Transfer to Nowhere

I was having lunch with a colleague last week, and she told me a story about her daughter, who began college at a public four-year university in Virginia and eventually decided to transfer to another public four-year university in Virginia. Upon arriving at the second university, she asked how many of the credits she earned at the first university would transfer over. The answer was, "we don't know -- we're looking into it." One of the courses they didn't know about was introduction to geology, taken at a university with a national reputation in the sciences. Her parents got so frustrated that they drove to the second university, picked up their daughter, and brought her back to the first one, where she re-enrolled. 

Stories like this are not uncommon in higher education. Credit transfer in America is something of a disaster, with little transparency for students and huge amounts of time and money wasted as transfer students are forced to re-take--and re-pay for--courses because their new college won't accept the old credits--a problem students are invariably alerted to after they make the move. It's a consequence of our decentralized higher education system -- institutional incentives run one way while public and student interests run another. There's got to be a better way -- as I explain in this new column in InsideHigherEd.