What Michigan Students Are Telling Us About Transfer

Michigan has one of the most established community college transfer ecosystems in the country—and one of the most uneven. The infrastructure is real: a Michigan Transfer Agreement; 10 program-specific MiTransfer Pathways developed, with 10 additional pathways in progress; and a statewide transfer network that has been voluntarily built and maintained by institutions for decades. And yet, for too many students, the experience of navigating that system still depends on whom they happen to know, which adviser they happen to reach and whether the credits they earned last semester still transfer.

In March 2026, MiLEAP listened—bringing together 16 current and recently transferred Michigan students from across the state to talk about what the transfer experience actually looks like from the inside. What they said confirmed what many practitioners already suspect: The system works, but not reliably and not for everyone.

This is the first in a four-part series titled “Transfer Without the Surprises” documenting Michigan’s work to make the transfer experience smoother for students. It opens here, with student voices and builds toward a statewide policy conversation. Part 1 is an intercut conversation—students name what’s challenging, and Monica Brockmeyer, student success and strategic initiatives director at MiLEAP’s Office of Higher Education, responds to them directly.

Information: Lucky or Left Behind

Across all three focus groups, students described finding their way to transfer through a sibling who’d done it, a friend already enrolled or one instructor who happened to mention the right thing at the right moment.

Monica: What this tells me is that so much of our outreach is informal and inconsistent. If students need a relative, a friend or an especially good staff member just to get basic clarity, that’s a design problem—not a student problem. Only students who already have some form of social capital can succeed, and luck should not be how this works. The impact of that is profoundly unfair.

There’s another point that I don’t think gets said enough: Faculty and administrators are also in the dark. It’s sort of accidental for us to understand these things, too. The information exists—it’s just fragmented and scattered and no one has designed it to connect to a student’s goals. A student doesn’t need all the information. They need the information that gets them to the next step in their path.

Credits: The Cost of an Unpredictable System

One student in the focus groups described writing her own brief—a formal written case for why her credits should count—after the receiving institution failed to recognize work she had already completed and been awarded credit for.

Monica: That story was so humbling and so clarifying. We have inadvertently—and I’d say carelessly—placed the burden of proof on the student. Even when we make an error, or when things change, students are the ones who have to fix it. We push the complexity of the system right onto the person who has the least power to navigate it.

The example of a student being told a course would transfer, only to find it wouldn’t, is a good illustration of how reasonable decisions can lead to unreasonable outcomes. Behind the scenes, faculty are making choices about rigor, new textbooks and updated standards—all of which seem reasonable from their perspective within the system. But the student did everything right. And then the goalposts moved.

What we’re working toward isn’t that every credit transfers everywhere. It’s simpler than that: We make a promise, we keep it and we communicate clearly when anything changes. That’s it. And right now, we’re not doing that reliably.

Belonging: A Design Feature, Not a Happy Accident

The gap between these two students’ experiences wasn’t random. One institution had done intentional work to welcome transfer students before they arrived. The other hadn’t. The difference in outcome—in confidence, belonging and persistence—was significant.

Monica: Belonging has to be a design feature, not a nice adviser or a lucky placement. When students feel genuinely welcomed—when faculty actually remember that half the room may be transfer students—they have more self-efficacy and they navigate better. That matters more than any single resource or checklist.

What I keep thinking about is how much of the system treats belonging as an afterthought, something that happens after you get the pathway right. I’d argue it’s part of the pathway. And it’s designable.

What’s Already in Motion

Michigan doesn’t have a centralized state system or a governing board—which makes statewide coordination genuinely hard. But that’s not the same as saying nothing is moving. Through the Advisory Council on Transfer Success and a legislatively funded Transfer Success Project, MiLEAP is convening faculty, institutions and state leadership around a shared goal: transfer agreements that are visible, durable and student-facing. In spring 2026, more than 550 faculty and staff members came together voluntarily to work on transfer pathways. No one forced them to. That kind of energy, across institutions, is something.

The goal isn’t a perfect system overnight. It’s a predictable one—where a student can see their full path, trust that what’s promised will hold and arrive somewhere that was expecting them.

Part 2 in this series will go deeper into what Michigan is aligning on and why the approach matters beyond state lines.