Transfer students have trouble with credit equivalency
Some students cannot transfer into their year.
Published Feb. 5, 2009
In the past few years, college students are leapfrogging from school to school, creating a phenomenon called a "student swirl" by the Missouri Department of Higher Education.
MDHE spokeswoman Kathy Love said today's students like to shop around with their colleges.
"I think a lot depends on economics," Love said. "Often, they choose an option based on what they can afford."
Love said some students are attending a local community college rather than a four-year university, and then after a year or two, transfer to a four-year institution to complete their degrees.
The problem is that some earned credit is not considered equivalent to the four-year institution's curricula, and therefore not accepted.
"A lot of my credits didn't transfer," freshman transfer Joy Ellis said. "The English class I took was split up into two parts, so I have to finish taking it and another class doesn't transfer even though they told me all my credits would transfer."
Ellis originally wanted to attend MU during the Fall 2008 semester, but was late applying for financial aid and, consequentially, did not have the money she needed to attend MU and was forced to enroll for a semester at St. Louis Community College-Meramec until she found a solution with ROTC.
"In order to go here I had to do ROTC stuff," Ellis said. "I had to get all my medical appointments because I signed up really late. Like it was in August, and instead of doing it all in a few days, I waited a semester to get the scholarship."
To combat transfer problems, MDHE crafted the Committee of Transfer and Articulation in 1987, Love said in a Jan. 30 news release. COTA attempts to smooth the transition between switching schools by standardizing transfer policies between institutions.
Comprised of administrative representatives from Missouri public universities, COTA tries to resolve transfer problems by speaking to universities' faculties and staffs.
According to MU's undergraduate admissions Web site, guidelines used to accomplish transfer evaluation include Advanced Placement credit, which will be only awarded from official score reports sent from the College Board.
Also, dual credit must be reviewed by admissions before an award is granted, and all community college courses will be only counted as lower division credit.
Goldie Radinsky, a transfer student from Rutgers University, is also experiencing difficulties with the exchange of her credit. At Rutgers, Radinsky was a junior and she had only about two more semesters before graduating, she said.
"I had around 89 credits from my other school and I really came here because I want to do journalism," Radinsky said. "I came here and I found out a lot of my credits transferred over as electives. They didn't transfer over as core requirements."
Radinsky feels she is taking courses she previously took at Rutgers.
"I have to take college algebra and I took intermediate algebra at my other school, but we didn't have college algebra," she said. "You just took intermediate algebra which is considered college algebra and trig, but they won't transfer it over here because it has the name intermediate algebra even though I think it's the same thing."
Despite the MDHE's attempt with COTA to improve the process of switching schools, transfer students here at MU are still dealing with adversity.
"It was pretty unfortunate and I have to take more classes over summer," Ellis said.
Radinsky said she is much like a freshman.
"I don't even know what I am and it's really, really annoying," she said. "It's just frustrating coming in with so many credits and not knowing where you stand."
