The Alliant Credit Union Foundation has awarded a $108,000 grant to Digital Leaders Now, the nonprofit that powers the Digital Leaders Academy at Ridgewood Community High School District 234, to support the implementation of innovative digital opportunity programs.
The initiative will begin rolling out in Spring 2025, with full program implementation for the 2025-2026 school year. The grant will help students gain critical digital skills, enhance career preparation opportunities at Ridgewood and beyond, and ensure teachers have the necessary resources to integrate technology into the classroom effectively.
“The Alliant Credit Union Foundation is committed to fostering educational opportunities that prepare students for the future,” said Meredith Ritchie, President of The Alliant Credit Union Foundation. “By partnering with the Digital Leaders Academy, we are helping to bridge the digital divide and ensure that students in Ridgewood Community High School District 234 are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the evolving workforce.”
The grant will support key initiatives, including:
Integration of AI Tools: Students will gain hands-on experience using AI and emerging technologies to enhance their learning and problem-solving skills.
Teacher Training & Development: Supporting professional development programs that empower educators with the tools and knowledge to incorporate digital learning strategies into their curriculum.
Digital Fluency Expansion: Enhancing student digital literacy and technology-based learning experiences to build a foundation for future careers.
Career Readiness Programs: Preparing students for high-demand technology roles by connecting them with industry experts, mentorship opportunities, and real-world applications of digital skills.
Through this initiative, the Alliant Credit Union Foundation continues its mission of driving positive change in education by expanding access to technology and professional development resources.
“The Digital Leaders Academy is a testament to the power of partnership and community. With the support of Alliant, we’re equipping students, teachers, and parents with the tools to thrive in the digital age, because when we invest in digital fluency, we unlock limitless potential,” said Caroline Sanchez Crozier, Founder of Digital Leaders Now, an Illinois-based nonprofit, and creator of Digital Leaders Academy.
Ridgewood Community High School District 234 students will benefit from enhanced learning experiences, giving them a competitive edge in today’s digital economy.
Kevin is a forward-thinking media executive with more than 25 years of experience building brands and audiences online, in print, and face to face. He is an acclaimed writer, editor, and commentator covering the intersection of society and technology, especially education technology. You can reach Kevin at KevinHogan@eschoolnews.com
Adult learners often come to higher education with a variety of skills and experiences that aren’t directly reflected in their academic transcripts. Credit for prior learning (CPL) is one way colleges and universities can recognize education outside of the classroom and expedite a student’s degree completion.
An April 14 webinar hosted by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning highlighted effective strategies for implementing credit for prior learning at four historically Black institutions: Elizabeth City State University, Atlanta Metropolitan State College, Morgan State University and Delaware State University.
Campus leaders shared the value of CPL policies, described how they’ve collaborated with various stakeholders at their institutions and provided logistical details for making CPL accessible for students and manageable for faculty.
Understanding the need: The administrators spoke of the importance of offering credit for prior learning to working adults seeking a credential.
“What we realized is that if you really want to continue to grow your enrollment, high school graduates cannot be the only population you serve,” said Farrah Ward, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.
One of the signature programs at her institution is a bachelor’s degree in aviation science. A significant number of students who enroll in the program already hold a private pilot’s license, but in the past they had to take repetitive courses to fulfill degree requirements. By offering CPL, the university is now able to recognize aviation students’ licenses and reduce redundancies in their course load.
Gaining buy-in: Before launching CPL, leaders at Elizabeth City State held an event for faculty and staff to talk about how to better serve adult learners in all departments and areas of the student experience.
The university also leveraged the expertise of various campus departments, including faculty, admissions professionals, military and veterans’ affairs staff, and student affairs leaders, Ward said.
Partnering with faculty members is key to a successful CPL process, Ward said, and can mean rolling out CPL in small measures to ensure frameworks are supported by professors and aligned with the respective learning outcomes for the discipline.
Atlanta Metropolitan State College has a CPL committee, which includes four faculty members to maintain the faculty voice in decision-making, said Kokila Ravi, director of online and specialized programs.
State policyalso drives the implementation of CPL. North Carolina uses a performance-based funding model, and Elizabeth City State is evaluated on how it increases the adult learner population on campus, tying CPL directly to institutional health and funding.
Similarly, Maryland state law requires higher education institutions to offer some form of competency-based learning or credit for prior learning, said Nicole Westrick, assistant vice president and dean of Morgan State University’s College of Interdisciplinary and Continuing Studies.
