Transfer and Credit Mobility Initiative

The Transfer and Credit Mobility Initiative grew out of ECMC Foundation’s previous Catalyzing Transfer Initiative that tackled issues of student and credit mobility, totaling $23 million between 2015 and 2022. 

How students can effectively transfer between institutions of higher education, most notably from a community college to a four-year institution in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree, has been a persistent challenge since the birth of the U.S. community college movement more than 100 years ago. Despite progress, hurdles still abound, particularly in how institutions too often fail to offer clear-cut ways for students’ previous academic achievements to follow them. Given that this transfer pathway is used most often by students from underserved groups, strengthening it is key to ensuring that many more of these students have an opportunity to complete their bachelor’s degree.

The Transfer and Credit Mobility Initiative makes grants in three key areas: technology-enabled solutions (including machine learning and artificial intelligence) that give students greater agency in initiating and managing their educational journey, institutional incentives that create positive transfer-affirming campus cultures and effective state policymaking that better support transfer students.

Examples of our 2023 Transfer and Credit Mobility Initiative grants include:

• Taking Transfer National with Predictive Course Articulation ($800,000): Open Syllabus is leveraging machine learning to make rapid comparisons among courses at different institutions. The goal is to simplify the transfer process by reducing the burden on institutions to analyze course comparisons and provide students with reliable information about how courses transfer from one institution to another.

• Beyond Transfer: Leveraging Reputational and Financial Incentives to Build Will for Next-Level Improvements in Transfer and Credit Mobility ($740,000): Public Agenda is investigating how higher education accreditors might revise accreditation practice to encourage more effective credit transfer policies at colleges and universities, as well as centering transfer student outcomes as a national marker of institutional performance.

• The National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH): Taking Pilots to Scale ($500,000): Four university systems—the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, the Texas A&M University System and the University of Illinois System—have been testing a variety of approaches to increase student transfer rates, improve the process of course articulation and enhance student data sharing. In 2022, ECMC Foundation’s funding furthered the program’s goal of helping students transfer effectively between community colleges and four-year institutions, with outcomes including a 53% increase in transfer rates, the awarding of 2,400 credits to 456 students and a 300% increase in potential transfer students to four-year campuses. The renewal grant in 2023 continued that progress across all four systems. 

Throughout 2024, the effectiveness of states’ roles in advancing transfer reform will take further precedence, including the identification of “next generation” policies that show promise in advancing transfer student success, especially for students from underserved groups.