The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia moved forward on a new reform initiative tocreate more uniform courses and help ease the transfer process for Virginia community college students in a meeting March 8.
The initiative, which is being led by the Council's Academic Affairs Committee, is an effort to make transferring from community colleges to four-year institutions easier, Stephen Scott, a representative for SCHEV, said.
"It is an effort to make the transfer process a more seamless process," Scott said.
Core courses are uniform for all two-year colleges in the Virginia community college system, but this is not true for four-year institutions.
The Council is now awaiting surveys from four-year institutions that outline which courses taken at two-year institutions transfer to their respective schools and how many credits are given for those courses.
"It's up to each institution to say what each one of those courses mean to them," Scott said.
Information gathered from four-year institutions will be incorporated into an online transfer tool. With this Web site, students will be able to identify what credits they will receive for their courses at each institution.
SCHEV hopes to make this information available by July, Scott said. For now, Virginia four-year institutions offer other assistance to transfer students, including guides for students seeking to transfer.
The University already has created an online transfer credit database which lists credits given for courses from a number of schools across the country.
Students entering the University from community colleges within the Virginia system are not hampered by credit transfers, said College Transfer Dean John Papovich.
"In fact, it's probably easier for students to transfer credits from within the Virginia system than not," Papovich said.
Efforts to make transferring easier for students are in accordance with a bill passed in 2004 (House Bill 989) in which the General Assembly directed SCHEV to identify courses available at two-year institutions that are transferable to four-year institutions.
"This is a policy to make sure that students are aware of what their options are when they are going to senior institutions and what credits they will get," Scott said.
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