Louisiana’s Transfer Degree JANUARY 2011 | CASESTUDY
This publication was produced for the Productivity Strategy Labs by HCM Strategists with support from Lumina Foundation. HCM is a public
policy and advocacy consulting group focused on finding effective solutions in education and health. The Productivity Strategy Labs provide
policymakers with the opportunity to connect with peers from other states to share, identify and pursue solutions to ensure that more students
complete college within existing resource The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent
those of Lumina Foundation, its officers and directors or employees.
Louisiana’s Transfer Degree
For years, Louisiana state senator Ben Nevers had been hearing from community college students about the
difficulty of transferring to four-year universities. They had spent two years completing an associate’s degree, but when they chose to pursue a bachelor’s degree at one of the state’s four-year institutions, they
were dismayed to learn that many of their credit hours wouldn’t transfer. Some were losing as much as a year’s worth of credits. Faced with the prospect of having to pay for an extra year of tuition just to repeat classes, many simply abandoned their baccalaureate dreams.
“It was mind-boggling to me that Louisiana’s institutions could not work together for the benefit of all students,” says Nevers, a Democrat from the small city of Bogalusa who serves as chairman of the Senate Committee on Education.
About 73,000 students are enrolled in Louisiana’s public, two-year community and technical colleges, but
only a small percentage transfer annually to four-year universities. Meanwhile, enrollment at two-year
colleges is booming. For example, about 19,000 students are currently enrolled at New Orleans’ Delgado Community College, which is about 2,000 students above its pre-Hurricane Katrina level. That mirrors the
national trend. During the recession, students have flocked to community colleges, which, because of their
relatively low tuition costs, are considered educational bargains compared to four-year universities. A
growing number of students see community colleges as an affordable place to start a college career, but they
don’t always follow through with plans to transfer, even after obtaining an associate’s degree.
Nevers, who likes to think of himself as “just a common-sense guy,” decided to apply a little common sense to the problem. But how? He knew there would be some resistance. “Many faculty members don’t believe that English 101 at a community college is the same as English 101 at a four-year university,” he says. But why shouldn’t those classes be equivalent? And why shouldn’t a student with an associate’s degree be able to enter a four-year university with enough credit hours to enroll as a junior?
Common sense, of course, will only get you so far. Nevers needed some practical ideas about how to move
forward, and he got them from Dave Spence, president of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB),
an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that works with 16 member states, including Louisiana, to improve
preK-12 and higher education. At an SREB meeting in New Orleans, Spence gave a presentation about the
need for transfer and articulation policies, and he explained how Florida had become a national leader in
aligning its community college curriculums to fit seamlessly with the state’s four-year colleges and
universities. Nevers was enthralled.
“It just ignited me,” he says. “I was emphatic that we were going to do something in Louisiana. And I was
not going to take no for an answer. You have to have the political will to do this. You have to have it in your
heart.”
The Louisiana Board of Regents had previously attempted to make it easier for students to transfer between
state higher-education institutions. In 1997, the Regents published the first Statewide Articulation Matrix,
which listed 25 courses that could transfer easily. That list has since grown to more than 200 courses. But
the matrix was confusing and riddled with exceptions. Jeanne Johnston, senior analyst for the Senate
Committee on Education, took one look at the matrix and concluded, “If I were a student, I don’t think I could navigate my way through this.”
2
Louisiana’s Transfer Degree
In 2009, Nevers sponsored a bill, drafted by Johnston, that was largely modeled on Florida’s transfer and articulation policies. Knowing that support from the state’s higher-education community was essential,
Nevers invited the Board of Regents to convene administrators and faculty members to come together in one
room and hammer out the details. Some were on board from the start. Others were skeptical that community
college courses could be as rigorous as those taught at four-year universities. “But once we got into a room
and shut the door,” Nevers says, “they found out they were not quite as far apart as they thought they were.”
Nevers’ bill won the endorsement of the presidents of Louisiana’s four higher-education systems: the
Louisiana Community & Technical College System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern
University System, and the Louisiana State University System. “Getting buy-in from LSU was critical,” Johnston said.
“Nevers”, says Jimmy Clarke, senior consultant for HCM Strategists and director of the Lumina
Foundation’s Productivity Strategy Labs, “was forceful and firm, but at the same time he helped bring the stakeholders along.”
