Who Decides Transfer?
A Review of the Policies and Practices at BC Transfer System Member Institutions
The purpose of this research was to examine transfer credit decision-making processes at BCTS member institutions, to identify the roles or areas that make decisions on transfer credit requests. This comparison is not intended to be evaluative, but rather to provide contextual information for institutions assessing or revising their own policies.
We collected publicly available data such as transfer credit policies and calendar copy from the websites of 38 of BCTS’ 39 member institutions. This information is challenging to summarize because of the wide range of variation in processes and participants. The full text of the report provides a more complete and nuanced analysis of transfer credit decision processes across the BCTS.
The broad outcomes of the analysis indicate that approximately 20% of BCTS member institutions do not explicitly identify the decision-makers and/or participants in the transfer credit decision process. Registrars and program heads are the roles that most commonly have the authority to decide on transfer credit requests. More than one role or area, in either a decision-making or advisory capacity, is generally involved in assessing transfer credit requests.
The study recommends that institutions have a clearly written and publicly available transfer credit policy that identifies all participants in assessments of transfer credit requests, and that defines each step in the assessment process. This information is important to provide consistency and guidance for students, staff, faculty, and administrators. The study also recommends that an academic representative from a relevant discipline be involved in all transfer credit decisions.