Creating early awareness: Alerting studentsof CPL opportunities is key, panelists said. “Most times [the admissions team] is the first point of contact, and when they are having those conversations with potential students, we let them know that CPL is an option,” said Rolanda Harris, director of adult and continuing education at Delaware State University.
Elizabeth City State is piloting an adult learner orientation tailored toward students ages 25 and over this fall, Ward said, during which staff will specifically talk about CPL.
Morgan State hosts intensive advising appointments with incoming students, in which advisers discuss CPL and the university’s transfer evaluation system.
Easing access: College leaders also shared innovations their campuses have implemented to reduce barriers to access for learners interested in taking advantage of CPL.
Morgan State offers students the option to enroll in a two-credit elective course to help them create a portfolio. “They participate in a peer review, practice their writing, preparing the portfolio, and when they’re finished, there’s a staff review of the portfolio to make sure that they’ve done a good job of aligning that prior learning experience with the learning outcomes from courses at Morgan State,” Westrick said.
Morgan State also creates digital rubrics for faculty members reviewing the portfolio, “so that it eases the cognitive load for our faculty in finding what they’re looking for; it always follows the same format,” Westrick said.
Some of the colleges offer a wide range of applications for CPL, requiring the students to earn a certain number of credits from the institution for their degree while allowing CPL to take the place of general education and major courses.
Funding CPL: Morgan State received a $5,000 grant from the American Council on Education to standardize and scale CPL on campus. Atlanta Metropolitan State received a $25,000 grant from the Adult Learning Consortium and the University System of Georgia to kick-start the process.
Some panelists said they charge a fee for portfolio assessment, for which the average student pays between $150 and $250. A few campus leaders said they provide a stipend to faculty for reviewing portfolios, while others offer the service pro bono.
Being mission-minded: For institutions considering implementing CPL, Ward said it’s important to start somewhere, even if it seems daunting. In the same vein, remaining flexible and understanding that CPL policies may have to pivot is important, said Harris. “I would just say, ‘Stay open.’”
Westrick said starting with the institutional mission in mind is critical, because that helps ground the process in understanding who will benefit from the policy and how it can make meaningful changes in their educational goals.
Utilizing faculty champions to advertise the offering and encourage students to take advantage of CPL is another lesson to learn, Ravi said. “We are still struggling to get the word out and get students to know about it. That’s why we are relying heavily on our faculty to promote the process.”
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Students tap on their keyboards as a professor lectures at the front of the room. It looks like any other college course, except that it’s taking place at a high school. This year, more than 150,000 California teens are earning college credit in dual enrollment courses.
Dual enrollment offers high schoolers the chance to attend community college, typically for free, often without having to leave their campuses. By helping students tackle the college academic experience, the programs increase the likelihood that students attend college after graduating high school.
About 80% of California’s dual enrolled high school students go on to a community college or university, compared to 66% of California 12th grade students in general, the Public Policy Institute of California found. More than a third of California’s dual enrolled students go on to attend the same community college they attended while in high school after they graduate, according to the Community College Research Center.
Many college and high school administrators have pushed to increase students’ college attainment rates, and the state has invested more than $700 million in dual enrollment, leading to a significant expansion. The number of students in these courses tripled between spring 2015 and spring 2024, according to state data. The Public Policy Institute of California found that about 30% of California’s high school graduating class of 2024 took at least one dual enrollment course.
The growth of high schoolers is a bright spot in overall student totals at the state’s community colleges, which have struggled to fully rebound after enrollment tanked during the pandemic. However, some community college faculty have pushed back against widespread dual enrollment due to concerns about academic rigor and working conditions for educators.
Furthermore, data shows that some of California’s rural students, as well as males and students of color, don’t enroll in and complete these courses at the same rate as others. Some experts and administrators say they’re not just missing out on a couple of college credits, they’re not getting the same opportunities to envision themselves as future college students.
“When high schoolers complete these courses, they are able to fulfill requirements that help them access associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees,” said Daniel Payares-Montoya, a PPIC research associate. “The students benefit, but so do the community colleges, because it helps them enroll more students.”
