Hannah Fleckner was in the midst of a premed track at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland when she realized that what she really wanted to do was teach. But the idea of transferring to a new school was scary. She had to start over, figure out the policies at each school, and she realized she wouldn’t get credit for many of the classes she had already taken.
It wasn’t just the fear.
“The transfer process is frustrating,” said Fleckner, who is among the more than a million students who transfer colleges each year. “It’s self-inflicted pain.”
Transferring academic credits is a perennial problem in higher education. Coursework at one school may not align with the requirements at another. Students may have to retake classes, spending more money and time on their education. And the frustration of it all can derail students from earning bachelor’s degrees.
As students wrap up the school year and look ahead to the next, more colleges and universities are making a concerted effort to simplify the process to get more students across the finish line.
There are potential benefits to the schools as well as the students — especially at a time when many school officials are concerned about enrollment and hope to reach a wider mix of students.
“We see some hope on the horizon,” said Tania LaViolet, director of the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program. “There are community colleges and universities that have created transformational transfer models that are serving students much better than what we’ve seen in the past.”
The Aspen Institute, a Washington think tank, has tracked the national outcomes for transfers since 2016. While 80 percent of community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, only 16 percent are successful within six years of entering school. LaViolet said transparency regarding student success rates and the workforce shortages has helped build urgency around the issue for many states and schools.
Colleges are increasingly partnering to design transfer programs with tailored advising and course plans that map out the classes needed for community college students to progress in their majors.
At American University — where Fleckner transferred — a new program will allow students to bring as many as 75 previously earned credits, and could cover up to half the cost of tuition at the private university.
American, like many schools, has been concerned about enrollment, and transfers could be an opportunity for growth. School leaders said they have heard from local community colleges that their students who want a four-year degree are apt to assume that private colleges are out of reach.
“I don’t know that it was always just perception that we were out of reach,” said Vicky Wilkins, the school’s provost and chief academic officer. “This is a true effort to make sure we’re not out of reach to them.” The school has made the financial commitment, she said, so that they can tell students, “You can plan to be at a private place like AU. You can come in and take advantage of the pledges and commitments we’ve been making in our strategic plan, and we’re going to help you get there and do it.”
Colorado State University and Front Range Community College launched the Ram Transfer Academy in 2024 to give enrollees immediate access to academic and student services at both institutions. Lebanon Valley College, a private institution in Pennsylvania, teamed with Harrisburg Area Community College to offer a dual admissions program in which students can take up to four free courses at the four-year school while completing a degree at the community college.
Last fall, the City University of New York rolled out Universal Transfer Path (UTP), a program that ensures students at CUNY community colleges follow the same coursework as those at CUNY four-year schools. That way, students can seamlessly transfer within a major across the system of 18 undergraduate colleges.
“The way in which material was covered in similar courses varied quite a bit from school to school,” said Alicia Alvero, executive vice chancellor and university provost at CUNY, who is overseeing the transfer initiative. “It was demoralizing for students because they had to repeat so much content.”
The university system focused on eight majors with the highest transfer rates — accounting, biology, business, computer science, engineering, math, psychology and sociology — which account for 85 percent of CUNY’s transfer students.
If a student takes an accounting class with the UTP designation at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, those credits are guaranteed to count toward a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Baruch College. According to CUNY, more than 345 courses are now universally equivalent to each other across all colleges, a system that is expected to save students an average of $1,220 in excess credits.
At American University, the new program is open to students nationally. But school officials have been working particularly closely with local community colleges to make transferring credits seamless and show students there’s a direct path to completing their degree, one they could be thinking about as early as high school.
“We wanted to move transfers to the front of the conversation,” said Jeremy Lowe, American’s assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions. The country’s demographics are changing, and community college may become a more common starting point for a four-year degree, he added.
Evelyn Thimba, the vice president for undergraduate enrollment, said the school realized some of its policies weren’t as transfer-friendly as they could be. Now officials are increasing financial aid, adding a transfer-specific orientation, starting academic advising even before students arrive on campus, and ensuring they have a career adviser who can help them find professional experiences such as internships.
Benny Geller, a 21-year-old from Charlotte who transferred from Berklee College of Music in Boston, appreciated that American grouped transfer students together for orientation, which helped the older students make friends quickly. “It just helped me feel a bit less like a stranger on campus,” he said.
“I was worried about making friends, finding community,” Fleckner said. “I was just very nervous about being older going into a college environment,” where most entering students had recently finished high school. The transfer orientation group was more diverse — with veterans, people with associate’s degrees, students from public and private universities — and Fleckner said she found the experience welcoming.
Her adviser met with her several times in the first two weeks of school to help her transfer as many credits as possible. “She has been amazing,” Fleckner said.
Now, with the new initiative, she’s hopeful that she’ll be able to get credit for even more of her hard work from Case Western, finish her classes and graduate next spring — in time to start teaching in the fall.
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