact and connection to the four-year or two-year campus.
(2) To promote and provide information about SUNY Transfer Paths (where applicable).
(3) To discuss options at the four-year level that align with the student’s current program or interests.
(4) To connect students with support on the two-year and four-year campuses at an early point.
(5) To support and promote the completion of the two-year degree, paying attention to how coursework can be simultaneously applied to the four-year degree.
(6) To work as the primary facilitators of transfer across campus lines.
Many of the SUNY transfer policies in place are not well-known to faculty, staff and students. For example, a recent survey of campus materials showed that many campuses do not provide online guidance regarding the student’s right to appeal transfer decisions, almost a quarter did not discuss SUNY Transfer Paths, and the GETA was publicized and described on only a minority of campus sites. 1,2 SUNY will provide greater visibility for policies and their benefits by publicizing them on SUNY and campus websites, communications, literature, and advertising. This will give students, faculty, and staff a better view of the advantages afforded by the policies and make the policies more pervasive and front-of-mind. The following recommendations aim to make transfer policy clear to students, faculty and staff by creating greater visibility using straightforward guidance and materials.
1 Performed July 2024. 2 Task Force campus site review – May 2024
Discussion
To promote a culture of support and instill a sense of obligation to improve transfer outcomes, many campuses and systems have developed documents of principle or mission statements supporting transfer work. The documents are designed to promote a transfer-friendly ethos and define the transfer mission.
Recommendation
SUNY will create a “Transfer Bill of Rights” to encapsulate the benefits and expectations that students may have regarding transfer services and the treatment of their prior coursework and credit. The documents should focus on the prevailing principles espoused by the Joint Statement from AACRAO, ACE and the CHEA as well as principles fundamental to the CCRC/Aspen Transfer Playbook. Based on the work presented in the Joint Statement, AACRAO developed a working model and Transfer Bill of Rights used by institutions, that can serve as a model for SUNY. The document should reflect that transfer students shall:
(1) Receive all of the advising, orientation and support benefits offered to students who began their studies as first-year students at the institution.
(2) Receive transitional support from both their SUNY two-year institution and four-year institution to seamlessly transfer to a baccalaureate program.
(3) Have access to clear, plain language statements concerning SUNY Seamless Transfer guarantees.
(4) Have the right to clear, complete, and accessible information about credit acceptance policies and how they will apply to their degree program.
(5) Be afforded the maximum amount of credit in accord with SUNY and campus policies and degree requirements.
(6) Be afforded the maximum amount of credit for all other non-course prior learning in accord with the SUNY and campus policies; this includes but is not limited to international study, military experience, nationally recognized training, and recognized standard exams.
(7) Have complete information available to them regarding additional admission standards for programs, pre-requisite requirements, and minimum grade or GPA provisions prior to transferring.
(8) Have the right to understand the reasons for any non-acceptance of coursework for credit or requirement completion and be presented with their right to appeal under SUNY policy.
The Transfer Task Force Financial Aid and Student Accounts working group noted that the impact transfer has on state and federal financial aid, especially in the complex regulatory environment within New York State, is often not fully understood by students and student support staff. Increasingly, there are greater implications for students if courses are not completed, insufficient credit hours are pursued, and in instances when students change majors and programs. Students must take care to be assured they have sufficient aid for four-year study after pursuing two-year study. What’s more, the Excelsior Scholarship and TAP have specific benchmarks and minimum progress requirements that must be met to retain eligibility. Strides have been made in recent years to provide some degree of added transparency to the likely or estimated cost of study and the application of aid, however accompanying guidance has not been as consistently developed or published.
The Financial Aid and Student Accounts working group proposed and designed a prototype guidebook for use by students, faculty and staff. This critical resource provides plain language explanations of the various types of financial aid, key benchmarks and considerations for students, and suggested check-ins and guidance for maintaining their financial health. SUNY campuses should have uniform adoption of this guidebook to support students and financial aid and student accounts staff especially. The guidebook will be updated at least annually by SUNY financial aid experts.
In addition, uniform, standardized, and vetted transfer student financial aid and budgeting guidance should be developed in a template form, and be included on all campus sites. These audience-specific materials serve as a jumping off point that students can use to have fully informed conversations with financial aid advisors, student accounts staff, and their families to help effectively plan and budget for continuing study.
While students have indicated a lack of understanding of the multi-layered transfer policies and procedures, there is also evidence that faculty and staff struggle to understand the policies and the associated options available to students. Various studies, and internal surveying, have shown that faculty and staff throughout the country and within SUNY find it challenging to keep abreast of procedures and understand rapidly changing policies in the transfer landscape. Communication between transfer support offices both within and across institutions is often lacking, leading to a lack of awareness of local policies and making collaborative efforts more challenging.
