The expectation sounds reasonable enough: A student takes classes at a two-year community college in the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system and assumes the credits will count when she transfers to another MnSCU school.
But some of the credits don’t transfer for one reason or another or they’re counted as electives instead of required courses. Now what?
As tuition inflation in the nation continues to outpace price inflation at least 2-to-1 by some measures, the credit-transfer issue is particularly annoying to students (and their parents) who are turning to more-affordable community colleges for their first two years.
This morning, a House and Senate conference committee was supposed to take up the issue in a hearing on the omnibus higher education policy bill. But the hearing was canceled late Wednesday after on-again, off-again announcements. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s unallotment ruling on Wednesday has disrupted the usual flow of activity.
“We are really, really, absolutely in a holding pattern,” a legislative aide told me.
After the veto
Last Friday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed a separate bill that would have forced MnSCU to clear up problems cited in a legislative auditor’s report and in student surveys. Despite that veto, the House version of the omnibus bill requires MnSCU’s Board of Trustees to “develop and implement a plan to improve credit transfers within the system.”
Language in the House’s omnibus bill says MnSCU’s plan must:
• “Enhance the availability of easily used information on transferring and tracking credits;
• “Improve training for all staff involved with credit transfer;
• “Identify barriers to transferring credits including intellectual property issues for
faculty and devise methods to eliminate these barriers; and
• “Identify discrepancies in the treatment of transferring and accepting credits by various institutions within the system and devise methods to improve the uniform treatment of credit transfers.”
But is a new law really necessary to fix the problem? Some say yes, others say no.
“This bill is unnecessary because the credit transfer issues identified by the Legislative Auditor, MnSCU staff, and students are being addressed through internal actions and policy changes,” Pawlenty wrote in his veto message.
Seamless transfer
So, what is MnSCU doing to satisfy the governor’s office, legislators and students that a seamless transfer system is in the works?
“We have … commitments from our board of trustees that transfer is a very high priority for them,” said Linda Baer, MnSCU’s senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs. “We have over half a million credits transferring every year and of those, 90 percent are accepted. So, there’s a high level of exchange of these credits already and much of it is working. We’re also committed to continually improving what’s going on” and to address students’ expectations about which credits will transfer.
That rate of rejection and anecdotal stories seem to draw the most attention.
State Sen. Tarryl Clark, whose district includes St. Cloud State University and St. Cloud Technical and Community College, is a co-author of the bill sent to the governor.
“This is a common-sense fix to a problem students have been facing since the MnSCU system was created 15 years ago,” Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, told the St. Cloud Times. “My own children have had difficulty transferring course credits, and this solution should ease that process for all MnSCU students.”
‘Smart transfer toolkit’
This fall, MnSCU plans to offer “a smart transfer toolkit” for students, Baer said. “It helps them understand how to best prepare for a transfer experience, who they should be talking to, and the idea of appeals if a course doesn’t initially get approved for transfer.”
A survey by the Minnesota State College Student Association found that 67 percent of student respondents weren’t aware of the appeals process.
“We were really surprised to find out how many students didn’t know about the appeals process that’s available when a student transfers — but of the students that did know, they had a successful appeals process,” said Travis Johnson, president of the student association, which represents 100,000 students in MnSCU’s 25 two-year institutions.
Johnson, a 23-year-old sophomore at Lake Superior College in Duluth, decided not to appeal after some of his credits from Hibbing Community College were not counted toward his program. “They were accepted as electives instead so that means I took courses that never even really counted toward anything,” he said.
Another survey finding that stood out to Baer: 40 percent of the student respondents didn’t seek advice about transferring. “They just decided that when they wanted to transfer, they’d transfer and they didn’t ask anybody about how to make it successful. One of the answers as to why transfers are moving along is that we have built a network of transfer specialists. Each campus has a transfer specialist, there’s a website and there is an appeals process.”
MnSCU offers information about transferring through a website called Minnesota Transfer as well as its frequently asked questions on the system’s website. The student association also offers tips.
A complex process
“I think awareness is the biggest piece” for students trying to navigate the system, said Johnson. “There are tools to do that, but they don’t know about the tools that are out there.”
Plus, he and others say, trying to transfer credits is a complex process.
“It’s a very complicated issue, and it’s going to take a lot of careful thought, but can we do better? Absolutely,” says MnSCU spokeswoman Melinda Voss. “So, we’re going to do better, and we’re going to improve the system whether there’s a law about it or not.”