Approved by the legislature, the law called for a comprehensive statewide articulation and transfer
agreement, a common core curriculum for lower-division coursework, and a common course numbering
system to be developed by a Statewide Articulation and Transfer Council (SATC). The SATC is housed at
the Board of Regents and made up of representatives from Louisiana’s four higher-education systems,
Regents, the Louisiana Department of Education, and the Louisiana Association of Independent Colleges
and Universities. Its findings are reported and approved by the Board of Regents.
It was the council’s job to create a specific and workable transfer agreement in one year—and it wasn’t an easy task. The group’s early meetings were “awful,” says Karen Denby, the Board of Regents’ Associate Commissioner for Academic Affairs, who represents the Regents as a non-voting council member. “These were people who weren’t used to talking to one another. Some two-year schools tended to have a chip on
their shoulders, and the four-year schools tended to discount the two-year schools. We had to get beyond
that.”
Eventually, they did. Once the council members began putting a proposal in writing, the process moved
quickly, and by spring of 2010, they had come together to create the
Louisiana Transfer Associate Degree. It went into effect in fall of 2010. The degree guarantees a smooth
two- year to four year transfer for students who have earned the state’s transfer degree.
Here’s how it works: Students may choose to pursue either an Associate of Arts Transfer Degree or an
Associate of Science Transfer Degree, depending on their interests and plans for future study. The two-year
degrees consist of 60 hours: 39 hours of general education courses and 21 hours of additional coursework
geared toward a specific major. Students who successfully complete the degree program with a C or better
in each course are eligible to enter a four-year state university as a junior. However, students must still meet
specific institutional or degree-program admission requirements.
For students who take advantage of the transfer degree, the benefits are clear. They can earn roughly half of
a four-year degree at a lower-cost community college and then move on to a four-year university for their
junior and senior years. And they can do so knowing that all of their credit hours will transfer.
3
Louisiana’s Transfer Degree
“There’s an economic advantage for students and for the state,” Nevers says. “Students won’t end up paying for additional credit hours, and they’ll enter the workforce earlier, which benefits the state.” Nevers hopes
the transfer degree will encourage more Louisiana students to pursue and complete postsecondary
education. That’s an important consideration given the state’s dismal graduation statistics. According to the U.S. Census, just 27 percent of Louisiana’s adults have college degrees, the third-lowest rate in the nation
after West Virginia and Arkansas. (In Massachusetts, by contrast, 49.6 percent of adults have baccalaureate
degrees.) “We’re working very hard to change that,” Nevers says, “but it’s a slow process.”
Because the transfer degree is so new, many community college students don’t yet know about it;; something Karen Denby of the Board of Regents is working hard to change. She’s spent much of the last year reaching out to administrators at all of the state’s two- and four-year schools to explain the new transfer degree. “This is a whole new concept,” Denby says of the degree. “To make it work, we have to make sure people know what the expectations and promises are.” All state colleges and universities are required to have a transfer
counselor in place and details about the degree on their websites.
In December, the Board of Regents launched a media campaign, financed by a federal grant, to spread the
word to students, parents, high school counselors, and college faculty members. A dedicated interactive
website will soon go online. “It doesn’t do a lot of good to have a degree program if people don’t know it exists,” says Kim Hunter Reed, chief of staff for the Board of Regents.
One essential element of Nevers’ legislation remains to be implemented: common course numbering. According to the law, “Courses that have the same academic content and are taught by faculty with comparable credentials shall be considered equivalent courses and shall be given the same course
designation. Equivalent courses shall be guaranteed to transfer to any educational institution participating in
the statewide course numbering system.” With common course numbering, there will be little doubt which credits will transfer from one institution to another and which won’t. A class called “Algebra 101” will be the same at both Delgado Community College and Louisiana State University.
Creating such a numbering system for courses turns out to be easier said than done, and it’s taking longer
than anticipated. But Nevers insists it will happen, and he says it’s necessary “to really, truly have an effective articulation and transfer policy.”
Ultimately, Nevers hopes his legislation will remove as many roadblocks as possible for community college
students who wish to advance their education.
“Every student should be given credit for the courses he or she takes and passes,” he says. “What we’ve done in the past is discourage people from enrolling in postsecondary education. And what we should be
doing is encouraging them.”
4