Rural schools and colleges face dual enrollment hurdles
In Siskiyou County, at the northern tip of California, the only community college serves a sprawling region that covers mountains, forests and rural towns. Although the county has a population of just 43,000, it is the fifth largest county in California by area, meaning that often the hardest part of supporting dual enrolled students isn’t the actual teaching — it’s having the right technology and transportation to reach them in the first place.
“The personal interaction is a challenge, because we have high schools that are two hours away,” said Kim Peacemaker, a counselor and dual enrollment coordinator at College of the Siskiyous. The college currently has about 230 dual enrolled high school students and about 2,390 students total, based on state data.
Peacemaker said the college has worked to make dual enrollment accessible by allowing professors to meet virtually with students in their high school classrooms. However, she added that some students don’t have reliable internet access at home for homework or tutoring. In Siskiyou County, 13.7% of households don’t have broadband internet.
Students walk through one of the main walkways onto Bakersfield College on June 14, 2023. (Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local)
California’s rural colleges generally lag behind urban colleges in dual enrollment. Kern Community College District in the southern Central Valley and the Compton Community College District near Los Angeles had the two highest percentages of high school students in 2024, at 41% and 36% respectively, based on state data. In comparison, 9.7% of students at College of the Siskiyous are dual enrolled high schoolers, and this drops to about 5% in some other parts of the state.
Sonya Christian, the chancellor of the California Community College system, previously led the Kern Community College District, spearheading its expansion of dual enrollment. Now, dual enrollment in the district is “one of the most successful models in the state,” Christian said in an emailed statement to CalMatters.
“I prioritized dual enrollment because I saw it as a potential pathway to increase college-going rates, accelerate degree completion and provide students — especially those in rural and low-income communities — with early exposure to college-level coursework,” Christian said in the statement.
For many high school students in the small city of Blythe, which sits along California’s border with Arizona, the only people they know with bachelor’s degrees are their teachers. That’s why Clint Cowden, the vice president of instruction and student services at Palo Verde College, said the exposure to college that dual enrollment provides these students can be transformative.
“It’s really a win-win for the community,” Cowden said.
A recent alumnus of Palo Verde College’s dual enrollment program, Manuel Milke earned his high school diploma and his associate degree simultaneously, while juggling varsity soccer and football. Now Milke, who is 19, is set to graduate in the fall from San Diego State with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. Milke said he chose to attend San Diego State to stay close to his family in Blythe, and aspires to work as a physical therapist somewhere nearby.
“Everyone should do dual enrollment,” said Milke. “It saved me time, it saved me money and it made me feel more prepared for college.”
Student gaps remain in dual enrollment
As a Latino male, Milke is in the minority for dual enrollment. Based on state data, Black and Latino students are both underrepresented in dual enrollment courses. In the spring 2024 semester, 41% of dual enrollment students were male, while 56% were female. According to Payares-Montoya, these gaps in access to dual enrollment can make it so Black, Latino and male students are less likely to see higher education as an option, compared to their dual enrolled peers.
For Jesse Medrano, an 18-year-old senior at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District, dual enrollment has provided “a good outline of what college is like.” His high school first placed him in dual enrollment in ninth grade, and since then he has taken five classes, covering topics including economics and political science.
“I didn’t have the drive to seek these courses out, so the fact that they put me in them set this standard for me, and now I’m meeting it,” said Medrano, who is Latino and plans to study accounting at Cal State Northridge. “I didn’t have the motivation, but now I do, and I’m able to succeed.”
At Compton College more than a third of the current students are still in high school, according to state data. Latino and Black students comprise 75% and 9% of dual enrollees, respectively, which are significantly higher than state averages. Keith Curry, the college’s president, said that when students of color complete dual enrollment courses, this gets them comfortable with college academics and leads to better representation at colleges and universities.
Some faculty push back against expansion
Some community college faculty have raised concerns about the process by which dual enrollment partnerships are established, the level of readiness of high school students for college courses, and who teaches these classes. In many districts across the state, some dual enrollment courses are not taught by community college faculty, but by existing high school teachers who hold the credentials required to teach at a college level. In the Kern Community College District, about 60% of dual enrollment courses held on high school campuses are taught by high school teachers who meet the college qualifications, according to district spokesperson Norma Rojas.
Tim Maxwell, an English professor at College of San Mateo, is a “conscientious objector” to California’s expansion of dual enrollment. Maxwell said he is concerned about what he sees as a focus to get as many students to graduate and earn college credits as quickly as possible, sacrificing college-level rigor and evaluation.
