PDF: 2009 Transfer articulation report
A statewide higher education committee tasked with improving students' ability to transfer from two-year to four-year schools has agreed on common curriculum for majors affecting 75 percent of transfer students.
But University of Tennessee system interim President Jan Simek said hammering out agreements between Board of Regents and UT schools on common classes in remaining majors will be more challenging, if not impossible.
"Down the line it will be harder, but there will be fewer students involved," said Simek, who updated the Tennessee Higher Education Commission on the committee's activity last week. "There will be some places we can't reconcile."
Creating a more seamless transition from community colleges to universities was a large part of higher education reform legislation approved earlier this year.
Gov. Phil Bredesen and legislators have said they want more students starting at the community college level because it will increase the number of Tennessee college graduates.
One of the barriers to increasing mobility between schools is disagreement about which community college courses count for credit at universities.
"The issue was that individual academic departments decided what courses could transfer into the institution. It should have been an institutional decision," Chattanooga State Community College President Jim Catanzaro said. "Schools signed off with community colleges in the past, but it didn't compel departments to work with us. If students take a course in an accredited school, it should be accepted in another institution."
The committee, comprising faculty and administrators from institutions across the state, has met for several months. So far, the group has agreed on a 41-hour block of general education requirements but is working through the 19-hour pre-major requirements in every area of academic study.
"We always said the devil is in the details," Simek said last week. "But the details have not proven to be as devilish as we thought."