Best Practice Guide: A Resource for Receiving Institutions
1. History
Traditionally in the BC Transfer System, only universities granted undergraduate and graduate degrees and were exclusively the receiving institutions in the transfer equation. The senders were the institutes and community colleges that offered post-secondary certificates and diplomas and university transfer courses. Senders request articulation and receivers grant or deny the requests. The significant flow of students then was from the institutes and colleges to the universities, enabling access to degree completion. Articulation agreements were printed in hard-copy transfer guides and reflected this relatively simple relationship.
| In 1995, the provincial government empowered BCIT, ECU and several of the community colleges, subsequently called "university-colleges" and now "teaching intensive universities", to grant four-year undergraduate degrees. Two-year undergraduate degrees and private institutions having Minister's consent to offer undergraduate programs are also relatively recent developments. These developments allowed some traditionally sending institutions to become receivers and some to also become both senders and receivers. The BC Transfer Guide grew in both volume and complexity becoming increasingly unwieldy and an online public database was developed to record and publish the thousands of course-to-course and other transfer relationships. The BC Transfer Guide is now published exclusively online and the underlying database structure is scalable to manage a large number of transfer agreements. | Students are moving more often and in different directions. This requires multi-directional articulation. |
As the transfer system evolved, so have student mobility patterns. With more institutions, program types and transfer options available, students are moving more often and in different directions than before. This requires multi-directional articulation.
2. Current Situation
The BC Transfer System refers, collectively, to the group of institutions in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory between which students transfer under formal articulation agreements. Member institutions articulate post-secondary and undergraduate level transfer credit primarily at the first and second year level. Table 1 below lists all system institutions by type and defines which are senders, receivers or both. The institution's code is shown after each institution's name and is used throughout this guide.
Province-wide consultations were held on whether the BC post-secondary transfer system, as reflected in the BC Transfer Guide, was in need of expansion, renewal or radical change (BCCAT 2006). The developing consensus was that planning should occur for multi-directional and multi-level transfers, and that an expansion in the roles of some institutions is acceptable. Further, care must be taken not to compromise the existing system and not to create undue or unsustainable workloads at institutions. Incremental change is seen as more likely to yield success than wholesale reform.
Update: After consultation with the BC Transfer System in 2012, all institutions have been enabled as senders/receivers in the BC Transfer System. For more information, please visit www.bccat.ca/enabling.
3. How to Use This Guide
This guide has been developed primarily for institutions in the BC Transfer System interested in seeking designation as receiving institutions. Institutions are encouraged to consult this guide and use those sections most relevant to their needs. In addition, BCCAT's excellent How to Articulate Handbook (Finlay, 2005) contains a wealth of practical advice on most process and policy issues surrounding articulation. It would be redundant for the Best Practice Guide to cover the same topics; therefore this guide should be used in combination with the How to Articulate Handbook.
A PDF of this guide can be downloaded here: Best Practice Guide: A Resource for Receiving Institutions
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