SPEAKER_00
ASEE's Race and Ethnicity and Higher Education Project has released the 2024 STAVIS report and updated the accompanying website. Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the report provides an updated overview of key topics in higher education, including undergraduate and graduate student enrollment, completion, student debt, and financing, by race and ethnicity. Explore the findings and download the report at www.

equityandhirehead.org. Hello and welcome to .edu, the Higher Education Policy Podcast from the American Council on Education.

On today's episode, we're going to be joined by two very special guests, Ann Holton and Ann Cress, who are both members of ASEE's Task Force on Transfer of Credit. But before we get to that conversation, I'd like to introduce my co-host, my delightful co-host, my esteemed co-host, Sarah Spritzer and Mushtack Gunja. Hello, hello, treasured colleagues.

How are you today?

SPEAKER_02
Wow, we're really laying down thick today, John. I'm a little nervous.

SPEAKER_00
I am mostly trying to draw out this introduction as long as possible to make our producers exceptionally nervous. That's a little inside joke for people listening, but how are you both?

SPEAKER_01
I am good. I spent the weekend watching a lot of college basketball, both men's and women's, and I watched a lot with my kids, who I have trained to yell madness. Anytime somebody makes a shot in the last two minutes, and in both the Stanford, South Carolina game and the UCLA Gonzaga game, there were a lot of shots made in the final couple of minutes.

So we are all screamed out.

SPEAKER_00
Yes, it was a very entertaining weekend of basketball. And sadly, as we record this national championship game was last night, which did not quite live up to the run up to it, but we have

SPEAKER_01
a new national champion. So. Well, John, the men's championship game was last night. Yes, yes, fair point.

But the women's game was fabulous. Fantastic. Very good point.

So and our president, Ted Mitchell is very happy because the Stanford cardinal came out victorious, and he and his family have long and deep roots with Stanford. So good weekend of basketball all

SPEAKER_00
around. And Sarah, since you clearly weren't watching basketball, were you doing anything at all?

SPEAKER_02
Just no, actually enjoying the end of the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. avoiding the title basin, but admiring the cherry blossoms in my neighborhood. And speaking of cherry blossoms,

SPEAKER_00
a gift from a foreign nation, few things happening as we approach the fall involving foreign students

SPEAKER_02
coming to this country. Did you like that segue? That was a great transition. And it made me wonder if we need to report the cherry blossom trees on our section 117 foreign gift reporting.

Yeah. So well, I think this goes along with kind of the larger conversation everyone's having about the fall. You know, we saw this week that Cornell and Rutgers announced that students would have to provide proof of vaccination returning to campus.

And more importantly, for international students, they're going to have to demonstrate that they received a US approved vaccine. So it's unclear how that's going to impact international students. But you know, we had sent a letter about three weeks ago to the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security about thinking forward in the fall and how to get our international students here if our campuses are able to reopen.

And we're having a lot of follow up conversations. But really, you know, it's very dependent on health and safety. And because a lot of the vaccine roll out and you know, what's happening with infection rate is based country to country.

It's very difficult, I think, to figure out sort of broadly what's going to happen. So for instance, we've heard from the State Department that they're having conversations country to country about travel restrictions. And so, you know, we currently have an exemption for students who want to travel from Europe to the United States if they're holding a valid student visa.

And our students are allowed to travel to Europe if they have a valid visa to go study. But it's harder in the other countries. And, you know, I think it's interesting, because I think there's a lot of places, there's a lot of countries that are nervous about accepting US visitors, right? Our infection rate is, is, is, is a lot higher than other countries.

So, you know, we're going to continue to monitor that very closely. The biggest thing is whether or not our consulates can re reopen in a lot of those countries, because they're going to have to process the student visas and schedule interviews for, for new applications. And it's just unclear when that's going to happen or what the timeline is

SPEAKER_00
going to be. And, and, sir, I know you will be tracking this very closely, not just as a expert in the area and as part of your professional responsibility, but to see if you can actually get your long delayed family vacation to England off the grounds this year.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I'm starting to have a lot of, a lot of doubts about that. And whether I need to just scrap that and try and find a beach house at the end of August. But yes, I think, I think everyone's wondering what's going to happen with travel plans.

And, you know, John, talking about the vaccine, I know that our general counsel just put out a great brief regarding kind of an outline on vaccine requirements and what campuses can can expect in the fall or if they're considering requiring vaccines, what that means for their campus. And I know we'll post that on the podcast web page.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the short answer on that, I think is that it's complicated, you know, and if you're looking for sort of a clear yes or no, yes, we can definitely require vaccines or no, we definitely cannot. You're not going to find that instead, you're going to find a whole lot of nuance and a great set of questions for for campuses to ask themselves as they're thinking about whether they they want to and can sort of require vaccines to come back on campus. So yeah, it'll be, there's an added layer of complication with our international students.