“Completion is important, but our primary responsibility is for students to learn something along the way,” said Maxwell, who has taught community college courses for about 30 years.
Maxwell has taught creative writing courses on his college campus with several dual enrolled students, one as young as 15 years old, and he said these students are “phenomenal.” But, he added, there’s a difference between a handful of proactive high schoolers going to a community college campus and a high school classroom that “switches to a college class during fifth period.” He said he is concerned about poor working conditions for professors, primarily adjunct faculty, who have to travel to high schools and teach without the proper background or support.
“We need to resist this, and we need lawmakers who understand something about education and not just spreadsheets,” Maxwell said.
Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, the president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, said dual enrollment is beneficial for students, but that she has “heard grumblings” about a need for faculty to have a more active role in setting standards and policies for dual enrollment.
Students walk near Hepner Hall at San Diego State University in San Diego on Oct. 10, 2024. (Adriana Heldiz/CalMatters)
While in high school in Blythe, Milke said his dual enrollment courses were generally easier than the courses he takes at San Diego State. But they still challenged him and prepared him for a college-level workload, he said.
Lawmakers work to continue growth
Several state laws have been enacted in the past decade to expand dual enrollment in California. In 2015, Assembly Bill 288 established the College and Career Access Pathways program, allowing community colleges and high schools to enter into dual enrollment partnerships. These institutions bring the courses to students, as opposed to those students having to seek them out. The state streamlined the pathways program with the passage of Assembly Bill 30 in 2019, allowing students to submit fewer forms to enroll. Assembly Bill 731, which is currently in committee, would, among other changes, increase the number of units that students in the program can take.
Based on PPIC research, students in the College and Career Access Pathways program now account for about 37% of dual enrollees. This program has a higher percentage of underrepresented students compared to other dual enrollment programs, in part because it eliminates some of the restrictions that can make it hard for schools to offer broad and barrier-free dual enrollment.
As dual enrollment continues to expand, it increases costs to California beyond the more than $700 million that the state has already invested. That’s because both community colleges and high school districts are typically both able to receive state funding for dual enrolled students, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
According to the statement from Christian, state leaders are working to increase dual enrollment access by expanding partnerships between high schools and colleges.
“My vision is to make dual enrollment a standard opportunity for all California students, not just an option for a select few, increasing equitable access to higher education and workforce-aligned learning,” Christian said in the statement.
Alana Althaus-Cressman, who runs the dual enrollment program at Golden Eagle Charter School, a K-12 school in Siskiyou County, markets the program to all students, not just those who already have a record of high achievement. She studied dual enrollment access for rural students for her graduate school dissertation at Sacramento State University, and started the early college high school program at Golden Eagle Charter in 2024. Students in the program take dual enrollment courses for part of the school day, and high school courses for the rest.
Althaus-Cressman said that because dual enrollment offers students a glimpse of college, it’s important that the classes aren’t only filled with students who already plan to attend college. Some high schools require minimum grade point averages or have other barriers to entry for dual enrollment, which Althaus-Cressman said can perpetuate inequalities.
The early college high school program enrolls about a third of Golden Eagle Charter’s ninth graders. Althaus-Cressman attributes this level of participation to extensive outreach, which included working with school staff to call the families of every incoming high school student to invite them to a dual enrollment orientation.
“We don’t want students to think that they aren’t the type of student for this program,” Althaus-Cressman said. “It’s for everybody.”
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NASHVILLE – Entering college with prior learning credits can be a huge boon to students, cutting down on the time and money required to complete their degrees. But the pathways to earning these credits may favor traditional college students from well-resourced high schools.
Since 2020, leaders from Salt Lake Community College have worked to improve prior learning credit options for prospective and current students, they told attendees Monday at the American Association of Community Colleges‘ annual conference in Nashville. The college put a special emphasis on pathways for adult learners — those aged 25 and older — as the average student on its eight campuses is 25 years old.
Over the past five years, the resulting cross-campus collaboration has yielded Salt Lake Community College some promising results, including more students receiving credit for their work experience and lowered financial barriers for prior learning assessment exams.
Then
In 2019, the Utah Legislature passed a law requiring the state’s higher ed board to create a plan aimed at boosting public colleges’ issuance of credit for prior learning, work-based skills and competency-based assessments.
Salt Lake Community College — which enrolls just under 37,000 credit-bearing students across eight campuses — began an evaluation of its process for awarding prior learning credits the following year.