Monte Bute, an associate professor of sociology at Metropolitan State University, doesn’t think legislation is needed to improve MnSCU’s credit-transfer system. Bute served four years on MnSCU’s Transfer Oversight Committee and has represented the Inter Faculty Organization (a union for MnSCU’s faculty at four-year universities) at legislative hearings.
“All 32 schools went through an elaborate process” to figure out equivalent courses at each institution, Bute said. “In my department (social science) we figured out every equivalency of our courses at every other school. A student can go online and see the exact equivalency, so it’s a no-brainer.”
Still, he acknowledges that MnSCU’s website is difficult to navigate and needs improvement.
Students also need to take more responsibility for their choices, he said, explaining that changing majors and/or not seeking help from advisers puts them at risk.
“They want retroactive immunity from ever having made a mistake,” Bute said. “We can’t guarantee that.”
Protecting intellectual property
The biggest concern for faculty, according to Bute, is protecting intellectual property, i.e. their course syllabuses (syllabi for Latin sticklers), from being widely available on the Internet.
“They want us to put our syllabi online,” he explained. “All these third-rate schools [online for-profits in particular] and inept teachers can poach our high-quality work.” The union has no objection to providing syllabuses to individual students, he said.
Bute calls the language in the omnibus bill about eliminating barriers to transferring credits “a red herring.”
“It implies that intellectual property rights are a barrier to transfer. That is patently false. Intellectual property rights are not a barrier to transfer,” he said. “Local campus administrators already have all the materials needed to determine transferability. This is not rocket science. … In truth, this whole issue has been a thinly disguised attempt to usurp faculty intellectual property rights via legislation. These are matters to be addressed in contract negotiations, not at the Legislature.”
Seamless transfer is the goal, Johnson says.
“Whatever we can do to get students transferring as seamlessly as possible,” he said. “I understand their (faculty) concerns, but if what they have can help students move on and get a degree, it’s kind of vital.”
Later this month, the student association will present more survey analysis to MnSCU’s Board of Trustees.
“The system is definitely making some great headway,” Johnson said.
So, is a bill still necessary to accomplish the goal?
“I don’t know that a bill is necessary,” he said. “We were disappointed to see it (Clark’s bill) was vetoed. But we’re pretty hopeful that the Board of Trustees is going to take some clear direction on this.”
Of course legislation is not the best way to fix this “problem.” But since when has that fact stopped legislators?
Many public educational institutions don’t seem to be able to do the right thing until the legislative gun is to their head…
Light rail and eminent domain comes to mind. Remarkable how even discussing the matter got some people of the dime. If higher ed can’t work this out – and fast – then legislation is appropriate.
I am also amused by the claim that a syllabus is some sort of high quality piece of work that people are worried about being poached. The last I heard a syllabus is a list of topics to be discussed and perhaps readings. The real work is in preparing and delivering the content. Is there some problem with being clear about the topics covered in a course as described by a syllabus? Does the University of Phoenix covet your syllabus?
Somehow I don’t think so.
On syllabi:
It’s been a good while since I looked at intellectual property law on the subject, but last I looked employee creations were the property of the employer unless there was a written agreement reversing that rule. That still seems to be the case.
http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownership-issues-underlying-the-work-made-for-hire-doctrine.html
So, my first question is “Why have we given ownership of syllabi to faculty?” There may be valid reasons, but none leap to my mind at the moment.
It appears that the University of Maryland, at least, has done so as well. But it also seems to have found a reasonable method of prortecting the value of that property while still making it readily available to those with a legitimate need for it.
http://www.education.umd.edu/infofor/facultystaff/sylcopy.html
In Minnesota, access might have to be expanded to all MNSCU students, but that shouldn’t be a terribly difficult hurdle to overcome.
I’m an associate professor at SCSU. As someone inside a public education institution I can answer some of the questions raised by the two posts above. First, intellectual property includes not only syllabi, but course content, research, publications, and creative work (literature, performances, visual art, etc.). Second, faculty control of intellectual property is part of our contract with the state. I believe the University of Minnesota and many other public higher ed institutions have similar provisions. You’ll find a lack of this provision in for-profit private institutions. It’s a significant difference in the working environments of these institutions. For one thing, it means that faculty can teach unpopular viewpoints, conduct controversial research, and produce provocative works of art. That’s not happening at private, for-profits. Third, yes, the University of Phoenix could very well “covet” our syllabi for the same reason students copy papers off the internet: it’s easier than doing the work yourself. More importantly, it’s cheaper. Private, for-profits offer bargain-basement payment to instructors while charging boutique prices to students. So poaching syllabi is a way to increase their profit margin.
