Earlier this month (July 2026), The EDU Ledger ran a LinkedIN poll exploring how much progress respondents’ states have made with credit transfer reform within the last two years.
Forty percent of respondents reported either some progress (28%) or significant progress (12%) around credit transfer reform. One in five respondents indicated no progress has been made. The final 40% of respondents were unsure of what if any progress has been made.
Where Transfer Students are Going, Where They’ve Been
The urgency around smoother credit transfer pathways persists. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s Transfer Enrollment and Pathways reports indicate very little change in the number of students who transferred into a new institution between Fall 2023 (13.2 percent) and Fall 2024 (13.1 percent).
Still, transfer students continue to comprise over 10 percent of students across higher education. Also of note is the most recent report (Fall 2024) indicating overall transfer enrollment has increased nearly 12 percent since 2020.
Community college students transferring to four-year colleges and universities continue to represent a large portion of overall transfer enrollment: 41.7% of all transfer students. Further, more Black and Hispanic students are turning to transfer as a key component of their educational journey.
This growth in transfer enrollment has led one columnist to proclaim the “transfer generation” is here. The Progressive Policy Institute’s Bruno V. Manno sees these trends as an indication that transfer has shifted from being “a side road in American higher education” to “one of the system’s main highways.”
The Need for Credit Transfer Reform
Why insist on reform at a time when transfer enrollment is growing?
Put simply, successful transfer enrollment between two institutions doesn’t equate to successful credit transfer. Seamless articulation – the ability of credits to cleanly move with the transfer student from one institution where the credits were earned to a new institution – is a term commonly used as an ideal, yet one that all too often doesn’t play out in reality.
Findings from a recent survey conducted by Public Agenda of over 3,000 Americans of various age groups regarding their experiences in and perceptions of higher education help illustrate the issue. 39% of survey participants reported attempting to transfer credits between institutions.
Nearly all of those participants (37%) who tried to transfer credits reported the process to be difficult. More disconcerting (though not surprising if you follow or study transfer), 25% of respondents reported being able to transfer few if any credits.
This is an issue we’ve known about for some time. Some responsibility lies with students wishing to transfer as well as their advisors.
Yet as researchers Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar explain in their book Discredited: Power, Privilege, and Community College Transfer, an imbalance exists within the transfer process wherein transfer-receiving institutions all too often prioritize “institutional autonomy over credit transfer and curricula.” Even more problematic is when transfer-receiving institutions engage in “active resistance to state transfer policies.”
College accreditors, which work with both two- and four-year institutions, have recently advocated for change around the credit transfer process. Last fall, the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions released a statement calling for change and encouraging the integration of AI into the transfer credit review process at transfer-receiving institutions to ensure accuracy and reduce bias.
Beyond potential AI reform, the accreditor SACSCOC (soon to be the Commission on Colleges and Universities) recently launched the Transfer Credit Consortium, aimed at occasioning faculty-led partnerships between institutions sending and receiving transfer students to minimize credit loss, maintain momentum, and expedite time to degree and completion.
Dr. Ryan Knight builds communities of practice around governance, leadership, and teaching and learning. He is the founder of Teaching to Transform, through which he offers support and organizational development around executive communications, teaching and learning, AI, and more. He also serves as Associate Director of the Community College Association of Texas Trustees, which is part of the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC). Ryan has previously worked at Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (NC State University). He lives in Austin, TX. He invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn.
