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The Senate Committee on Higher Education met on September 5 to hear invited and public testimony regarding the following interim charge:

“Improving Transferability: Examine and make recommendations regarding policies that will help students make informed decisions regarding transferring credits among institutions and promote efficient completion of degrees and credentials. Study the adequacy of advising for transfer students in secondary and post-secondary settings. Focus on statewide solutions that will address transfer for all Texas students, including Fields of Study curricula, the role of the Core Curriculum and additional tools that will help students transfer credits efficiently toward a degree.”

 

This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics the committee took up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the hearing, but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.

 

Invited Testimony

Raymond Paredes, Texas Commissioner of Higher Education 

  • Transferability is an issue that has been ongoing for many years
  • Challenge is curriculum of higher education changes continually with varying degree programs
  • 73% of all baccalaureate graduates took credits at 2-year institutions – highest in the country
  • Discussed costs associated with 4-year institutions and the benefit of taking credit hours at community colleges in allowing low income families higher education opportunities
  • Noted preparation differences and transfer ratios by demographics – African American and Hispanic students have lower transferability numbers
  • Strategies taken to improve transferability: Focus on top 25 most popular fields of study to make it as easy as possible for as many people
  • Focus moving forward:
    • Need to expand academic advising
    • Need to create more guided pathways to degrees
  • West – how many times have you made the same recommendations?
    • Many times
  • West – would additional staffing cost less that the stranded hours families are paying for now?
    • Believe that it would cost less
  • West – need to work with the House to get a bill passed that did not pass last session
  • Seliger – can you help us find out what were the barriers were to that legislation last session
  • Seliger – what percentage of credit hours did not transfer?
    • There is a difference between transferring hours versus whether they count toward the major – that is the conversation that needs to be had
  • Seliger – speaking to ethnicity transfer rates – have we seen improvements?
    • Slightly, but have seen more improvement for Hispanic students
    • African American students still are in the poorest performing schools
  • West – what have we done about it?
    • Not enough
  • West – we know this as a state?
    • Yes
  • West – what role does financial aid play?
    • A large role, but less that it did in years past
  • West – what percent of students get the Texas grant? Are we meeting the need?
    • We are meeting the need – there is not a huge discrepancy
    • Will provide additional information to the committee

 

Sue McMillin, Greater Texas Foundation

  • Private foundation in Bryan Texas – focused on improving post-secondary outcomes in Texas
  • Focus on 4 areas, including Transfer
  • Transfer of credits between institutions stood out as a large problem
  • Transferring between institutions is very common
  • 52% of Texas students were enrolled in community college in 2015
  • Act of transferring is often a barrier to completion
  • Transfer tends to cost additional semester of needed time to completion (usually 13 credit hours lost upon transfer)
    • Significant cost to state and students
    • According to Complete College America study – $75 million per year cost to Texas taxpayers on excess credits – cost to students – $58 million per year
  • Students do not have clear transfer pathways
  • Students are not given much help in staying on transfer pathways
  • Need stronger pathways for students across the state
    • Some colleges and universities have already made agreements
  • Described example of community college instituting new initiative to help advise students on transferring
    • Notes Map My Path program at UT system
  • Need additional interregional partnerships
  • Seliger – what would you implement tomorrow to make stronger transfer pathways?
    • Getting students to understand what the core of their community college and how those will transfer – advising is the key
  • Seliger – is there any community college that has been particularly effective in advising students?
    • Early college high schools are better at identifying pathways
    • Austin Community College and San Antonio Community College are, but they are one-offs
  • Buckingham – when looking at best practices – should look at Killeen Early College High School to A&M
  • Paredes, HECB – noted that it is possible and there have been many examples of integration in one system, but it is transfer between the systems that is the issue
  • West – noted previous legislation related to regional consortiums – should take a look at that and give us feedback related to that
  • Taylor – are the courses that are not transferring core or not core courses? But should consider that core courses should be easier to align and transfer
    • Core courses transfer by law but may not count toward degree
  • Taylor – believe that this is over complicated, should make it easier to transfer core courses

 

Jason Langdon, The College Board

  • Working on the AP program to ensure that the credit hours count
  • There are things related to AP that can be done to help students get better outcomes
    • Ensuring alignment to Texas Core
    • Look at common course numbering system
    • Should look at advanced mapping
  • Need to continue to support access and funding for AP
  • Discussed CLEP programs as a method to improve degree completion
  • Bill that set AP test score of 3 being automatically accepted as core helped tremendously

 

Vistasp Karbhari, UT Arlington

  • Received more transfers than any other state school
  • Many non-traditional students
  • Striving for ease of access
    • Noted TCC to UTA pipeline is extremely strong including information sharing agreement, structured pathways and counseling
  • Created partnerships between ISDs, community colleges and UTA
  • Division of student success created to better determine degree maps and pathways
  • Began experimenting with online leveling courses to better accept experiences from other colleges

 

Bob Mong, UNT Dallas

  • Partnerships have let to greater enrollment, retention and graduation rates
  • Described demographics of institution
  • Debt of graduates is lowest in Texas and among the lowest in the country
  • Partner with districts and community colleges and foundations
  • Involved with Dallas County Promise – able to better effect student outcomes by being involved at the beginning
  • Entered into pure data sharing programs with districts after last Session
  • FAFSA completing is growing very quickly in Dallas
  • Described multiple agreements in the Dallas area that stem from being involved with the Dallas County Promise
  • Seliger – said your debt level was low by intention – can you explain that?
    • Goal is to keep debt below $7,000 upon graduation
    • UTA – about $12,000
    • UTPB – about $14,000

 

