Tag: Requirements

  • Tennessee Sues to End HSI Requirements

    Tennessee Sues to End HSI Requirements

    The state of Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday seeking to nix traditional requirements for Hispanic-serving institutions’ federal designation and grant funding. The state is joined by Students for Fair Admissions, the advocacy group whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in college admissions.

    The plaintiffs argue it’s unconstitutional and discriminatory for the Education Department to designate grants for Hispanic-serving institutions, defined as colleges and universities where at least a quarter of students are Hispanic. Today, about 600 colleges and universities meet the criteria for the federal designation, established by Congress in the 1990s.

    The lawsuit laments that Tennessee higher ed institutions serve Hispanic and low-income students but don’t receive grants intended for HSIs because they don’t meet the enrollment threshold. As a result, the plaintiffs argue, Tennessee institutions find themselves in an “unconstitutional dilemma”—they want to enroll more Hispanic students to earn HSI status, but using race as a factor in admissions would be illegal.

    “Funds should help needy students regardless of their immutable traits, and the denial of those funds harms students of all races,” the lawsuit reads.

    The plaintiffs seek “a declaratory judgment that the HSI program’s ethnicity-based requirements are unconstitutional” and “a permanent injunction prohibiting the [Education] Secretary from enforcing or applying the HSI program’s ethnicity-based requirements when making decisions whether to award or maintain grants to Tennessee’s institutions of higher education.”

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  • English language requirements under the microscope: Do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements for international students?

    English language requirements under the microscope: Do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements for international students?

    • By Tamsin Thomas, Senior Strategic Engagement Manager, Duolingo English Test.

    The English language proficiency of international students is once again under the microscope. Heightened scrutiny is being driven by media coverage of international admissions, including The Times and BBC Radio 4’s File on 4, as well as the new immigration white paper. The Home Office is currently tendering for an English test for immigration purposes and has also undertaken a review of university English testing arrangements.

    There are growing questions about how UK universities assess English proficiency, which tests are accepted, and what governance arrangements are in place to ensure that students have the level of English they need to succeed. These are valid and necessary discussions.

    But it’s also true that much of the debate is happening without lived experience. Most contributors to this conversation — from media commentators to admissions professionals and policymakers — have never sat a high-stakes English language test themselves, certainly not as an entry requirement for studying in another country. That gap matters.

    How Do International Students Currently Meet English Language Requirements?

    UK universities have built robust and nuanced systems for assessing English proficiency, shaped by decades of global engagement. These typically fall into three broad categories:

    • Secondary school qualifications: Many countries offer high school-level English that meets UK university entry standards. For example, iGCSEs, the IB, Hong Kong’s HKDSE, or Germany’s Abitur are often accepted without additional testing.
    • Standardised English proficiency tests: Many international students – especially those from countries where English is not the primary language of instruction – take tests like IELTS, TOEFL, or the Duolingo English Test (DET) in addition to their school diplomas.
    • Evidence of prior study in English: If a student has completed at least three years of education in English at the tertiary level, this can meet requirements under a “Medium of Instruction” policy.

    In countries like India and Nigeria, the situation is more complex. Both operate parallel education systems – some in English, others in regional languages. Students with strong English scores in the Indian Standard XII (CBSE, ISC) or the West African WAEC are often accepted without further testing. Graduates of other boards may need to take a test.

    These frameworks are diverse by design – reflecting the deep, often country-specific, relationships and expertise UK universities have developed over time.

    While the media sometimes focuses on the small minority of international students whose English may fall short, it’s worth remembering that perfection is not the benchmark. Most international students meet entry requirements – and universities have systems in place to support language development throughout the degree. After all, only a small percentage of UK students get a Grade 9 in GCSE English, and developing academic English skills is part of what universities train students to do. Language proficiency exists on a spectrum – the question isn’t whether students are fluent on entry, but whether they have the foundation to succeed.

    What Happens When a New Test Enters the Market?

    As a relatively new entrant to this space, the Duolingo English Test – now accepted by over 40 UK universities – has seen firsthand how institutions evaluate and onboard new tests.