But I think our campuses have a whole lot of thinking to do before the fall on the on the domestic side as well. I mean, luckily, it's a good problem to have, right, because it looks like our vaccine rule out in this country is going exceptionally quickly. I think I read this morning that we're up to 3 million doses a week.

I'm sorry, three million doses a day and maybe over four over four on Saturday. Yeah, I mean, it's just remarkably good. So let's hope that that infection rate comes down a little bit with all these vaccines that are going.

Hey, John, what's going on with infrastructure? So, you know, it's infrastructure week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00
So is it going to happen? What what is happening? Yeah, I mean, so I laugh because this is sort of a running joke in Washington, but it really it's been infrastructure week. It looks like it's going to be infrastructure month for the next couple months. The president sort of rapidly following up on the American Rescue Act, which was the emergency relief bill, lots of money for COVID testing and vaccinations and things like that, including $40 billion for students and colleges is following that up with a massive $2.

3 trillion infrastructure proposal. And, you know, Sarah, you know, I would encourage to jump in a lot of this money is going into the areas of research and innovative new fields. It's across a lot of different areas.

But I think, you know, the thing that really struck me when I looked at it is how much of this is touching on higher education in different ways. So, you know, there's research money and historically lots of R&D money finds its way to campuses because we do the research. But there's very specific portions of it for scientific research infrastructure and especially scientific research infrastructure at HBCUs and other MSIs support for research at those institutions, workforce training programs that are specific to community colleges and that other colleges may also participate in.

And then even a pool of infrastructure funding, $12 billion just for community colleges. So, really, it's a $2.3 trillion bill, the Biden team summary of it, which is really a paragraph or two for each thing runs about 25 pages.

It's a huge complicated thing. But point by point by point, when you walk through it, higher education pops up in one way or the other, just sort of really demonstrating how inextricably linked our institutions are to any economic recovery. So, it's an impressive proposal.

And it's the president's proposal and now it goes to Congress and who knows what's going to happen, it goes to Congress. It's a much less certain future than the

SPEAKER_02
last bill was, that's for sure. Well, it really is. It seeks to make historic investments in areas that I think would reshape parts of U.

S. society, almost like the New Deal. And so, when you look at the research money, it's $250 billion overall for research.

Some of that money would go to infrastructure for labs and research facilities, especially at HBCUs and MSIs. But then there's also historic investments in things like climate change research. And some of it is also kind of a wish list for this White House.

And I don't know, both of you have probably been reading about how it's been perceived by the progressives, that it thinks that they believe that it doesn't go far enough and that you could actually triple, quadruple it. And it would, in order to kind of make that historic investment on a lot of those

SPEAKER_00
priorities. Yeah, which it's important to keep in mind too, this is the first of two of these infrastructure bills. This one's really focused on physical infrastructure.

So there are lots of things about clean water systems and broadband access across country. Transportation is a huge element of it, building roads and highways and rail lines and things like that. The second piece, which we may be seeing details of as soon as next week, that's sort of the current rumor that the administration will start releasing those details next week, is more of a human infrastructure component, workforce development and capital improvement in our workforce.

And that's the one, I think very famously people have probably already heard, this was leaked a while ago, that there'll be two components of that. The first, probably the most attention getting that in our world is Free Community College, a federal Free Community College state partnership program. But also along with that, actually a partnership program to make tuition at HBCUs and other MSIs either wholly or mostly free for students.

So it's a really, you know, huge, would represent a quantum leap forward in the federal government's role in funding higher education, even if it's not the full, and Sarah's thoughts about progressive sort of prompted this, not the full goal of some folks on that side that would be free universal college, but it's a massive step forward. And again, another huge investment in higher education

SPEAKER_02
that we'll be seeing in relatively short order. And that's next week, we're going to see details along with, right, the skinny budget. Skinny budget is this week, supposedly.

SPEAKER_00
Supposedly. This week, okay. It was supposed to be last week, now it's supposed to be this week.

SPEAKER_02
So. Yeah, and that's the president's budget proposal for the annual appropriation bills. And then also coming up is we are likely going to see some sort of massive China bill in the Senate being put forward by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, which is going to seek to make an enormous investment to kind of out compete China in the area of research and development by really increasing funding at the National Science Foundation, and creating a new technology directorate.