Rachel Lewis, Salt Lake Community College’s associate provost of academic systems, said the existing process turned out to be hardly a process at all.
“It used to be, if you knew the one advisor who knew the process and could talk to this person in the registrar’s office, we could get your prior learning,” she said. “Good for the students who found it — not good for all the others.”
The college’s leaders also uncovered a gap in what kind of credits were awarded.
In 2019-20, about 80% of the prior learning credits that Salt Lake Community College awarded were through pathways typically used by high school students, said Andrea Tipton, the institution’s director of credit for prior learning.
For instance, 807 of the 1,291 students who received prior learning credits earned them through Advanced Placement tests offered by the College Board.
In comparison, only 13 students that year received credit for their professional certifications or licenses, and just one student earned credit for their previous work experience and portfolio.
Now
To address this disconnect, Salt Lake Community College standardized its prior learning credit process. That included a new hire.
“We made a crucial decision to create a position at the college dedicated to prior learning — one person at the college who could be the point of contact to serve in that role,” Lewis said, nodding to Tipton, who was hired for the new role.
Salt Lake Community College now emphasizes credits for prior learning as an option through improved communications to students. The institution also works to inform students that it’s free to have their credits evaluated and added to their transcripts.
Once a prior learning credit is added to a student’s transcript, it is transferable as if they earned it at Salt Lake Community College, according to college policy.
“When that student goes to the University of Utah, it’s now considered transfer credit,” Lewis said. “They don’t reevaluate it. They don’t look at it.”
Roughly three-fourths of Salt Lake Community College graduates, 72%, go on to transfer to a four-year institution.
The college is also highlighting CLEP tests, an exam option offered by the College Board open to learners ages 13 and older.
The tests can provide a viable alternative to AP tests. But the registration fee — upwards of $95 in 2025 — proved to be a barrier for many students, Tipton said.
This year, Salt Lake Community College began directing students to the Modern States Education Alliance, anonprofit that will cover test costs for students who complete its free prep courses.
First-year results are still pending, Tipton said. But the college is processing more CLEP exams than before, suggesting more students are taking advantage now that the financial barrier to testing has been addressed, she said.
In 2023-24, the college awarded 248 credits to 33 students for their professional licenses and certifications. This represented nearly triple the prior learning credits students earned this way only a few years before.
It granted another 100 credits to 18 students for their work portfolios and experience. The number is still low, but the jump from just one or two students a year is statistically significant,Tipton said. And it’s a population the college wants to grow.
One prior learning pathway more commonly used by nontraditional students has seen a more complicated transformation — military credits.
Back in 2019-20, Salt Lake Community College appeared to do quite well in this regard, with 137 students receiving a whopping 2,184 prior learning credits for military experience that year.
“But it was a lot of electives,” Tipton said. “It wasn’t easily applicable to their degree or transferable in a meaningful way.”
Since then, military prior learning credits have declined significantly, down to 34 students receiving 46 credits in 2023-24.
That drop resulted from the college shifting from “awarding just whatever the credit you can get” to prioritizing military credits that go toward a student’s desired degree, Tipton said. She is now working with academic departments to continue establishing better course equivalencies for military experience.
The sector is so split on the issue it can seem at once both an intractable issue never to be fully realized and an obvious enough mechanism to promote access and mobility.
In reality, it’s somewhere between the two and, today, a new report from QAA looks at where we might find that common ground. After looking at what the current state of play on credit transfer is last year, this year we’ve delved into why it is that way and what might instigate change.
Hierarchies of need
Credit transfer is the process by which a provider recognises the credit a student has accrued at another institution, exempting them from modules they’ve already undertaken elsewhere. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) doesn’t require credit transfer, but it will fall far short of its vision if more isn’t done to facilitate transfer between institutions.
The current financial precarity of much of the UK’s higher education sector has also brought into sharper focus the value for students of being able to transfer their credit and their studies between providers – whether prompted by the threat of course closures, the movement of key teaching staff, or even the prospect of institutional collapse.The latest Office for Students board papers tell us that this has happened recently in the case of the Applied Business Academy.
Last year’s Student Academic Experience Survey found that more than a fifth of students said they would, with the benefit of hindsight, have chosen a different institution or/and course. Smoother processes of credit transfer would make it possible for those students to change courses midstream. Those mechanisms wouldn’t just reinforce their rights as consumers; those opportunities should enhance their satisfaction, their chances of completion and academic success, and their employment prospects.