    Typically, the process reflects a practical need to expand the range of tests, paired with a careful scrutiny process – usually via committee:

    • Recruitment teams identify a test that meets student demand or addresses market access barriers.
    • Admissions teams assess delivery method, validity, and the external evidence base.
    • English-language colleagues evaluate whether the test provides evidence that students can succeed academically on campus.
    • Compliance teams consider immigration implications and policy compatibility – is the test secure?

    Tests are often accepted provisionally, with performance tracked for one to two years, however long it takes to build up enough data to make an informed decision. Institutions benchmark outcomes against long-accepted credentials: Do the score thresholds align, and are there heightened compliance risks?

    The process is rarely quick, but it is thorough.

    What Does Good Governance Look Like?

    While most UK universities use similar criteria for test evaluation, governance structures vary. In some institutions, decisions sit with dedicated English policy working groups; in others, with international admissions committees. Sometimes responsibility is split between professional services and academics. In others, it’s entirely devolved to professional services.

    This variation isn’t necessarily a problem but it does mean there’s no single ‘sector-wide’ process for evaluating or monitoring English tests.

    As an online test provider, one gap that has always seemed under-discussed is the practical reality of actually taking a test. If you’re a student in Afghanistan, where crossing borders is difficult and test centres don’t operate, how are you supposed to prove your English proficiency? If you’re a mobility-impaired test taker in a country without inclusive building regulations, how do you sit a test at all? The global distribution of test centres is far from comprehensive.

    Join the Conversation — Enter the DET University Challenge

    Here’s the challenge: put yourself in an international student’s shoes. Could you meet your own university’s English language entry requirements?

    The DET University Challenge 2025 invites UK university staff – whether English is their first language or not – to sit an English proficiency test similar to those taken by millions of international students each year.

    The Challenge offers a practical, engaging way for staff to experience a process usually reserved for students. It’s a prompt for reflection – and yes, maybe a little fun along the way.

    At a time when English requirements are under increasing public, political, and policy scrutiny, there’s real value in taking a closer look at the systems we rely on – and at how they feel from the other side.

    So: do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements?

    The DET University Challenge is open until 31 May 2025 with participants able to win up to £5,000 in prize money for their university or a designated Higher Education access charity. Terms and conditions apply.

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  • Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Shortly after the second Trump administration began attacking higher education diversity initiatives, the University of North Carolina system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The system was targeting DEI even before Trump retook office—the UNC Board of Governors repealed the system’s DEI policy a year ago—and its general counsel pointed to the federal government’s newly threatened funding cuts to justify this further step.

    But the system’s kibosh on DEI requirements came with caveats. Majors could continue requiring courses with diversity themes if university chancellors provided waivers.The system gave chancellors the final say on which major-specific courses would continue to be mandated, and chancellors said waivers were needed because state or national accreditation and licensure criteria require diversity education.

    “Approximately 95 percent of the programs identified for waivers at the chancellor level had accreditation and licensure requirements attached to them,” said David J. English, the system’s senior vice president for academic affairs, during a UNC board committee meeting this week. English said these programs are in counseling, education, nursing, psychology and social work.

    According to documents attached to this week’s board meeting agenda and previously reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer, dozens of courses will remain necessary for certain majors in the UNC system, which includes all four-year public universities in the state. Among them are Feminist Theory at UNC Asheville; Multicultural Counseling at UNC Charlotte; Social Work Policy and Restorative Justice at UNC Greensboro; Teaching Reading to Culturally Diverse Children at Fayetteville State University; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Agriculture at North Carolina A&T State University; and Diversity in Higher Education at North Carolina Central University.

    The UNC system is one example of universities across the country being asked to comply with vague statewide and national demands to excise DEI. Lacking detailed guidance, they’ve had to define that term for themselves as they seek to show compliance.

    The UNC system never defined for its component institutions what it meant by the verboten “course credits related to DEI.” The universities were left to determine for themselves what they should stop requiring; some administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review.

    The Feb. 5 order from the system said universities’ general education requirements couldn’t include mandates for DEI-related courses at all. A few institutions, such as East Carolina University and UNC Asheville, responded by jettisoning broad diversity categories from their gen ed requirements. At UNC Chapel Hill, College of Arts and Sciences dean Jim White wrote that “Power, Difference, and Inequality”—a category within the gen ed curriculum there—“could be incorrectly read or understood to be ‘related’ to DEI,” so it was “streamlined” and is now called “Power and Society.”