But along with that, I think for universities, we may see some legislation regarding section 117 foreign gift reporting, more provisions around Confucius Institutes and requirements for institutions that have Confucius Institutes. And then finally, I'm tracking really closely and I'm worried that we may see some things around student visas. So we're going to watch that very closely.

And obviously, we don't have the bill text yet. It's going to be introduced probably next week, and it's just going to be massive and it's unclear what the house is going to do. But it's going to be, it's going to be a busy week next week when Congress comes back.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, a lot of big things in the pipeline. The one thing I think that as we talk about all these different proposals and large spending areas and support for higher education that we haven't seen yet, that we are still hopeful may work its way back into the conversation is doubling the Pell grant. And this is not new to people listening to this podcast.

We've talked about this a bunch of times, but AC worked with a lot of other organizations to put together a letter to send to Congress and just share our views on the importance of doubling Pell really as the critical component, the first step in making college affordable for students. And I'll say to both of you, now that the letter is done and out, was kind of shocked at exactly the response we got. We put these letters forward a lot of times and you'll get 50 associations on an Association letter one, or you'll get a few hundred institutions that might join the letter that's open to those institutions.

On this one, we had a little under 1200 total signers, over 300 organizations, nearly 900 colleges and universities signed on. It was an amazing response. And I think it's one of those things where it was such a strong response.

It's a pretty telling statement about how universal the support is for this, how well understood the importance of making Pell grants, restoring their ability to help low-income students access and afford colleges and how that's not something that's one sector of higher education or one group of people. There's no split view on this. Groups that honestly on that list, never agree on anything, agree on this.

And it was really great to see and really great to be a part of. So that letter is up on our website. I'm sure we'll link to it on the show notes for this.

But hopefully that'll help start moving that policy discussion in that direction and we'll have better and more news to report on that later. There is so much to talk about guys, but I don't think we really have enough time to cover everything else, especially since we have a really, really, I think, engaging conversation about an issue that's very much in the public's attention, especially after the pandemic, transfer of credit and the results of the AC task force. So we're going to be joined by Ann Holton and Ann Cress to talk about those issues in greater detail in just a few minutes.

Ann, welcome back. We are joined by our very special guest today, Ann Holton and Ann Cress. Dr. Cress is the president of Northern Virginia Community College and Ann Holton is the former president of George Mason University and currently a professor in education and policy there. And more importantly to our discussion or maybe not more importantly, but certainly more central to our discussion today, you're also both members of the national task force on the transfer and award of credit, which was convened by a CE around issues around transfer of credit and higher education.

And we know this because we had a conversation before we started recording this conversation about this. And one of the things that struck me when we were just talking to you and getting some background is you both have these really, I mean, rich and diverse educational backgrounds and professional backgrounds that in a lot of ways, at least to my mind, made you uniquely suited to serve in these roles. And so I thought maybe a great place to start was sort of give you the chance to talk a little bit about how you both came to this and touch on your background and what's led you to inform your participation in this task force work.

And either one can go first. I don't want to, maybe it's easier if I direct it, but feel free to jump right in.

SPEAKER_03
Sure. Well, I'll start. So I've been working, this is Anne Kress, I should say, and I've been working in community colleges my whole career.

And transfer is incredibly important to community colleges. It is important to our students. The vast majority of students who start in a community college have a goal of completing a bachelor's degree, which means that transfer of credit is part of what they're looking for.

So, you know, I've worked in community colleges in the state of Florida, in New York, and now in Virginia. And what's interesting is that every single state does transfer a little bit differently, hence the work of this task force and why it's so important. It is also incredibly institutional dependent.

So I've discovered that. But the one thing that I would put at the center of this is the student, right? I've worked with students my whole career, some of whom have been able to transfer very easily, some of whom have lost credits. I've seen what that does to their own timeline for degrees.

So this is really a passion of mine.

SPEAKER_04
And yeah, John, I'm happy to jump in. I am newer to higher ed policy than Anne Kress and have loved learning with her, including on this task force. My background in K-12 education led me to a role as the Secretary of Education in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

In 2014 through 2016, prior to that, I worked briefly in the community college system, so got a little taste of the community college perspective, and then have been at George Mason University since then, with a one year interim role as president of George Mason University, the largest and most diverse public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I had the opportunity partly because I was interim there. I think the ACE folks asked me and Tim White, who was soon to be emeritus as Chancellor at the CSU system to lead the task force, thinking we might have some time on our hands in our former roles.

