PENNSYLVANIA Program makes college transfers easy

Students must meet requirements for the Academic Passport program.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Caryn Lange thought she would get a huge break on private college tuition when she decided to take a year's worth of community-college courses while she was still in high school.
To her dismay, shortly after she had been accepted by Bucknell University, Lange discovered that the accounting major she'd set her heart on was closed to transfer students.
She decided to continue her studies at Harrisburg Area Community College and then transfer to Shippensburg University, a state school.
Despite the last-minute switch, Lange, 20, has stayed on track. She is scheduled to graduate from Shippensburg, one of 14 universities in the State System of Higher Education, this month.
Lange is among a few hundred state-system students who have taken advantage of the Academic Passport, a 4-year-old program intended to simplify the transfer process and improve the odds that those who transfer can finish their bachelor's degrees on time.
"I'd have to give it pretty high marks," she said. "I can think of maybe four or five classes that, had I not gotten into the passport program, I would have had to take again when I got to Shippensburg."
Standard state system transfers require students to apply for admission to a university, which then decides on a course-by-course basis how many credits to accept.
The Academic Passport is designed to guarantee automatic transfers to students with associate's degrees, provided they meet certain academic requirements.
While the number of students using the program has grown steadily each year since it was introduced in 1999, they still represent a minority of all transfer students.
Usage figures
In 2002, out of more than 2,000 community college students who transferred to state system schools, only 361 -- less than one-fifth -- used the Academic Passport, according to state system Chancellor Judy Hample. About 220 used the program to transfer in 1999.
"When you look at those numbers, you see it's a relatively small percentage, but I don't know why that is," Hample said.
State system and community college officials have formed a special committee that is examining ways to improve the transfer process and increase the use of the Academic Passport program, system spokesman Tom Gluck said.
The program, which also allows students to transfer from one state system school to another, enables community-college students with associate's degrees to transfer up to 45 general education and liberal-arts credits.
There are some caveats: Students must have a minimum 2.0 grade-point average to qualify for the passport, and community-college students with associate's degrees must have earned at least 30 liberal arts credits. Credits from occupational and vocational courses usually will not transfer.
And each university determines whether to apply transfer credits to a student's general education requirements, to apply them to the student's major or to count them as electives.
According to state system records, not all students who transfer under the Academic Passport as juniors finish their bachelor's degrees in two years.
The system's average two-year graduation rate for Academic Passport students enrolled in the fall of 1999 was 32 percent; the average three-year graduation rate was 61 percent.
The system's average four-year graduation rate for students who entered as freshmen in 1997 and graduated in 2001 was 24 percent.
At Shippensburg
Shippensburg's dean of admissions, Joe Cretella, said that, though the university has forged a long-standing academic advising relationship with Harrisburg Area Community College transfer students, the Academic Passport provides an added bonus in smoothing the way.
"It seems like we have a very good structure in place, and the students feel like they're being taken care of," he said.
James Linksz, president of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, a nonprofit lobbying organization representing the state's 14 community colleges, says the state system needs to do more to ensure that all community college students can successfully pursue bachelor's degrees.
Linksz, who is also president of Bucks County Community College in suburban Philadelphia, said the system's decentralization, which enables each university to set its own specific admissions requirements, can be frustrating.
"The passport is a good idea conceptually, and it's certainly the basis for further productive and positive movement, but it's unlikely to succeed in the long term, given the current culture of the university system," he said.
What works best
Mary Fourlas, a transfer adviser at HACC, said an ideal state-system transfer policy would simply recognize a community-college degree as a ticket to any school -- provided that the major is an academic discipline, rather than a technical one -- instead of requiring a match on a course-by-course basis.
"To me, our associate's degree is a very healthy degree. It has a very healthy range of general education requirements, and if you're going into a parallel program at a state system school, it should be accepted," she said.
For community-college students who are not eligible for or do not use the Academic Passport program, transfers tend to be easier between schools that are near each other and naturally work together, Hample said. The campuses of Shippensburg and HACC, for example, are within an hour's drive of each other.
"In a situation where our university has a physical presence on the community college campus, the students who are transferring find it to be an extremely compatible experience," Hample said.
Hample also agrees with Linksz's assessment that there is room for improvement, which she said system officials are discussing.
"It's a discussion that's still percolating right now, largely because of the autonomy that the universities have. On one hand, you can have great respect for that, but we do need to find ways to be more accommodating," she said.