    But when it came to specific majors’ mandates for DEI-related credits, the system let chancellors grant what it called “tailored waivers” to allow these requirements to continue.

    Appalachian State University’s acting provost initially asked the national Council on Social Work Education, which accredits social work programs, to waive accreditation standards that are specifically called “Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” But when the council refused, Appalachian State chancellor Heather Norris gave her university’s social work program a waiver to continue the education requirements.

    Halaevalu Fonongava’inga Ofahengaue Vakalahi, the Council on Social Work Education’s president and chief executive officer, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “We do not issue waivers except in very limited circumstances as defined by our Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Those circumstances are not applicable in this case.

    “What we have done, and are continuing to do, is work with programs and institutions to ensure they are both meeting the appropriate standards for accreditation while also staying within the boundaries dictated by law,” Vakalahi wrote. “Social work is about healthy individuals, healthy families, and healthy communities. We value inclusion because we believe that social work is for everyone—no exceptions.”

    While the waiver documents released this week show course requirements that survived, they don’t specify whether universities dropped major-specific requirements—and if so, which ones—instead of having their chancellors grant waivers. Universities didn’t provide interviews this week to Inside Higher Ed for this article. But the fact that the system ordered statewide changes to curriculum rather than have the faculties of individual universities propose them has raised academic freedom and shared governance concerns.

    ‘Faculty Were Not Pleased’

    Wade Maki, chair of the UNC Faculty Assembly, said the faculty senates or councils of all 16 universities, plus the one specialized high school in the system, ratified a resolution calling the order to end DEI course requirements “an unnecessary and intolerable breach of the principle of academic freedom” that “deeply undermines” the system’s mission “to serve the people of our state.”

    Defending the place of faculty in setting curriculum, the resolution says, “Faculty, who are trained at the highest level of our disciplines, collaborate within our departments, universities and communities to design and lead programs—including defining the core curriculum and graduation requirements—to ensure our students’ growth and success.”

    While “faculty were not pleased” about the order, they stepped up to take part in the course review, Maki said. Because the system “did not prescribe how” to comply, “it was up to faculty and administrators to work together to determine what to do,” he said.

    “Each major had to look and say, ‘Do we think we’re at risk of being out of compliance here, and what’s the best course of action?’” he said.

    Herle McGowan, chair of North Carolina State University’s Faculty Senate, said her university dropped a general ed requirement in response to the system’s order—a requirement that had been created by faculty with student input.

    “The fact that it changed without consultation from faculty is definitely concerning to me,” McGowan said.

    She said she personally believes academic freedom rights should cover “the broader curriculum,” not just individual faculty teaching and research. Within majors, she said experts should agree on what students need to learn, and when it comes to gen ed, there should be “collaboration from faculty experts all across the university” in determining what students need to be good, well-rounded citizens prepared for life and work.

    Regardless of her own views on academic freedom, McGowan said, the fact that the system handed down such an order points to a need for constituents—from faculty to board members—to come to a consensus on what academic freedom means.

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  • Alabama high school requirements now allow students to trade chemistry for carpentry

    Alabama high school requirements now allow students to trade chemistry for carpentry

    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In a corner of Huffman High School, the sounds of popping nail guns and whirring table saws fill the architecture and construction classroom.

    Down the hall, culinary students chop and saute in the school’s commercial kitchen, and in another room, cosmetology students snip mannequin hair to prepare for the state’s natural hair stylist license.

    Starting this fall, Alabama high school students can choose to take these classes — or any other state-approved career and technical education courses — in place of upper level math and science, such as Algebra 2 or chemistry.

    Alabama state law previously required students to take at least four years each of English, math, science and social studies to graduate from high school. The state is now calling that track the “Option A” diploma. The new “Option B” workforce diploma allows students to replace two math and two science classes with a sequence of three CTE courses of their choosing. The CTE courses do not have to be related to math or science, but they do have to be in the same career cluster. Already, more than 70 percent of Alabama high school students take at least one CTE class, according to the state’s Office of Career and Technical Education/Workforce Development.

    The workforce diploma will give students more opportunities to get the kind of skills that can lead to jobs right after high school, legislators said. But there’s a cost: Many universities, including the state’s flagship University of Alabama, require at least three math credits for admission. The workforce diploma would make it more difficult for students on that track to get into those colleges.