Provide additional and on-going training and resources to support faculty and staff who assist transfer students. The following proposals are aligned with promoting clarity and transparency within policy by creating faculty-facing tools that can be easily accessed. These recommendations are highly related to the Comprehensive SUNY Transfer Support and Transition Portal recommendation, which will house additional faculty and staff resources.
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Faculty and Staff Transfer Library | Create a virtual transfer library that includes SUNY-developed guidebooks, national models, reports, papers and documentation that support transfer service development and best practices. A library could be maintained using SUNY’s current library services and made available via the SUNY Transfer Support and Transition Portal. |
| Improve Online Policy Repositories and Pages | Improve and consolidate the current transfer policies, and ‘archive’ or make explicit the policies that correspond to prior General Education or those that no longer apply under the General Education Framework. |
| Provide Structured Training and Badges | The task force recommends that SUNY provide opportunities for structured training focused explicitly on SUNY transfer policy, Seamless Transfer, the GETA and Transfer Paths. These sessions would be focused and could occur in addition to or as part of Communities of Practice or Advisor Certificate programs. |
When courses or credits do not transfer, or if a student believes they have not transferred properly, SUNY provides a means for students to appeal to SUNY System Administration, after they exhaust a campus appeal process. The multiple steps and requirements currently required is an unclear and lengthy process, and the burden of the appeal is entirely on a student. The level of support and direction that a student receives will vary from campus to campus, and many campuses do not list appeals as an option or have a formal process detailed in policy. These experiences suggest that publicizing the process and creating an abridged and visible resource that can connect students with campus staff may lead to better outcomes. Because campuses are responsive and amenable to reviewing these cases, by having a central tool where an advocate can assist, resolutions can be speedier, constructive, and more straightforward.
SUNY will create a central resolution / appeal tool that guides a student through the process. The resulting centralized tool will allow students to progress through an appeal using a step-by-step guide which bridges the student, SUNY and the campus. Support personnel at SUNY will ensure the student connects directly with the proper resources and advisors to exhaust their options prior to a full appeal. To achieve this, the Curriculum and Transfer Pathways working group advocated for exploring successful current models in other academic appeal cases, such as the approach used by NC-SARA. By providing a means to structure these interactions and in creating an environment for dialog and advocacy, student appeal outcomes and issue resolutions are likely to improve.
The lack of in-depth and comprehensive data related to transfer students - particularly student level data needed to assess transfer acceptance practices - was identified as a critical issue early on by the working groups. While there are some high-level indications of the impact of transfer practices, we lack the ability to assess practices in-depth, recognize patterns, or identify reasons for credit denial. In general, there was widespread agreement that additional data needs to be collected to fully assess efforts, and that both newly identified and already available data in student information systems and degree audit tools should be syndicated and made available more broadly.
Currently, system-wide campus course-to-course transfer equivalency data is not available via SIRIS or any SUNY-wide data system. As a result, SUNY is unable to create centralized tools or processes, and the University has no system-wide reporting for the purposes of assessment or the development of Transfer Paths. Multiple systems of higher education and states have developed public-facing comprehensive equivalency tools (Virginia, California, CUNY, Chicago City Schools, New Jersey etc.) that rely on the collection and assessment of course-to-course transfer equivalencies.
Utilize the SIRIS process or other data collection means to collect campus pre-defined equivalency data from student information systems. This data would include (at minimum): (1) the source and destination course subject, number and title, (2) the source and resulting course credits, (3) attributes, pre-requisites and dependencies, and (4) minimum grades and acceptance standards. Data should be centrally available via standard business intelligence tools, with reporting and file downloads available to campuses.
While SUNY captures and collects student level data for the purposes of reporting, compliance and development, transfer data is not collected to any significant degree. This means that SUNY and its campuses are unable to fully assess transfer programs and remain unable to effectively align programs across campus borders. Furthermore, SUNY and campuses are unable to reliably ascertain how many credits are accepted, nor are they able to recognize patterns, transfer issues or draw conclusions about the need to develop courses or new equivalencies to support transfer students.
Utilize the SIRIS process or other data collection means to collect student level data. The following data elements are requested and are present in all represented student information systems in use in the SUNY System. As previously indicated, student level data collection should be inclusive of all transfer course assessment. When courses are not accepted, a reason code should be provided indicating the reason for non-acceptance. For a complete list of recommended data elements to be requested, please see the appendix which provides a detailed chart. This is also highly related to the recommendation to collect early student indicators for early intervention.
