The old college switcharoo

By Cindy Landrum  

APRIL 6, 2010 4:37 p.m. (0)

Some students are trying to piece together a college degree by taking online courses from several different colleges.

Others start at a South Carolina technical college before transferring to a four-year university because it is cheaper.

Still others switch schools because they switch majors.

No matter what the reason, a growing number of college students in South Carolina and the nation need to transfer credits earned at one school to another.

Students could lose fewer credits with planning and a new online tool just launched by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education.

The Web site, called SCTRAC, is designed to help high school and college students learn whether a course taken at one school will transfer to another and how many credits they’ll earn for it.

Transferring to another school can often add a semester or more to a student’s college career because of not all schools accept all credits from another.

There are only 86 universally transferable courses in South Carolina’s public higher education system, said Clint Mullins, a commission program manager who helped develop the Web site.

With the rest of the thousands of college courses offered by South Carolina’s technical colleges, two-year colleges and four-year colleges and universities, it is up to the receiving school to decide whether they’ll accept those credits, Mullins said.

“The academic landscape is changing,” he said. “In the past, students entered and finished at one institution, or enrolled in a technical school and transferred to a four-year institution. But with today’s technology, students can take online courses from all over the state and the nation.”

The Web site includes some out-of-state schools as well as all 33 South Carolina public higher education institutions.

Eventually, the Web site will allow students at the state’s two-year schools to import the courses they’ve taken into the system and find out exactly how they’ll transfer to an in-state school, Mullins said.

That’s important because many of the transfers are from two-year schools.

Between 2006-08, the number of students transferring from one school to another increased 16.8 percent in South Carolina, according to a commission study.

The number of transfers originating at technical colleges and moving to the state’s three research institutions – the University of South Carolina, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina – increased by 48.5 percent.

The number of students transferring from the technical colleges to the state’s comprehensive teaching colleges rose 15.4 percent, according to the study.

The transfer rate has increased at a higher rate than has the state’s first-time undergraduate enrollment.

The Web site will allow students to see which schools will accept most of their credits and which schools would require them to repeat courses and lose credits.

The site also includes application deadlines and contact information for the state’s colleges. It includes information about transfer agreements between the schools.

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