Credit transfer is more important for some providers than for others. The Open University receives over 6,000 applications for credit transfer every year. At multiple specialist providers, credit transfer accounts for more than 10 per cent of their annual intake.
Some providers may feel sufficiently confident in the profile of their provision to welcome an open system of credit transfer that would result in their net gain. Others have concerns about the administrative burden posed by credit transfer, the logistical complexities caused by the unpredictability of shifting student numbers, and its impacts on institutional autonomy and their academic brands.
In short, it seems clear that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t fit all, or indeed suit anyone. So, what might work? We thought it might be a good idea to ask.
Mission: Improbable
QAA’s latest research, published today, involved a survey of sector perspectives, and a series of stakeholder conversations and focus groups involving representatives both of providers and of professional statutory and regulatory bodies (PSRBs).
Those we engaged in this research overwhelmingly agreed that credit transfer is a valuable tool for students and can underpin lifelong learning. The advantages most cited were the flexibility it provides and its impact on widening participation, particularly for returners to learning – as well as the practical benefits for students who can gain qualifications and learning in a shorter time and at a lower cost, by removing the need to duplicate learning unnecessarily. The benefits also extended to institutions, particularly as an instrument to promote retention and improve completion rates.
The idea of a sector-owned framework was also welcomed by our participants, with 84 per cent agreeing it would be helpful to achieve credit transfer at scale. But our participants were rather less optimistic about the possibility of a more formal integrated sector-wide system of credit transfer. The providers themselves tended to consider this prospect unrealistic, while sector organisations were more likely to welcome the idea.
While participants were positive about the effectiveness of institutions’ individual approaches, their responses expressed concerns around transparency, resourcing and cultural resistance. Though our stakeholders largely agreed that credit transfer was a valuable route and necessary to facilitate lifelong learning, they often doubted the feasibility of delivering it at scale.
The art of the possible
Action on credit transfer falls into three (fairly) neat buckets, each with its own level of impact and compromise.
For starters, there’s some low hanging fruit that would make this process work more smoothly for applicants. Our participants observed that applicants often don’t realise credit transfer is an option – and that its processes are difficult to understand. We’d therefore recommend that providers embed greater transparency and promotion of credit transfer – and agree a sector-wide terminology to explain it.
But there’s little point making the policies more accessible if what applicants find there isn’t great. We also have to work to improve the policies themselves. We’d recommend the development of a sector-owned good practice guide to the key principles of credit transfer policy; student engagement in determining the information required and how it should be presented; and that providers consider routes through which forms academic credit can be automatically recognized for transfer.
The greatest challenge is to develop multi-institutional initiatives to ease transfer between providers. There are pockets of the sector where this would be welcome, and others where it would be hard to get it off the ground. We’re not recommending hard enforcement on credit transfer – frankly, the sector has enough to be getting on with – but some level of accountability through regional consortia or partnerships, a charter of best practice, or folding its focus into existing regulatory processes would be a start.
What’s clear is that credit transfer remains in limbo until we get a clearer direction from the government on just where the LLE is going. It might help the policy’s ambitions, but without a better sense of what the government wants the sector to achieve, it’s understandably falling down the list of priorities.
To move beyond this impasse, the government needs to make clear where the strategic imperative is for action, so the sector can get to work on addressing the cultural and practical barriers.
On February 4, Nick Graetz joined the University of Michigan’s Stone Center to present “Individualizing Climate Risk: Credit Score Penalties in the Home Insurance Market.”
Nick Graetz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. He is also a Fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive climate policy think tank developing research on the climate and inequality nexus. His work focuses on the intersection of housing, population health, and political economy in the United States. Learn more at ncgraetz.com.
Helena Vine, Lead Policy Officer for England at the Quality Assurance Agency, considers what we might learn from American researchers Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar’s recent study of ‘Discredited: Power, Privilege and Community College Transfer’.
When it comes to the more intractable issues in higher education policy, we’re often tempted to look wistfully overseas to supposedly sunlit uplands where the knotty issue has, at least on the surface, been resolved.
This has never been truer than in the case of credit transfer – the process by which a provider recognises the credit a student has successfully accrued at another institution, exempting them from modules or even whole years of learning that they have already undertaken elsewhere. If I had a pound for every person who’s suggested I look at how the USA does it, I might be able to fund a neat solution here in the UK.