To establish baseline information, and have common comparative data structures, standardized reporting and data standards must be devised for transfer information. Many of the transfer data standards may be defined by Institutional Research or may refer to standards that are already customarily used by prevailing organizations such as the National Student Clearinghouse and U.S. Department of Education.
Develop effective, consistent transfer reporting and assessment measures that can be analyzed with research conducted by leading transfer research organizations using the following data standards categories:
|
Element |
Details and Information |
|
Standardized Cohorts |
Establish standardized cohort models that can be used year-to-year to create consistent, comparable sets of data. Cohort models should align with the models used by the U.S. Department of Education (also widely used by CCRC, NISTS, NSC and the Aspen Institute). |
|
Standardized Transfer Student Categories |
Adopt and disseminate the SUNY Institutional Research transfer data definition, which conforms to national standards. Additionally, granular terms should be devised in concert with institutional research, and should be used consistently in reports, dashboards and communications. |
|
Standardized Descriptive Vocabulary and Data Dictionary |
Adopt a common nomenclature to effectively communicate policy, needs and information related to transfer students. This includes defining dual enrollment, dual admission, high school enrollment etc. |
Campuses have varying resources and differing abilities to create and collect transfer data. As part of the mission to make data readily available and the transfer landscape transparent, widely available dashboards and metrics should be available to all campuses, and should represent an official, standard set of measures.
Based on the expanded data collection recommended above, SUNY should publish centrally hosted dashboards focused explicitly on transfer students and transfer records. Currently, transfer data present on SUNY BI and Tableau are limited to the high-level data currently available due to SIRIS and some limited Degree Works information. Specifically, the following dashboards and reporting are recommended and reflect the needs and metrics requested or required by campuses.
|
Report or Dashboard |
Current Availability |
Details |
|
2023 General Education Approved Course Dashboard |
Yes |
Provide a revised, current general education dashboard to support transfer articulation of GE courses. |
|
Transfer Degree Works Reporting |
Yes |
Integrate Degree Works completion level data with transfer student records to gauge in-progress transfer success rates. |
|
Transfer Partner Dashboard |
Yes |
An improved dashboard that shows the top transfer schools by receiving campus and sending campus, with the ability to drill down into CIP areas, majors, etc. |
|
Transfer Course Acceptance Percentage |
No |
Provide a report or dashboard showing the average percentage of credits accepted upon transfer. |
|
Transfer Non-Acceptance Reason |
No |
Provide a report or dashboard showing what courses are not accepted by count, and reasons by count. |
|
Major Applicable Courses |
No |
A report showing the percentage of courses applied to the major upon transfer on average, with the ability to drill down into CIP areas, majors, etc. |
|
Transcript Reporting and Monitoring |
Unknown |
Create a report that provides transcript sending/receiving numbers. Use to identify transfer patterns and monitor transcript sending/receiving for the purposes of gauging IUT costs. |
The “Transfer Maze” has been a notable challenge not only for students, but for those who support them. Given that the U.S. Department of Education and key researchers such as the CCRC have begun publishing national comparative transfer numbers, it’s even more critical to be able to differentiate SUNY and its campuses and provide tools and metrics for public assessment of progress.
Create public, accessible and clear dashboards that compare SUNY campus outcomes within SUNY to the national average, as a significant way to publicize SUNY’s successes, while also being open and transparent about areas in need of improvement. Dashboards can serve as internal motivations to improve or better interrogate our transfer numbers and outcomes. Specific recommendations include:
|
Dashboard Element |
Details and Information |
|
SUNY-Wide Transfer Course Percentage Acceptance |
A report that shows SUNY’s average credit percentage acceptance rate when students transfer courses from an institution to SUNY. This should be able to be differentiated by source, including SUNY Community Colleges, SUNY lateral transfer, out of state etc. |
|
Transfer-In Rates |
Transfer-in rates at the System and at the campus level. Transfer-in schools should be able to be differentiated by source, including SUNY community colleges, SUNY lateral transfer, out of state etc. |
|
Transfer-Out Rates |
Transfer-out rates by source and destination internally for SUNY. |
|
Average and Median Time to Degree |
Using cross-institutional data, SUNY can enhance its existing time-to-degree metrics and provide a public-facing dashboard separated by campus and student category. |
|
Campus-to-Campus Transfer Relationships |
A dashboard showing the strongest transfer relationships between SUNY institutions. This should be viewable by campus and by region. |
|
Campus Transfer Program Enrollment |
A dashboard that identifies student enrollment count and outcomes based on specific campus-to-campus programs including dual enrollment/admission and cross-town partnerships. |