    The law passed in 2024 alongside a spate of bills aimed at boosting the state’s labor participation rate, which at 58 percent as of January remained below the national rate of 63 percent. Simply put, Alabama wants to get more of its residents working.

    Alabama is giving high school students a new pathway to a high school diploma: fewer math and science classes in exchange for more career and technical education courses. Credit: Tamika Moore for The Hechinger Report

    The new diploma option also comes at a time when public perception of college is souring: Only 36 percent of U.S. adults have a lot of confidence in higher education, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Just 43 percent of Alabama high schoolers who graduated in 2023 enrolled in one of the state’s public colleges the following fall.

    “The world of higher education is at a crossroads,” said Amy Lloyd, executive director of the education advocacy nonprofit All4Ed and former assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education. “Americans are questioning the value of the return on their investment: Is it worth my money? Is it worth my time?”

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free newsletter on K-12 education.

    One recent afternoon in Huffman High School’s architecture class, a few students in bright yellow safety vests were measuring a wall they had built. At the end of the semester, the project will culminate in a tiny home.

    Lucas Giles, a senior, started taking architecture his sophomore year as a way to “be able to fix things around the home without having to call other people,” he said. The new workforce diploma option won’t apply to him since he’s graduating this year, but he said he likely would have opted for it to fit more architecture classes into his schedule — that is, until he learned it would make it harder for him to attend college and study engineering.

    “I wouldn’t have the credits,” Giles realized.

    Students who earn a workforce diploma and end up wanting to go to college after all can enroll in community colleges, or aim for state colleges that have less stringent admissions requirements, said Alabama education chief Eric Mackey. The key to the new diploma will be ensuring school counselors are properly advising students, he added.

    “That’s where the counselor comes in and says, ‘If you want to be a nurse, then yes, you need the practical stuff at the career tech center — taking blood pressure and trauma support — but you also need to be taking biology, physiology, chemistry and all those things, too,’” Mackey said.

    Because the diploma only makes sense for a specific subset of students — those who do not plan to go to a four-year college that requires more math or science and who cannot otherwise fit CTE classes in their schedule — counselors have a huge role to play in guiding students. As of 2023, there were 405 students for every counselor in Alabama’s public schools, well over the recommended ratio of 250 to 1.

    Mackey said the state added career coaches in recent years to ease the counseling workload, but in many districts there is just a single coach, who rotates among schools.

    Samantha Williams, executive director of the nonprofit Birmingham Promise, fears the workforce diploma may shut off students’ options too early. Birmingham Promise helps students in Birmingham City Schools pay college tuition and connects them to internship opportunities while in high school.

    “Do you really think that all of our school districts are preparing students to know what they want to do” by the time they’re in high school, Williams asked.

    Williams also worries that lower-performing students might be steered to this diploma option in order to boost their schools’ rankings.

    Students who opt for the workforce diploma will not have their ACT test scores included in their schools’ public reports. Legislators decided that schools should not have to report standardized test scores for students who did not have to take the requisite math and science classes.

    “The concern a lot of people voiced was ‘Hey, isn’t everyone just going to place the kids who are underperforming in the workforce diploma so their ACT scores don’t bring down the whole?’” Williams said. “There’s a strong perverse incentive for people to do that.”

    Speaking to the state’s Board of Education last fall, Mackey warned the “furor of the state superintendent will come down on” anyone who tries to redirect students toward the workforce diploma because of low ACT scores.

    Related: What happened when a South Carolina city embraced career education for all its students

    At Headland High School in rural Henry County, Alabama, every student takes at least one CTE course, according to Principal Brent Maloy. The most popular classes, he said, are financial management and family consumer science.

    “We don’t force them in — everybody registers themselves, they pick their own classes,” Maloy said. “But there’s just about a zero percent chance that a kid’s not going to have a career tech class when they graduate.”

    The school has hosted information sessions for parents and students about the new diploma option ahead of next school year. In a poll of rising juniors and seniors, 20 percent said they would like to pursue a workforce diploma, and another 30 percent said they might be interested. Maloy is anticipating about 25 percent of students will actually opt in to the pathway.

