NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — HutchCC President Dr. Carter File notes that though there are some national concerns regarding credit loss, which is the inability to transfer from a community college to a four year institution and have those classes count, here in Kansas it is handled differently.
"In Kansas, we recognized years ago that this credit loss was a concern," File said. "The regents universities and the community colleges all work very closely together to achieve as seamless a transfer between the two institutions as possible. There are always going to be circumstances where a student may change a major, or they may change where they're going, that's going to create some kind of a credit loss. But, by and large, we've worked very hard, through advising and through other initiatives, to make sure that students don't lose credits when they transfer from a community college to a university."
This is assisted through the way classes are structured at HutchCC.
"We have a gen ed core we're working on right now, which is 32 to 35 credit hours that will transfer anywhere to any university in the state, or actually between community colleges," File said. "Those 35 credit hours will transfer and count towards those exact classes. We're also working on Transfer Kansas, which we sometimes refer to as the transfer and articulation agreement. That is a group of 114 classes that transfer among universities and community colleges, that will transfer as those courses to those universities, without any question. We're also working on what's called program to program articulation, especially for a limited number of programs where, let's just say it's an education major, the student could take the undergraduate, the freshman and sophomore classes at any community college and transfer in to the education major at any university and be junior status. All they would have to take are upper level classes. All of those are efforts to make sure that credit loss is minimized as much as possible."
The state's private colleges are also working on making transferring easier.
"Community colleges signed an agreement just this last fall with the independent colleges in this area, with the Kansas independent colleges," File said. "Essentially, what it says is, if you get an A.A. or an A.S. from a community college, an associates from a community college, you enter those colleges as junior status. As long as they are not classes you need for your major, you do not have to take any additional undergraduate classes. You take just junior and senior level classes."
It is important for students, if they are struggling in classes and need to change their major, to let their advisor know as soon as they possibly can, to mitigate the taking of classes that will not eventually help them reach graduation requirements.
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