A stellar high school student in Brockton, William Kimani earned so many credits at a nearby community college that he graduated from high school with an associate degree, too.
The son of Kenyan immigrants, he thought it would save him time and money when he enrolled at the University of Chicago and transferred his credits.
Instead, he learned a hard lesson in college economics. The college told him none of the two-year associate degree credits would count toward his bachelor's degree.
“Zero,” Kimani said on a recent morning, recalling the blunt email he received from college administrators in Chicago. It “was quite painful because I feel like the degree that I worked towards was a lot of work — a lot of effort.”
One of the supposed benefits of attending community college is that it offers an affordable path to a four-year degree, but that’s not the reality for many students. Some highly selective four-year colleges have policies that allow them to determine which credits count after a student enrolls. But others, like the University of Chicago, reject all credits from two-year institutions.
It’s a practice that costs students thousands of dollars per credit and prevents them from graduating on time, with less debt, while colleges profit off of their enrollment.
The Government Accountability Office estimated that, among students who transfer, about 43% of their college credits don’t end up counting toward a new degree — including private and public schools, as well as two- and four-year schools. The report included data on lost credits among students transferring between four-year institutions, but it also found that students attempting to transfer from a two- to a four-year college lost an average of 30% of their credits.
Those figures obscure the true bottom line: students finishing their degrees and walking on graduation day.
“[Students] get discouraged or sort of fall off the pathway,” said Martin Kurzweil, at the nonprofit consulting group Ithaka S&R. “A lot of students who do transfer don’t end up making it all the way to a degree.”
At least 80% of community college students said their goal is to earn a bachelor's degree. But, historically, very few of them realize it. Only one in six of community college students — or about 16% — graduate, according to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University in New York.
The issue of credit transfer isn’t lost on state governments. But while the majority of states have crafted policies to help with that transition, they aren’t following up on what ultimately carries over. Plus, lack of guidance for students at two-year institutions makes it hard for them to choose courses.
Thirty-eight states, including Massachusetts, have general education courses guaranteed to transfer across all public postsecondary institutions. And 35 states have a statewide policy that guarantees transfer of an associate degree at public institutions, according to the Education Commission of the States.
But those institutional agreements in Massachusetts, for example, don’t track whether a student’s credits make the transition and save students money or help lessen their student loan debt.
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education described the state transfer system as “one of the leading systems nationally,” because it offers student transfer resources like MassTransfer A2B’s Degree tools, which help students understand which courses are transferable. But the department could not tell GBH News what percentage of a students’ community college credits ultimately transferred to four-year schools. State officials acknowledged there are ways the system could improve.
Kurzweil said part of the problem is that community college advisors don’t always tell students whether the credits they’ve earned will count toward a bachelor’s degree, leaving students guessing about the best path forward.
The terms of the credit agreements between community colleges and four-year schools guaranteeing transfer credits for general education courses are also constantly changing.
“Because [students] don’t know, they can’t really plan,” Kurzweil said. “They end up taking things that don’t count, and that is extremely discouraging.”
Francesca Purcell, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said schools that require students to take additional courses or repeat courses reap a financial benefit at students’ expense.
“Oftentimes institutional priorities bump out student priorities,” she said. “Given the financial situation that most four-year institutions are in, that is not an unreasonable potential revenue source to overlook. Colleges are businesses. They need to survive.”
Kimani, the first-year student at the University of Chicago, said his situation highlights a glaring inequity. The university accepts high school Advanced Placement course credits but denies credits like those he earned at community college.
Studies have found that Black and Indigenous students, as well as students attending high schools in rural areas, have significantly less access to AP coursework than their peers.
A University of Chicago spokesperson responded to questions about its policies in a statement saying that “any student can take placement tests or accreditation exams for credit.”
"Oftentimes institutional priorities bump out student priorities."Francesca Purcell, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Financially strapped community college students hoping to transfer to four-year schools, then, must bear the brunt of the costs — apart from rare exceptions like Simba Gandari.
An immigrant from Zimbabwe who became a U.S. citizen, he earned an associate degree at Piedmont Technical College, a two-year public college in Greenwood, South Carolina.
He said he was told all his credits would transfer when he was accepted at Cardinal Stritch University, a private Catholic four-year college in Wisconsin.
Then, on the eve of finishing his bachelor’s degree in sports management, his academic advisor told him that he still needed to take an English literature class despite having taken English classes in South Carolina.
He would have to enroll and pay for another semester.
“I was supporting myself, so I was just trying to figure out how I would even be able to pay for it and have the time to do it,” Gandari said. “It was discouraging.”
Gandari, who had already taken out nearly $50,000 in student loans, said college administrators did not seem to feel the same urgency he did to graduate on time. So he acted boldly, emailing Cardinal Stritch’s president directly to explain his circumstances.
The college ultimately agreed to accept his technical school English credit, allowing him to graduate faster.
The story didn’t end so well for Cardinal Stritch, which announced plans to close this month citing enrollment and financial challenges.
Kimani, at the University of Chicago, said he views selective colleges that accept AP credits but not community college credits as businesses that cater to wealthier students.
“I think it shows, in many ways, ingrained inequality preferences towards suburban, more affluent students,” he said. “It shows where colleges’ priorities really are.”