“Many public educational institutions don’t seem to be able to do the right thing until the legislative gun is to their head…”
—Bill Gleason on MinnPost 05/06
After taking many years on my personal quest to attain my degree, the greatest hurdle I experienced was transferring course credits from the UofM to the final school toward my dream. The labyrinthine and byzantine credit transfer policies of the UofM made this grown man cry.
All UofM coursework was was supposed to be full credit, core required, and non-remedial. But, the U made all courses taken through the [then] General College pre-major curriculum cores-all prerequisites and subject to sub-par credit! Since I was attending Metro State in St.Paul, the academic advisers, with few exceptions, worked out basically all the credit transfer problems with the U..
Now the system of transferring academic course credits between state universities and colleges has become a royal pain in any transferring students’ glutei maximi!(*) What credits may transfer to one state school may not transfer with another. The UofM is the worst and most prolific antagonist of this gallimauphric transfer nightmare.
Maple Syrup in January moves faster than the UofM, MnSCU, and all the rhetoric that has been expounded on credit transfer issues for the past three or four decades.
My personal research has revealed, Metropolitan State University has given all and any MN transfer students diligent due full credit whenever humanly possible. The same cannot be said for the UofM or several MnSCU institutions when considering transfer credits from Metro State.
Example: A student taking a required upper level English Literature [major]course taught by the subject’s instructor [on adjunct faculty] at one school receives fewer credits [in transfer] when the student changes institutions to pursue further English [major] course study. Did I mention that the English Lit. instructor is the same teacher!?? The teacher in question is a tenured professor at the state school the student transferred to!–Same course, same semester system, same textbook, and same instructor. What Gives!
Though the final university had the stronger major curriculum, why was the school where the student pursued the core major curriculum requisites; taught on the same academic level with possibly the same instructors; given less credit in transfer? That’s the crux of the problem facing students trying to make the most of the their educational pursuits.
Institutional or political idiosyncrasies have no place in deciding how academic course credits get processed. However, it is time for higher [non-academic] responsible authority, IE the legislature, to correct this archaic inane system of credit transfer hassles and/or academic institutional snobbery. It’s time for Minnesota’s higher education institutions to get with the program of 21st Century standards in consistent academic excellence.
As quoted before:
“Many public educational institutions don’t seem to be able to do the right thing until the legislative gun is to their head…”
RE: Jenifer Tuder’s comments.
In essence I agree with what you commented. But, eliminating all outside, out-of-state, and extraneous academic or political arguments let’s level and equalize this discussion field to only the public state institutions of higher education. That is where the main crux of the transfer credits issues lay.
A modern MN student pursuing a [Bachelors] degree full-time, being on a four completion year track goal, has a snowball’s chance in Hades of completing that goal if he/she has to work, or possibly raise a family, or, heaven forbid, transfer to another school to continue further studies.
Why isn’t the tow year “CORE” state requisite degree courses given the same transfer weight[credits] among “all” state colleges or universities with no exceptions except grades? Forget, all the rhetorical rig-a-ma-roll what is the problem with Minnesota’s higher education academic standards among its schools.
Why must a student pursuing educational aspirations be held back in credits when meeting all the requisite requirements ask of him/her when transferring?
Again I am not debating the premise of your cogent points when applied to all the issues and schools, private or public. What I am trying to point out that the vast majority of MN students going to “public” state higher education institutions, in most cases, will have to make a transfer or two to attain their degree.
Why must they be hampered by archaic ineffective transfer standards between state schools? Until you have experienced this transfer trauma and travesty, first hand, it doesn’t bode well for a hard working deserving student. That’s the problem on the table for discussion!
I appreciate Ms. Tudor’s response to my question regarding ownership of intellectual property rights and have no real problem with faculty ownership of the intellectual property that they create. I would suggest, however, that faculty contracts provide for the use of syllabi and similar material by the employers in a manner in which the material is available for legitimate use by enrollees in MNSCU programs, as I suggested above.
In her defense, Mr. Farrell’s comments seem to take Ms. Tudor to task on points she hasn’t addressed. That aside, he makes many good points as well.
(My interest in the subject is based on my son’s up-coming high school graduation. I suspect we’ll be looking at this issue from a very personal perspective at some time in the next few years.)