I understand the appeal – the community college system and the transferable nature of credit are much more embedded within the United States than in the UK, even if each state takes a slightly different approach. It’s tempting to see such a system as the ‘holy grail’ of credit transfer models, where students can accumulate and transfer credit between institutions – and where the path of attending a community college before moving onto an institution offering four-year degrees is well-trodden.
Finding a way forward feels particularly pertinent right now. The potential for a coherent and consistent sector-wide approach to credit transfer has been highlighted by growing government aspirations across all four nations of the UK to promote lifelong learning, widening participation and regional economic development. This is why we at QAA published guidance on credit recognition and research into credit transfer practices across the UK last year and why we’re currently working with colleagues across the sector to produce an in-depth study of those practices.
We’ve naturally looked to the US ‘holy grail’ model to inform our thinking about how credit transfer might work under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement in England – and more broadly across the rest of the UK. But rather than discovering an abundance of convenient solutions that we could apply here in the UK, we were struck by the number of challenges and barriers that our systems share. It turns out that the US perhaps doesn’t have it entirely figured out after all.
Credit transfer systems appear difficult for students to navigate in both the UK and the US. Research in the US exposed conflicting sources of information, guidance documentation that is difficult for students to digest, and protocols which place the onus firmly on students to show they have the requisite learning.
These findings may feel all too familiar to those who’ve been engaged in credit transfer processes in the UK, which our own research found could also prove extraordinarily opaque.
In their study of the credit transfer practice across Texas – Discredited: Power, Privilege and Community College Transfer (Harvard, 2024)– Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar refer to this issue as the ‘hidden curriculum of transfer’. They argue that the series of hoops students must jump through almost feel designed to make them ‘demonstrate that they are worthy’. The students most ably navigating the system could do so because they took no information at face value and instead triangulated it across various sources to identify what was accurate. Such an approach indicates a significant amount of effort is therefore required to do something supposedly so essential to the smooth operation of a tertiary education system.
Despite there being much clearer routes between community colleges and four-year degree providers in the United States than those we have between further education colleges and universities in the UK, Schudde and Jabbar’s research identifies an underlying assumption in some institutions that community colleges are of lower quality and their students are not necessarily academically prepared for transfer to higher levels of study.
Academic faculty and administrators at those four-year institutions sought instead to preserve their institutions’ prestige and reputation for selectivity. In doing so, they fostered unwelcoming and unreceptive transfer processes and cultures, inevitably contributing to poorer outcomes for the students involved. Indeed, Discredited cites one administrator at a selective institution who questioned whether the students who failed to navigate its own complex system were the right candidates for such a prestigious place of study.
And in the traditionally hierarchical education system we have known in the UK – and particularly in England – it’s not impossible to imagine that there have been similar pockets of resistance that have impeded credit transfer and student mobility here too.
Delving further into the body of research on credit transfer in the US, we find that attempts to streamline and standardise these processes have often encountered concerns around the impact on institutional autonomy. While state-wide, policy-level initiatives are much more common in the US than in the UK, measures as simple as the introduction of a common system for course numbering have been met with resistance. Similar concerns abound across the UK, where efforts to acknowledge some consistency across provision raise fears of a slippery slope towards external interference in admission policies.
Ultimately, Schudde and Jabbar argue that efforts to improve support for students (and for community colleges) in navigating these transfer processes are insufficient within a system not designed to ease their paths and where the players with the most power are sometimes the ones most resistant to a reformed system.
Their argument rings true in the UK. On an individual level, providers are open and willing to engage with students with prior learning and support them in finding a route into the institution that recognises their potential and sets them up for success. Many are also willing to acknowledge that their practice in this area could be enhanced. But if the conversation continues to happen solely at an individual level, we risk a system which remains disjointed, opaque and disheartening to engage with. In doing so, we will fall far short of our ambitions for lifelong learning, a skills revolution and a more flexible imagination of higher education.
Sector reference points, such as the UK Quality Code and the Credit Framework for England coordinated by QAA, have a strong track record of facilitating appropriate consistency across a diverse sector. They recognise the common ground the sector shares while enabling providers to adapt it to their own context. The same approach could be taken with further guidance around credit transfer. Every provider’s credit transfer policy may include slightly different requirements and limits, but a sector-led agreement coordinated by QAA on what information goes in those policies and how they’re communicated to applicants would go a long way towards easing the burden on learners and providers, who know they need to do more in this space but aren’t sure where to start.