SPEAKER_00
Maybe a little more freedom to speak to in the former role. There you go. Always a benefit.

And I think one of the things you've both touched on and Anne K, just for ease of reference, this idea of being student-centered, which comes up in so many contexts in higher education, is really frankly very positive development when you're thinking about institutional practices. But particularly this idea of student-centered around some of these transfer of credit, I think you could think of as sort of a kind of an academic procedural thing, but the importance of it goes way beyond administrative process, right? It starts to touch on these issues about completion and affordability and equity in higher education. And can you talk a little bit about either both through your own experiences and your experiences on task force,

SPEAKER_03
how this work has touched on those issues? Sure. Absolutely. I'll start with a story.

So I've been at NOVA, which is what we call Northern Virginia Community College, for a little bit more than a year. And when I was going through the interview process for the presidency, I would encounter students who were part of the advanced partnership that we have with Mason, and I'm sure we'll touch on that. But the one thing every single student said to me when I said, where are you transferring? And they would say, I'm going to Mason.

I'm part of advance 100% of my credits transfer. That was the one thing consistently that they said. And to me, that's everything.

Because what you've really heard from students then is how important that is. We tell students, start a community college, it's more affordable, it's more accessible. But if at the end of the day, you're going to lose credits on transfer, maybe the advice that you got wasn't as strong as it could have been.

And so you took classes that aren't going to transfer, and you couldn't have known that. I think that's really when we start to hit into affordability issues, equity issues, when we understand that the majority of students at NOVA, for example, are Latinx and African American and Asian. So we are a very diverse institution that students who are looking for that equity and access to education frequently will start at community colleges.

But if they can't move those credits forward, then that's a challenge. And I think that's one of the things that the task force really honed in on, is that this is an equity concern. It's an affordability concern.

For us to get this right, community college to four-year college, four-year college to four-year college, it's going to impact our students' future in very

SPEAKER_04
real ways. I love Ann's example of that. I love your story, Ann, because one of the things that shows is the importance of transparency.

And I got to tell you that most students at most community colleges, when they start out, know nothing about transfer of credit. They're not even thinking about it. It's not on their radar.

So obviously, your NOVA counselors, not only are doing a good job helping make the credits transfer, but also helping students be aware of those issues, so as they make their own decisions about course selection, et cetera, they've got it on their radar. I'll just chime into your question, John, with saying I think one of the biggest changes and exciting changes in higher education over the last few decades has been the great expansion of access to low-income students and students of color. And that's been a great thing, but a huge part of it, of first-gen students as well, but a huge part of that growth has been the explosion of the community colleges.

Most community colleges are a less than 50-year-old construct, and within the last few decades have grown exponentially, but with that growth, and a lot of that growth, has been low-income students. So we're telling everybody now, you got to do something post-secondary, actually for a long time there, we were telling everybody, you got to do college post-secondary, and yet that's not accessible financially for many people, and so low-income students go to the easiest point financially, starting out at community colleges, great place to start, but only if it's a place where you can finish, successfully finish a degree there, and if it is your goal, transfer on and successfully finish at a four-year. So this transfer of credit issue is right at the heart of that.

Yeah, and it's such an interesting,

SPEAKER_00
we talked in the intro about doubling Pell as a component of affordability, right, and doubling Pell by and large would make most community colleges essentially free if you have a $13,000 Pell grant. You know, community colleges are already remarkably affordable, and so you talk about this transfer path, I was struck and Cress about the point of, you know, students who knew 100% of their credits are going to transfer. I assume that has some implication on their choices too, that if they know that that's a possibility, then they're thinking about, they're thinking about moving to an, not just entering the higher ed space, but sort of moving through.

Has that been the experience you've seen, or, you know, does it help shift a student's choices? It does shift their choices,

SPEAKER_03
you know, just yesterday I was talking via Zoom with our student government leaders, you know, these are top performing students admittedly, but we were talking because the number of them are graduating, where are they going to transfer, and they could talk knowledgeably about how they were making choices based on what would transfer. And that I think is really, really important for all of us to understand, because that says that this is one, it should be part of the culture, right, advising, and making sure that advising is there, is part of the task force recommendations. That students don't just, they're not born knowing this, as to your point, they don't walk into Community College knowing this, but these are students who had met with advisors who helped them understand what their transfer pathway might look like.