    Most graduates of Headland enroll in a two-year school after graduation anyway, Maloy said, and the workforce diploma won’t hinder that. But the high school has only one counselor for its 450 students, and making sure students fully understand this diploma pathway — and its limitations — is likely to add pressure and extra responsibilities on counselors with heavy workloads.

    Students hold up the wall of a tiny home they’re building in a career and tech architecture class at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report

    “There’s so much pressure on our secondary counselors already just to make sure that all of the boxes are checked before graduation. It’s going to put an extra box for them to check,” Maloy said.

    Ultimately, state businesses and industries want this change, said Mackey, who started his career as a middle and high school science teacher.

    “They were saying, ‘We really need students with skills over, say, calculus,’” Mackey said. “That doesn’t mean some students don’t need calculus — we want to still offer those higher math courses and higher science courses.”

    But, reflecting on his own experience as a high school science teacher, “I can tell you that every student doesn’t need high school chemistry,” Mackey said.

    The chamber of commerce in Mobile, Alabama, is one group that advocated for the workforce diploma. Career tech classes are a good way for students to better learn what they want to do before graduating high school, and they are also an avenue for students to get skills in high wage industries prevalent in Alabama, said Kellie Snodgrass, vice president of workforce development at the Mobile Chamber.

    Less than half of high school graduates in the region end up enrolling in college after graduation, Snodgrass said, and only 20 percent of high-wage jobs in Mobile require a college degree. A large chunk of jobs in the state, and in Mobile in particular, are in manufacturing.

    “It’s terrible when a student goes away to college and comes back and can’t find a job, when we have thousands of open jobs here,” Snodgrass said.

    In an emailed statement, Trevor Sutton, the vice president of economic development at the Birmingham Business Alliance, said the diploma option was a “win for the state of Alabama” that would allow students a chance to learn both “hard and soft skills like communication and time management.”

    Related: States bet big on career education, but struggle to show it works

    At least 11 states have embraced policies that give students flexibility to use career tech courses for core academic credits, according to a review from the Education Commission of the States.

    Like Alabama, Indiana also made changes to its diploma requirements in 2024. After more than a year of public debate, the state created three graduation pathways that are meant to lead to college admissions, the workforce, or enlistment in the military. Those changes will be effective for students in the class of 2029, or current eighth graders.

    Having industry buy-in on career tech programs is important, said Lloyd with All4Ed, because most students will need either an industry or post-secondary credential to land a job with a comfortable wage.

    “The reality is a high school diploma is not enough in today’s labor market to have a guaranteed ticket to the middle class,” Lloyd said.

    The problem, Lloyd said, is most K-12 industry credentials have little use to employers. Only 18 percent of CTE credentials earned by K-12 students in the U.S. were in demand by employers, according to a 2020 report from the Burning Glass Institute.

    The key in Alabama will be ensuring students are going into career pathways that line up with job demand, Snodgrass said. Out of the more than 33,000 CTE credentials Alabama high school students earned in 2023, only 2 percent were in manufacturing, which is one of the state’s highest need areas.

    Still, attitudes toward high school CTE courses — once largely thought of as classes for students who struggled academically — have improved significantly over the years. And many schools offer CTE programs like aerospace, robotics or conservation that could help students get into high-demand undergraduate programs at universities.

    “We’re increasingly blurring the lines between what has been historically siloed in people’s minds in terms of career education versus academic education,” Lloyd said. “Those are very often one and the same.”

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath at gilreath@hechingerreport.org

    This story about Alabama high school requirements was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter

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  • Ithaka’s New Transfer Explorer Maps Transfer Courses to Degree Requirements

    Ithaka’s New Transfer Explorer Maps Transfer Courses to Degree Requirements

    Over two-thirds of adult Americans who have attempted to transfer academic credit report having at least one negative experience, according to a recently released survey from Public Agenda. Student mobility is increasing, as is student access to college-level learning from multiple sources. But as evidenced by the Public Agenda survey and slow progress toward improving outcomes for transfer students, higher education institutions are still struggling to improve the transfer experience.

    Part of this continued struggle is the siloed and opaque nature of information about how prior learning will be accepted and applied toward a credential upon transfer to a new institution. With 1.2 million students transferring between institutions in 2024—a 4.4 percent increase from 2023—it is more critical than ever to overcome the barriers students face moving academic credit to and between institutions to earn a degree.

