Under a new Arkansas law, two-year college graduates won’t have to take more general education courses at four-year colleges. It’s hoped the rule will ease transfers and boost graduation rates.
Critical Mass worries about dumbing down the curriculum: The University of Arkansas — which has a 58 percent six-year graduation rate — is reducing general education requirements from 66 hours to the state’s 35-hour minimum. Science and math requirements will be slashed; students no longer will need to learn a foreign language.
Some departments are adding foreign language requirements to their majors; others are adding extra math requirements. But this is still a scattershot approach — the humanities students aren’t going to encounter the math requirements, and the science-types won’t have to study a foreign language.
Do all students need college math, science and a foreign language? In Europe, college students don’t take general ed courses. They specialize from the start and finish their degrees in three years.
A California bill to streamline transfers is moving through the Legislature. The bill would standardize transfer requirements, guaranteeing students an associate degree and admission to as a third-year student to a California State University campus.
Currently, each community college sets its own requirements for an associate degree, often adding courses that aren’t needed to transfer, such as a physical education or art history class.
“If for some reason students who transfer can’t complete their four-year degree requirements, they’re left with nothing to show for years of hard work in community college,” said Milburn, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges.
According to a report from the California Legislative Analyst’s office, community college students who transfer to a California State University graduate with an average of 162 units, forty-two more units than the required 120 units. Transfer students accumulate extra units because they’re often forced to retake classes.
Florida’s 2+2 transfer system is California’s model.
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at 10:17 pm
In Georgia there are six parts, consisting of more or less 60 hours, to the undergraduate core curriculum for both two-year colleges as well as four-year colleges. Any of the six areas completed at one institution must transfer as a block to any other institution in the system and any student receiving an AA or AS degree at a two-year college will have the core satisfied when transferring for their junior/senior year.
This seems to work well although there are occasional hiccups (like certain senior colleges requiring a particular course as a pre-requisite for an upper-level course) but I think this speaks to the convenience of having a single system for both levels. My personal experience in Mississippi, which has two separate systems for the universities and community colleges, was not quite as smooth because priorities at the different systems were not aligned which lead to some mismatching courses.