To me, that's an indicator of that transparency, that ability for students to access information about affordability. All of that builds in to the equity concerns when you think about what Ann Holton was saying about first generation students. These are not students who can turn to their parents, or turn to an aunt or uncle, and say, can you explain to me how transfer works? They really need advising

SPEAKER_02
to really help them move forward. Yeah, I was, I actually transferred from a Community College to my four-year decades ago, right, and I relied so much on help from folks at both institutions, and if I hadn't had that, it would have been incredibly difficult, but it also took a lot of effort on my part to make those connections. So you're right, anything you can do to help make it easier for students, that just, it helps so much.

You know, both of you kind of referenced this at the beginning, that the work of the task force started pre-pandemic. And a lot of the issues that you're looking at, right, are things that higher ed has grappled with for a long time. But now we're kind of looking at the post-COVID, post-pandemic landscape.

You know, did COVID, was that taken into consideration when you were doing the work? Are there things that could be applied from this report in greater ways post-COVID on campuses? Just thinking about that, because, you know, knowing that your work started pre-COVID, and now the report has come out as campuses are looking to reopen, does that change how campuses might use the report?

SPEAKER_04
I'll take a stab at that, but first, let me just say, Sarah, congratulations. I love telling my undergrad students that the smartest students in the room in my undergrad classes are the students who've transferred from NOVA, and I can prove it, because they're the ones who are going to graduate with the least debt. They've figured out the best financial plan to get a four-year degree.

So if you can make it work, start at the community college and then transfer successfully. You're the star kid

SPEAKER_02
in my class. It was the best decision I could have made, and it was just great. I still tell folks, you know, if you can go to the community college, especially if you're unsure of what you're going to study or how you're going to fit in at a four-year institution, it's just a wonderful

SPEAKER_04
experience. So to your COVID question, I would say one of, I mean, it's impacted higher ed in so many ways at all of our institutions, but relevant to this topic, I think one of the things it's highlighted is how mobile our students are, and that was true already. So one of the studies that ASEE shared with us on the task force showed that almost 40% of students starting at, I think the study was from 2011, starting at a four-year institution, and I'm sorry, starting at any institution of higher ed in 2011, almost 40% of them accumulated credit at two or more institutions, and sometimes four or more before they, within their six years after 2011.

So students are mobile to start with, and then the pandemic absolutely shot that up with students wanting to stay closer to home, just making choices dictated by geography because of the pandemic. So the mobility of students and the mobility of their credit acquisition has only been accentuated, as with many things by

SPEAKER_03
the pandemic. So I would add that I think one of the things we thought about as the task force was all of the data as well about how the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on certain communities. And so when you again look at students who are much more likely to start at community colleges, much closer to home, it probably has had a disproportionate impact on them as well.

And so getting transferred right becomes ever more important. More students are going to start closer to home. They may have more financial challenges than they ever could have imagined.

To be able to, again, work together a partner institution to partner institution to smooth that pathway, so that to Sarah's point, you don't have to do as much of the heavy lifting yourself would be incredibly important at any time. But I think especially now, it's more important than ever.

SPEAKER_01
Yep, you're here. So we've referenced this task force that both of you were members of. Thank you so much for all the hard work.

I remember I think that first meeting was the last big in person meeting that we had at a CE. If I remember correctly, it was either late February, early March, but I can remember it because it's the last, it's the last time I saw anybody in person, it feels like. But the work that the task force that is incredible, I read the report sort of cover to cover, and we'll make sure to link to it in our show notes.

And I encourage everybody that's listening to this to at least read the executive summary, which I think is fantastic. There are concrete recommendations in that report for our precedents. I wonder if you might want to just briefly outline what some of those recommendations are for the audience, and maybe we can dive into a couple of them.

So, Ann Holton, do you want to take the first crack?

SPEAKER_04
Yeah, sure. So there's six key recommendations and Ann, Chris, if that's okay, I'll do the first three and let you pick up the second half. And the report expands upon the substance of these recommendations and includes some really terrific examples of universities doing concrete, taking concrete steps towards each of them.

But so that's kind of the structure of the recommendations in the report. So condensing them immensely into a phrase each. The first is about just to prioritize and embed transfer into your institution's culture.

And I would say that's one of the things I'm proudest of that we've done at Mason, where we have over half of our incoming students every year come from transfer. And it just means that there's no stigma, there's just a whole setup from orientation forward, they are part of our community. And that embed, and that can be more challenging if your transfer numbers aren't so big.

But embedding it deeply in your culture and celebrating it right from the get go, that's prioritizing transfer is number one recommendations. The second one is basically to do an end to end review of your policies to make sure you're doing everything you can to remove unnecessary barriers. And one of my favorite but sad examples on this is one where institutions sometimes let their own short term interests conflict with students interest.