    To help address these complex and longstanding challenges, our teams at not-for-profit Ithaka have launched a new, public, national credit mobility website, Transfer Explorer. Currently in its beta release, Transfer Explorer will expand in 2025 to contain data from a growing number of institutions across four states, thanks to collaborations with the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, the City University of New York, the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, and the Washington Student Achievement Council.

    To break down transfer data silos, Transfer Explorer member schools establish an automated data feed of evaluated course equivalencies, course catalog information and program requirements directly from their institutions’ student information and degree audit systems. This enables Transfer Explorer to create exploration tools with the most accurate and up-to-date information and allows institutions to easily maintain accurate information on the website simply by maintaining data within their existing systems. Data integration from member college source systems is powered by CampusAPI Requisite and Equivalency services from the nonprofit DXtera Institute.

    Students can use Transfer Explorer beta to:

    • Create a personal wallet of courses they have taken or plan to take at one or more schools
    • Explore how courses in that wallet transfer and apply to degree requirements at Transfer Explorer member schools
    • Create multiple explorations and research different schools and degrees
    • Save and share explorations by creating a personal, unique, and editable hyperlink
    • Discover information about Transfer Explorer member schools

    Three schools in South Carolina are the first to be featured as destination schools on Transfer Explorer: Aiken Technical College, Coastal Carolina University and Lander University. These represent three different source systems (Colleague, Banner and DegreeWorks), but their data are normalized for a consistent exploration experience in Transfer Explorer.

    Lander University was the first institution to launch Transfer Explorer in February 2025.

    “At Lander University, we have made major changes over the past five years to make our institution more transfer friendly: We have streamlined our general education curriculum, modified the maximum number of credit hours we will accept and added staff to enhance the transfer student onboarding experience,” said Lloyd Willis, dean of the College of Graduate and Online Studies.

    “We view Transfer Explorer as the next step of this evolution. We love the tool’s user interface, the level of data it contains and the functionalities it contains that empower students to engage in course articulation and transfer conversations with their academic advisers.”

    Community and technical colleges play a critical role in student mobility both as preparers of students for transfer and careers, as well as receivers of transfer students from all sectors of higher education. Aiken Technical College is planning to use Transfer Explorer in its recruitment and admission activities for new students, as well as to support students planning to transfer to a university.

    “Aiken Technical College is excited to be a part of the Transfer Explorer project. The website is very user-friendly for students and advisors and will go a long way in avoiding lost college credits for students upon transfer,” said Chad Crumbaker, vice president of academic affairs and workforce innovation at Aiken Technical College.

    Crumbaker is also eager to see how Transfer Explorer can help Aiken improve transfer processes and rules: “It also will help us identify additional opportunities to analyze course equivalencies to ensure that students get credit towards their programs for the courses they have already taken and to confirm that our transfer agreements are in practice in our transfer process.”

    Transfer Explorer will continue to expand and grow in 2025 and beyond. Upcoming additions to the site include enabling users to add credit for prior learning experiences (e.g., exams, military training) to their explorations, improving the interoperability of school data by allowing comparisons across destinations and enhancing the user experience in collaboration with member schools and systems.

    Transfer Explorer is inspired by and builds upon the groundbreaking CUNY Transfer Explorer (T-Rex) created by the City University of New York and Ithaka S+R in 2020, which has helped hundreds of thousands of people explore, discover and use the over 1.6 million credit transfer rules for the CUNY system’s 20 undergraduate colleges.

    Transfer Explorer and the broader Articulation of Credit Transfer Project have been generously funded by Ascendium Education Group, the Gates Foundation, the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, ECMC Foundation, the Heckscher Foundation for Children, and the Ichigo Foundation.

    Chris Buonocore is product manager for Transfer Explorer at Ithaka and founding member of the CUNY Transfer Explorer platform.

    Alex Humphreys is vice president for innovation at Ithaka, where he leads a team that scouts and develops the future of research and education through projects, partnerships and investments.

    Martin Kurzweil is vice president for educational transformation at Ithaka S+R and principal investigator of the ACT project.

    Emily Tichenor is a senior program manager at Ithaka S+R leading initiatives and research focused on credit mobility, including Transfer Explorer.

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