Sandy Woodley, UT Permian Basin

  • Described student experience and pathways that are non-traditional
  • Do not believe that students that take longer than 4 years to complete college are failures
  • Noted many students do not know what they want to do, and pathways will not help that student
  • Need to change focus on how success is measured
    • Need to be sure that institutions helping those non-traditional students are not penalized
  • UTPB focuses on underserved populations
    • Do want more traditional students and important to clear the pathway to completion
    • Again, should not penalize institutions for non-traditional student completions
  • Seliger – do not believe there is a penalty imposed on institutions that have atypical completions
    • The accountability measures are hyper focused on 4-year completions
  • Seliger – the context that is most important is resource optimization at the state level
  • Seliger – the last time transfer credits were not accepted, what was the problem and where did it come from?
    • Karbhari – if students do not have a pathway, they tend to take a lot of courses that do not count toward their ultimate degree – specific instance of language classes that did not count toward engineering degree – discussed need for specific courses for accreditation
    • Mong – described example of student with accounting courses that were not rigorous enough for the accounting program – worked it out to accept the courses
  • Seliger – if it lacked rigor did they come from the Dallas county area?
    • Not sure it wasn’t rigorous enough – not sure they understood that it wasn’t initially part of the degree program
    • Woodley – it is important to start thinking more broadly and innovatively regarding technical career courses and applied baccalaureate degrees and experiential learning
    • Karbhari – need to remove perception that everything needs to transfer but need the core 18 meta majors – need more pathways for general categories of fields of study
  • Seliger – is that information readily available?
    • Karbhari – not really but it needs more than to make it available on the website
    • Will provide the study information to the committee
    • Mong – should consider for simplification looking at meta majors and make standard groupings or courses that would transfer everywhere
  • Buckingham – have heard a lot of talk about course work but not much about ore competency, would there be a benefit to utilizing that for transferability?
    • Karbhari – absolutely believes that should be utilized at it is what is used for accreditation
  • Seliger – do you allow competency testing for courses?
    • Karbhari – in some courses but not all – looking into expanding the options
  • West – what are the major obstacles for region consortium for utilization of meta majors?
    • Karbhari – two things – perception of competition for state funding and software systems and advising practices distances between institutions
  • West – so that is something can be modeled in north Texas?
    • Karbhari – yes, it can

 

Kristi Kirk, Concordia University

  • Described vulnerable populations – guided pathways are great but require extensive advising
  • Has a number of articulation agreements with community colleges and are part of the regional compact in central Texas
    • Articulation agreements are a start but there are a lot of work to do on specific majors
  • Discussed information sharing portal within consortium
  • Noted online presence for additional innovative options in seamless ways that are low cost and low hassle
  • Works very closely with Austin Community College – grateful for regional approaches of recent years
  • FERPA has been stumbling block in the past – creating sharing platforms through policy has been effective
  • Encouraged legislature to continue to keep independent institutions in the conversation as policies are vetted

 

Ivette Savina, UT El Paso

  • Supports dual credit as transfer processes
  • serves a large low-income student body
  • UTEP articulation council meets 4 times per year with 3 affinity groups with expressed purpose of discussing and improving transferability
  • Discussed early college high school collaborations
    • Focus on applicability of course transfer
    • Have over 3,100 early college high school students
    • 8,600 dual credit students
  • Dual credit students have higher completion rate than non-dual-credit students
  • Over 10 years have served 9,000 dual credit students with savings of over $53 million to students and families
  • West – how difficult was it to create areas for most collaboration?
    • The region is a closed loop system that expects and requires collaboration
  • West – and you meet 3-4 times per year?
    • That is correct, but often multiple times per month within smaller groups

 

Russell Lowery-Hart, Amarillo College

  • Discussed demographics of the institution
  • Noted large amount of bureaucracy that is making it difficult for non-traditional students to complete
    • Core courses are not treated as core courses for transferability
    • Core’s purpose is to give students foundation – often making it difficult for students to navigate core courses before even choosing a major
  • This is not just an issue for transfer students – it effects those within an institution and makes transferring between majors at the same institution difficult
  • Core curriculum needs to be separate from majors

 

Mark Tengler, Houston Community College

  • Assumption that vertical transfer is a pathway is not correct anymore
  • Described number of partnerships leading to engineering and pre-engineering majors through an associate degree
  • Large savings seen with partnered programs compared to non-partnered transfers
  • Recommend mandating common field of studies have full associate degrees
  • Noted there is not transfer limit (commonly understood to be 60 hours)
  • Seliger – what legislation should be proposed related to core curriculum?
    • Hart – to say that there should be no major requirements placed on the core curriculum
  • Seliger – what is the average debt upon graduation?
    • Concordia – mid $20,000s
    • UTEP – will provide that to the committee
  • West – related to different touch points for successful collaboration, would those work at a major urban area institution?
    • Yes, they do work
  • West – what has been the problem between institutions getting together without a mandate?
    • Commitment – that is where a mandate would come in
    • Would need a mandate that field of study turned into associate degree and a mandate on timeline
    • Previous efforts were not successful because there was no mandated time of completion
  • West – noted substantial saving through partnerships listed in written testimony

 

Public Testimony

Bruce Leslie, Alamo Colleges

  • Developed central Texas transfer consortium – hope to expand to 20 institutions
  • Concurred with core course notion to make them all applicable
  • Noted hidden costs of prerequisite courses
  • Need students to know what degree plan to be before enrolling at community college
    • Endorsement program in high school is not working
    • Recommends revamping the endorsement program through collaboration between the Workforce Commission, TEA and Coordinating Board to give better information to students to choose endorsement plan
  • Expecting 1,000 tags developed for course sequencing for advisors
  • Working closely with universities and districts
  • Noted Florida does a very good job with this
  • Seliger – why is that?
    • Because they have a seamless pathway from community colleges to 4-year universities