And that's where universities charge, won't release transcripts, because students owe some small debt. So recognizing we want to keep all our students with us forever until they're done. But for whatever reason, they're going to, many of our students are going to transfer outwards.

And when we hold up their transcript for a $25 fine that they didn't remember they had from the library or even a 50 or $100 obstacle, it's such a short sighted approach. So that's the number two is the remove unnecessary barriers, look at all your policies and then the number three is leverage technology to improve consistency. And there's a there was some research done as part of the task force work on some of the great technology tools that can help.

SPEAKER_03
And so I'll pick up from there. So number four is around transparency, which we talked a little bit about already. And what I would really underscore it's transparency and how credits will transfer.

So too often students will take an English class and it doesn't transfer as an English class, it transfers as an elective, which is great. But then you end up with this bucket of electives that maybe exceeds even the number of electives you should have upon transfer. So it really is around improving the transparency so that as a student who's going to transfer to university X, I know my courses as students will say in their nomenclature count, does this course really count for something? That's I think a recommendation that I would really underscore.

Also dedicating the resources necessary to ensure quality advising and we talked about that. But advising across the institutions, right, so that the advisors are talking to each other on a regular basis, that they're checking in with students at critical points in their journey. That isn't that's so important.

It's important for the students. It's also important for the universities. I've been in states, for example, where students might have thought they were transferring to institution Y, but they actually heard from the advisors from institution X, much more frequently and they changed their plans.

So it is potentially a place where universities could lose transfer enrollment if they're really not building those connections as seamlessly as possible. For example, in the advanced pathway that we have with Mason, we actually have shared coaches that work with students. So they know exactly it's a very smooth transition.

It's a very firm handshake. The students are moving forward. And then the last is to partner with your most frequent either transfer to or transfer from institution.

And you can't boil the ocean. All of this takes a lot of work. And when you look at your data, you know that there are probably two or three community colleges that transfer to you or universities that you transfer your students to.

So really sitting down with them, bringing faculty together, bringing advisor together. You know, it's not just president to president. Our leadership is always important.

But we could say we have a great transfer pathway, but the folks who are really doing the work on the ground know that there's a lot of bumps in that road. It's getting those folks together to help smooth that pathway because you're going to impact the greatest number of students. We send thousands, thousands of students to Mason every single year.

And so sitting down with Mason made a huge amount

SPEAKER_04
of sense for us. And you send students elsewhere and we receive students from elsewhere. But if we smooth our pathways, number one, we're helping a huge number of students that way.

And number two, what we learn from working with you helps the community college students at least from all over Virginia. And likewise for you, I'm sure it helps blow all boats.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. And I would just add, you know, the structure that we built with advance, for example, we're, you know, Mason's looking at using it with other community colleges, we're looking at using it with existing, even existing transfer agreements that we have to add those additional components that seem to be making a big difference for our students, those coaches, that information flow, that ability for students to really think of themselves as

SPEAKER_04
university students from day one at NOVA. And meanwhile, the rest of our Commonwealth is building on our experience. So Virginia has a unified community college system, or at least somewhat centralized community college system, whereas our four years are loosely coordinated by our SHIO.

But our SHIO and our community college system office are working at promoting pathways approaches all across the Commonwealth and using Mason's and NOVA's partnership experience through advance to help guide that work.

SPEAKER_02
And that kind of gets at the more complicated issues like reverse transfer. I know we talked about that a bit, you know, a student not transferring from a community college to a four year, but perhaps going from a four year to a community college or having multiple credits at multiple institutions. And so our, you know, is that something that the task force looked at?

SPEAKER_04
Yeah, absolutely. And actually, there's another twist, though, I think they call them the swirlers in the in the report. So the student that may be at the four year, but looking to pick up some credit during the summer more economically and while they're at home, or maybe of course, that the community college has more offerings on in the summer might might take a credit or two during the summer and transfer it back.

So yes, absolutely. That's how you get to these high numbers of students who are getting credit at more than one institution by including all of those different paths. Oh, and the other thing the report did did address is credit for prior learning outside of traditional institutions, which is a huge issue.

Students coming from which both of our institutions have students coming from the military where they've taken courses that are for all intensive purposes, the exact same courses that we're offering, and or have had work based experiences that would enable them to a pass an assessment that would help them wave out of some of the introductory courses.

SPEAKER_03
The test force looked at all of those issues. And I think especially with reverse transfer, one of the challenges and I'm sure most folks who are listening to this podcast know this number, but it's it would be interesting to look at your census data about the number of folks in your community who have some college but no degree. So that means they don't have an associate's degree either.

