Transfer Research, Practice Benefit From Using Same Terminology

A recent “Beyond Transfer” column made the very useful point that the transfer community needs to stop using different words for the same thing. For example, when the same course is given different names at two different institutions, that can hinder the transfer of that course’s credits between those institutions.

The purpose of the present column is to beseech the transfer community to not only use the same words for the same thing, but to use precise, correct terminology for credit transfer (specifically concerning the terms “credits,” “lost credits” and “reverse transfer”). Doing so is essential not only for avoiding confusion by everyone, but for facilitating good research and practice that can inform and implement helpful transfer credit policies and actions.

Let’s start simply with the term “credits.” All transfer community constituencies need to be specific about what sort of credits they are talking about. Are they general education (core), major or elective credits, or some combination thereof? Most institutions’ degree requirements include all three types of credits, as well as a total number of credits. However, some researchers or policymakers are only concerned with transfer of major credits. Others focus on general education or elective credits, or on the combination of all three credit types. Again, the policies and strategies that affect the transfer of these three types of credits are different.

Therefore, if we want to ensure that students make optimal choices and that we have optimally helpful policies, we need to be clear what sort of credits we are talking about. For example, a state might put in place policies that guarantee that general education credits will transfer seamlessly between public institutions in that state, and then announce that credit transfer has now been assured within that state system. However, such actions do nothing for the transfer of major credits, whose transfer is also necessary to facilitate student progress towards a degree. All three types of credits need to transfer, and therefore everyone needs to be clear which type of credits they are writing or speaking about.

So, please, transfer community: Do not use the term “credits” unless you mean all types of credits. Otherwise, be more specific.

Second, let’s consider the term “lost credits” (or its variant, “credit loss”). Anyone who has been around transfer, whether as a transfer student, a practitioner or a researcher, has heard this term hundreds if not thousands of times. But what exactly does it mean? Does it mean (A) credits that do not transfer at all from one institution to another? Or does it mean (B) credits that transfer but change from counting for a major to counting only as electives? What about (C) elective credits that originally counted for a degree, however, the student already has too many electives for the destination degree and so these newly transferred elective credits become what we can call “excess elective credits”?

Much concern has been expressed about all three of these types of credit transfer, and all three have been characterized as “credit loss.” There is no problem with this if what a writer or a speaker means when they use the term “credit loss” is all three types of credit transfer problems. However, sometimes a writer or speaker means only type A, B or C, and then there is a problem.

The causes of these three types of “credit loss” are different, as are the strategies needed to prevent them. So, if only type A is being discussed, using the more general term of “lost credits” may confuse readers or listeners. For example, suppose a state tells its universities that they must record instances of “credit loss,” as Texas has done. If the state is not very clear in its instructions about what sort of “credit loss” it wants recorded, some universities might record one kind of “credit loss” and others another, making it then very difficult, or impossible, for researchers to study the universities’ records or for administrators or state officials to use the records to develop and enact more transfer-friendly policies.

So, once more, please, transfer community: Do not use the term “lost credits” or “credit loss” unless you mean all types of credit loss. Otherwise, be more specific.

Finally let’s consider a third terminological problem for the transfer community: the term “reverse transfer.” This is another case in which the same term can mean more than one thing. “Reverse transfer” has been used as the name for transfer from a bachelor’s to an associate program. But it has also been used as the name for the process whereby a student who has transferred from an associate to a bachelor’s program (vertical transfer), without an associate degree, gets some bachelor’s program credits counted for the former associate program and then receives the associate degree.

In the first type of event called “reverse transfer,” the institution at which the student is matriculated changes, and in the second type only the credits transfer (and they do not actually transfer—they continue to count at the bachelor’s institution even as they also count for the associate degree). These are two very different situations requiring very different kinds of administrative and advising support for students to be successful.

Some people have solved this terminological quandary by calling transfer of students from bachelor’s to associate programs “downward transfer.” However, using this alternative terminology has its own problems. The word “downward” has negative connotations, but such transfers may occur for very positive reasons, such as a bachelor’s student in good academic standing deciding they want to get an associate nursing degree. How about calling situations in which vertical transfer students use bachelor’s credits to complete their associate degrees “retroactive associate degree completion” or, more simply, receipt of a retroactive associate degree? The term “reverse transfer” would then be reserved for cases in which students actually transfer from bachelor’s to associate programs.

Perhaps readers of this column have their own suggestions. The goal is to pick a single term for each transfer situation and stick with it.

All regular readers of this column know how very frequently students transfer from one institution to another and, more generally, how very frequently students obtain college credits from multiple sources. Over 50 percent of bachelor’s recipients have credits from colleges other than from where they’re graduating. Readers of this column are also likely to know how unsuccessful vertical transfer is: Although about 80 percent of community college freshmen plan to earn at least a bachelor’s degree (for which first they must transfer), six years later only about 16 percent have attained that goal. We need to do whatever we can to help these hundreds of thousands of students, and one way we can all do that is by being precise in the terms we use related to transfer credit.