Report: Demand is high for easy, universal credit-transfer system
Staff report
columbus
A report released last week by the Ohio Board of Regents shows strong student demand for simple, universal transfer between Ohio’s public colleges as well as wide use of the state’s comprehensive credit-transfer system to reduce costs and build personalized educational pathways.
“Students want a guarantee that when they take a course at a public college or university, it will count no matter where their educational path leads,” said Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut. “We are leveraging the full strength of Ohio’s world-class higher education infrastructure to provide more options to students, incentivize quality, and drive down student costs.”
Transfer is a major building block of Ohio’s system of higher education. Among students from the 2001 freshman class, more than 23 percent transferred at some point in their education.
The number of transfers has grown 21 percent since then and is expected to continue to rise with strong growth in community-college enrollments and strategic efforts to link those students and those within the adult education network to low-cost bachelor’s degree programs.
Annually, students saved $20.1 million by transferring community college credits to four-year universities.
These students also show increasing course completion and graduation rates over the time span of the report.
This demonstrates that a strong transfer system not only saves students money, but helps eliminate the inefficiency of uncompleted degrees.
The full report is available online at http://regents.ohio.gov/transfer/research/.