They don't have a college certificate. So they've got a bunch of credits that right now don't really add up to a marketable component when they're looking for a job. So I think that's the power of reverse transfer is the ability then to work with a transfer institution to say, okay, well, we both want to put this student we want to put in at the center here and doesn't have an associate's degree or a baccalaureate degree.

Can we reverse transfer some of that credit to make sure that and has an associate's degree going forward. So I you know, I just want to bring us back to the fact that this task force was very student centered. Even though you had institutional leadership sitting around the table at the middle of the table, we were really talking about how can we better serve the students who come to our colleges and universities, knowing that they come to us with the goal of getting a degree, how can we make that possible for them.

SPEAKER_00
And, you know, you raised reverse transfer, there's a lot of national policy discussion about a federal policy around reverse transfer. And certainly, that's one small component of a lot of interest at the federal level about policy for higher education with an emphasis on community colleges and pathways and other things. But the task force wasn't really focused on making federal policy.

I mean, Sarah and I spent all of our time talking about federal policy. So it's hard for us to imagine anything that's not focused on it. But that's not what you're actually working

SPEAKER_04
on, right? No, yeah, the task force assignment was to come up with recommendations for university presidents that university presidents could carry out. Now, they do have some implications for policy. I mean, one good news is many of these recommendations are ones that can be done without significant financial resources.

But at least one, the ensuring quality advising does take money. And, you know, the community college system and our larger diverse institutions like Mason that aren't at the wealthiest end of the four-year scale have not always had the resources to invest in quality counseling. It does take, you can absolutely use technology, you can use efficiencies to get the most bang for your buck, but it is a people-centered activity.

And whether you're using professional advisors or holy advisors or a combination thereof, it takes time. And time means money. And so federal and state policy that helps support financial resources for counseling can over the long run save money for students and therefore for both levels of government and the institutions by helping students get through more successfully.

But that would be one example on my wish list for federal and state policy would be recognizing

SPEAKER_03
the need for counseling. And I would say as somebody who's worked in Florida, which has a statewide articulation agreement, which should, you know, you could, you know, sort of say it's all done, but it was never done, right? You still need those institutional relationships. You still need to mind changes that are happening in colleges and that students might want to transfer to.

If a student wants to go, for example, I worked at Santa Fe Community College, now Santa Fe College in Gainesville, the student wanted to go study business at the University of Florida. Those requirements might look different than they would at FSU and the pre-professionals might look different that they would need to take locally. So it's you can never just sort of push it off and say, well, policy is going to take care of this.

It is still a people business. Our institutions are too idiosyncratic. I don't think we would want to change that and make everyone uniform.

But we do want to, again, just really focus on the student and smooth those pathways. And I would just go back to, that's the power of having those relationships with the largest, the largest either taker or provider of your students because those relationships are golden. And we're definitely hearing

SPEAKER_00
hearing that play out between your two institutions, too, as you discussed these examples, I think. And I know we're running a little short on time for the couple of things that just feel like I have to get to. We've talked a lot about the benefits to students in terms of affordability.

And when we talked about the resources for policymakers, how much you spend to get a student through, we're talking about money generally. But there's another huge resource that students invest in higher education, which is their time. Just maybe touch on if you could a little briefly about the advantages to students time to degree and time to completion of understanding these transfer pathways and how that sort of accelerates that other big challenge, which students face as

SPEAKER_03
they move through higher education. Well, I'll just say for most community college students do not attend college full time. And so from the very beginning, then you have a two-year degree that could have taken four years or six years.

So if you think about the importance and the value of time for that student, then to potentially lose any credits or have to retake classes upon transfer, that extends what should be theoretically a four-year degree even further, right? The two-year part is already taken six years. You don't want the other two years to take another six years, and then it's 12 years to bachelor's degree. So again, that transparency, the advising, all of that is incredibly critical to make sure that students time is valued and that they don't,

SPEAKER_04
again, as students will say, waste time. Well, and I would say, yes, time is absolutely money, and it's not only how quickly you get the degree, but whether you get their degree. So if you just think of the affordability issues for, if you think of paying for four years of college, which we all know is most students take more than four, but even just think of the crucial four, 15 credits a semester, easily students are losing as much as up to 15 credits from credits not transferring towards their major.

