Sunday, March 23, 2008

System hurts Kentucky college transfer students

This from the Courier-Journal:

Switch from community colleges to state universities can be difficult, costly
More than a decade after the General Assembly passed sweeping reforms designed in part to help community-college students in Kentucky make the jump to public universities, fewer students -- not more -- are transferring.

That's bad news for Kentucky, a state whose efforts to become more economically competitive are hamstrung at least in part by the fact that it ranks 47th in the nation for residents with bachelor's degrees.

Educators blame a host of factors for Kentucky's stagnant transfer numbers, including: university requirements that make it difficult to exchange academic credits; not enough financial aid or advisers to help students make the jump to four-year schools; and a reluctance among some universities to aggressively recruit community college students.

A Courier-Journal review shows that during the 2006-07 academic year, roughly 3,500 community college students transferred to Kentucky's public universities -- 100 fewer than in 1997, when the legislature passed education reform. It's far from the 11,300 students a year the state says it needs by 2020 to compete with other states...

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