AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Paul LePage joined leaders of Maine’s university and community college systems Monday for the signing of a landmark, comprehensive agreement that aims to ease student transfers between the state’s public institutions of higher learning.
University of Maine System Chancellor James Page and Maine Community College System Acting President Derek Langhauser signed the deal at the University of Maine at Augusta campus.
The hope is that the agreement will help improve degree attainment and completion rates by making switches between systems simpler and college more affordable.
“It is not where you start, but how far you go that matters,” Page said. “With this agreement we are ensuring the same learning outcomes, same expectations, and same credit for our students across all 14 of Maine’s public colleges and universities so Maine learners can more easily and affordably progress along the path to advancement.”
After Page’s selection as chancellor in 2012, the governor called to congratulate him but within the first few sentences stressed that he wanted the transfer process fixed. Officials from both systems and LePage have said that the process of transferring from one system to another is overly complex and inefficient.
“In every job I’ve had, people will say, ‘The cost of education is so expensive.’ This is one way we can reduce the cost of education,” LePage said at Monday’s event.
He shared the story of a student who transferred from Southern Maine Community College to the University of Southern Maine and couldn’t get credit for a history course taken at SMCC, in spite of the fact that it used the same textbook as its counterpart at USM.
The former head of the state’s community colleges, John Fitzsimmons, r esigned early this year under pressure from LePage. The governor expressed displeasure with the lack of progress on the transferability initiative and the decision to drop the Bridge Year program, which allows students to earn college credit before graduating high school, under Fitzsimmons.
The agreement, a memorandum of understanding between the systems, will allow students who complete up to 35 general education credits to transfer that credit block on to any community college or university campus in the system. This means students could fulfill these general education requirements at a lower cost at one of the state’s community colleges before transferring to a four-year school. Other students might decide to leave one of Maine’s universities to attain a less costly community college degree.
“This is the standard of cooperation we need to expect from Maine public higher education institutions, and the start of more to come for Maine students,” LePage said.
To this point, transfers have been guided by more than 150 individual “articulation agreements” between individual programs at individual campuses. Those agreements have determined whether specific courses can transfer and count toward the completion of a degree or certificate.
Langhauser said that about 750 community college students transfer to UMS each year. In one recent three-year period, 42 percent of community college students went on to pursue a degree at another higher education institution. Of that 42 percent, 40 percent went to a UMS campus. That number is expected to grow under this agreement.
“Thanks to the hard work of faculty and staff across our institutions, this agreement will help ensure that our students are prepared to be successful at each step in their educational journey,” he added.
“This is by far the most comprehensive, detailed and multileveled set of works that we’ve ever done together,” said UMS Chief Student Affairs Officer Rosa Redonnett, who has been leading the two-year effort to iron out the agreement. She has been with the university system for 28 years and says she can’t recall a collaboration of this significance on the systemic level.
The community colleges had to make the most significant moves in order to get this deal done.
Before this deal, community colleges required students pursuing an Associate of Arts degree to complete 22 credit hours of general education courses, so the schools had to increase their requirements to match the 35-credit-hour UMS general education threshold.
Barbara Woodlee, chief academic officer for MCCS, said faculty were key to that effort.
This general education transfer agreement doesn’t yet reach into the Associate of Sciences or Associate of Applied Sciences paths, because those programs require more specialized courses, and there is less time for students to devote to general education requirements.
The agreement also establishes reverse transfer, which allows a student who has transferred from a community college to a UMS school to earn community college credentials by applying credits earned after their UMS transfer back to the community college. This will start in the fall of 2015.
The memorandum also aims to ensure students receive credit for their prior learning and work experience. Committees of faculty from both systems are working to set common standards so students can be awarded credit for work they’ve done in the past outside the classroom.
Committees of administrators and faculty from both systems will continue to meet to monitor the success of transfers and develop common assessments across the system, leaders say.
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