So at a semester, beyond, you've done all your financial planning, you think you know how to pay for eight semesters of higher education, and then, oh, by the way, you need money for an and time for a ninth, and how many drop out and how many don't complete and end up as Anne said in that awful category of lots of debt, no degree. The work that one thing I want to be sure and highlight is the work that our faculties have done. These this advanced pathway that we've referred to several points has many components, but one of the crucial ones is the work that our faculty say that engineering a tough, you might think one of the harder pathways, but it's if the when the Mason faculty sit down with the Nova faculty from the engineering departments, both places and say, if your introductory course includes x, y, z, we will credit it fully and they it's it's granular, it's hard work, it takes time, but it's it's part of the magic.

SPEAKER_01
This feels like the like the hardest thing to me and it goes to this culture point, which is the first recommendation. How did you get your faculty to to sort of come along when faculty hold so tight often to you know that that their way of teaching is the or the what they have covered is sort of the gold standard for what needs to have been covered. How did you loosen them up?

SPEAKER_04
Well, the easy answer is it happened before either of us was in our positions, but I would say and you may have thoughts on it too, but I would say part of it was the culture and part of it was a top down leadership commitment and and commitment even to financial resources. So we had we paid faculty for summer time to meet with the faculty across the two institutions, and that's actually something Virginia has done some little mini grants to faculty at other universities to to recognize that oh this isn't it's not that you you just wave a wand it actually it takes takes real work from the faculty and compensate that and honor it and appreciate it

SPEAKER_03
that that certainly helps. And I think you start with you know that coalition of the willing so advance now has a hundred plus transfer programs. It started with one with one transfer program and so getting those faculty from departments at the community college and at the university who had an interest in sitting down and working this out for students and then they modeled what other folks could then step in and see oh okay this is how you do that and it also isn't done week we meet annually to bring these groups together just to refresh make sure that we're on the same pathway is there any program that's not part of this that we would want to add so it is a living thing right these transfer agreements they need tending you can't just sign something in a ceremony and put it on the shelf and think oh now it works for students it really does need that constant people attention.

Yeah and please go ahead. Take it back to where we started

SPEAKER_04
the transfer culture it just matters so much so you know our engineering dean and his faculty were very committed to this right from the beginning and they were some of the early pathways and it was because they were getting the students from NOVA anyway but not necessarily getting them in the shape to be ready to graduate and so they wanted those students to be successful this was

SPEAKER_00
the way to help them succeed. That is amazing and we will put links to the advanced program in the show notes for the web for the podcast but before I let you go sorry one more thing but our audience our college university presidents senior administrators are there particular things you would recommend to them as they sit here listening to this and thinking what should I be doing on my campus right now to improve our understanding of transfer credit improve our student centeredness in this area what do you have for them tell them what they need to know

SPEAKER_03
what they need to be doing. Well I would say it we I started with students I would strongly encourage every president every senior leader who's listening to bring back some of your students who have transferred and ask them about the process ask them to share what worked and what didn't because too often especially in our offices we think that things are going really smoothly and we don't see all of our people our faculty our staff and our institutions at the transfer institutions our students are really kicking hard below that water and so that's what I would say is bring back some of your transfer students have a conversation with them they will give you many insights into what you could be doing better and what through appreciative inquiry you should do more of.

SPEAKER_04
And I will say read the report or at least at least read the executive summary which is very doable of that's your 10 minute read as a president and then send it to your leadership team to read the whole report and and tell them you want to want a report back from them in so many days on what's the first thing you're going to tackle what's the one that makes the most sense at at your university that we do have such diverse institutions and some of these may speak more to some than others but with the examples with the concrete suggestions there I think I think there's something for everybody.

SPEAKER_00
And I promise there wasn't teeing you up to say read the report although I do I obviously agree wholeheartedly that's that's a great thing to do I want to thank you both so much for taking the time today you know it's abundantly clear to me and my co-assenture everyone listening to this you know the the connections between the two of you and your institutions and the expertise you bring to this and that it is such a successful program is the work of people like you who are invested in making it happen and so thoughtful about it so I'm sure there are many many many appreciative students and faculty and staff behind you in that regard but we are also very very appreciative for having you today and having you take the time so thanks you're always welcome back

SPEAKER_04
anytime you'd like to come back. Oh thank you. Thank you and thank the ACE staff who did all the heavy lifting on the task force too.

Absolutely. We certainly will thanks again.

SPEAKER_00
And you can also use our email podcast at acenet.edu for suggestions for upcoming shows or guests you'd like to see or just thoughts on how we're doing. Before we go I'd like to thank Carly O'Connell, Laurie Armstrong, Audrey Hamilton and Malcolm Moore for the exceptional producers of .

edu and make a sound as good as we do every episode. And finally I'd like to thank you for listening.