Learning that the US is far from perfect in this area could easily disincentivise action. Instead, I think it demonstrates that it’s not simply a waiting game for slow cultural and system change to emerge. Instead, it shows that, without proactively tackling the entrenched barriers in the system, the challenges continue to linger no matter how smooth and shiny it looks on the surface.
OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS TO EARN FREE COLLEGE CREDIT
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The CLEP exams, administered by the College Board, are accepted for
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Dive Brief:
A state audit of employee spending practices at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system found several financial transactions that broke university policies or lacked adequate documentation.
Comptroller Sean Scanlon detailed over $19,000 in spending on food by system Chancellor Terrence Cheng in fiscal years 2022 through 2024, by far the majority of spending on his institutional credit card. Violations included missing receipts, missing guest lists and purchases of restricted items like alcohol.
Scanlon’s probe came at Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s request after CT Insider reported Cheng spent lavishly on meals with a state-funded credit card over the past few years.
Dive Insight:
The report from CT Insider alleged that Cheng had spent as much as $1,114 at restaurants in a week, and paid for private chauffeurs despite having access to a state-provided car at the time. Once, he spent nearly $500 for the service, the outlet reported.
Scanlon’s office concluded that “while not technically violating state or university policy, we found that, in the absence of sound, comprehensive policies, the Chancellor utilized poor [judgment] when making P-Card purchases that were especially troubling given the financial stress on the CSCU system.”
The audit zeroed in on spending on food and transportation by the chancellor. Meals designated as business meetings accounted for 70% of the spending on the official’s card, and some transactions exceeded the $50 meal limit for system employees, the audit found. It also found 18 food purchases with tips deemed excessive — above 22% — which the report noted “is not a policy violation but a questionable use of university funds.”
Of the chancellor’s food-related transactions reviewed by the comptroller’s office, 43% had either no itemized receipts or were missing receipts entirely.
Among other violations were 30 instances where Cheng paid sales tax. That’s a violation of policy because institutional credit cards — also known as P-cards — are exempt from sales tax but must go through a process with vendors to credit those taxes.
However, the comptroller found that Cheng did not technically violate policy because as chancellor he can “override the policy at his own discretion.”
As for chauffeur use, the report noted three times when Cheng — who lives in New York state — paid for a private car service with his P-card, including two trips even more expensive than the one reported by CT Insider. Scanlon determined that these services did not represent violations but said that they “are of note as the Chancellor was provided with a state vehicle for their use.”
In an emailed statement Thursday, Cheng said that he appreciated the audit’s thoroughness and that the system is “committed to implementing stronger controls, policies, and comprehensive training.”
The system review also found issues with P-card use by other leaders, including the interim president of Southern Connecticut State University, Dwayne Smith. The audit found that Smith’s P-card “shows a wide variety of infractions spanning almost every category of restricted purchasing and failure to follow many of the policy requirements for documentation and reporting of transactions.”
Specifically, the comptroller’s office faulted Smith for failing to keep receipts, as well as purchasing tickets to an outside football game without stating its business purpose, among other issues.
In an emailed statement, Smith thanked the comptroller for his analysis and recommendations, adding that many of his office’s P-card transactions relate to his community engagement activities.
“These meetings have yielded significant support for our scholarship programs, internships, mentoring, and ultimately, enhanced job opportunities for our graduates,” Smith said.
Scanlon’s audit found many other issues across the Connecticut college system’s staff. His office’s report lists 10 recommended changes the system should make, including reinstating internal audits, establishing a central policy for P-card use, creating accountability measures for card misuse and establishing a policy for vehicle use.
“Unfortunately, this audit revealed troubling gaps in oversight and questionable spending practices,” Scanlon said in a Wednesday statement. “Our recommendations provide a clear path forward with more comprehensive policies, consistent enforcement, and greater overall accountability.”
In his statement, Cheng said the recommendations would “support the goal of accountability and transparency across the system.”
He added, “The system has begun to take steps in this direction and over the next 100 days, I’ve instructed my team to implement recommendations to improve compliance and reporting.”
The system’s governing board this fall moved to increase oversight of spending in its central office. As part of that process, the system recently hired a new chief compliance officer and legal counsel.
