For college students, transferring to a different school has often come with a hidden expense: credits that don’t transfer.
In a novel move, four North Texas colleges signed an agreement to help students get their bachelor’s degree with less debt. Leaders from Dallas College, the University of North Texas at Dallas, Texas A&M-Commerce and Texas Woman’s University inked the Dallas Transfer Collaborative on Thursday afternoon, a move they said will get students who transfer from Dallas College into select programs at any of the three universities and across the graduation stage faster.
The agreement allows the four higher education partners to tackle the long-standing barriers that can set back transfer students when they bring their completed credits to a new college. The four schools will commit to a shared governance structure, academic alignment, real-time credit-to-degree technology, coordinated advising and student success services, and data sharing.
School leaders said the collaboration is a huge win for students who started school at a community college without knowing exactly what they wanted to do but who had some direction and interest in a particular field. Between Dallas College and the three universities, course credits will count. Historically, transfer students enroll and have to take classes that are a lot like the ones they already passed.
“One of the issues is that so many students end up with extra credits from a community college they can’t use in their major, and it’s such a waste of time and money,” said TWU Chancellor Carine Feyten. “So in this case, it guarantees — because we’ve all worked on the curriculum ahead of time — if you take this class for this particular bucket, this particular meta-major, you will be guaranteed that you can enter that bachelor’s degree at a university.”
For the uninitiated, a meta-major is a cluster of related programs that students can use to pursue a number of different bachelor’s degrees.
In fall 2022, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reported that more than 13,000 Texas students who transferred from a two-year public institution to a university did not receive course credit for at least one lower-division-level course. The most frequently reported reason for denying those credits was that courses fell outside specified degree requirements. In that semester, more than 21,000 courses were denied credit for that reason.
The collaboration starts this fall. Emphasizing high-demand fields, the first set of meta-majors will launch in business, education and health sciences in late August.
Later this fall, the collaborative will also launch a transfer hub website, including resources and information required for transfer to Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman’s University, the University of North Texas at Dallas and other institutions. Using the site, transfer students will be able to see how their credits will transfer into degrees at participating institutions. Once they’re enrolled and studying, those students will use the hub to track their progress toward degrees.
“These first two components — meta-majors and the transfer hub website — will help prevent students from losing transfer credits and will help meet the immediate planning needs of prospective transfer students,” said Warren von Eschenbach, interim president of the University of North Texas at Dallas.
“Loss of credit, specifically due to not meeting degree requirements, has emerged as a major barrier to success for transfer students as they often struggle to figure out what lower-division credits will transfer and apply to different majors and at different universities.”
Ricky Dobbs, the senior vice provost at Texas A&M University-Commerce, said he thought A&M-Commerce faculty would like the idea of the collaboration, but then started worrying he might have oversold it to the other schools.
“Well, I went back to Commerce and started having conversations with the faculty, and they were all over it,” Dobbs said.
Von Eschenbach said the university wanted to be part of the collaboration because it serves students who are motivated but struggle to mount the barriers to a college degree.
“UNT Dallas worked closely with Dallas College and the other stakeholders in the Dallas Transfer Collaborative because we want to make the transfer process faster and easier for prospective students,” Eschenbach said. “Student feedback was instrumental in developing our new Transfer Hub website, which will provide a seamless transfer process from the seven Dallas College campuses to UNT Dallas.”
Von Eschenbach said that what benefits students, and gets them to earn their degree, pays dividends in the communities where they will eventually live and work.
“One of UNT Dallas’ top goals is to ensure students are career-ready and enter the workforce fully prepared for the opportunities and demands ahead,” he said.
“Employers are seeking job candidates with four-year degrees, which are increasingly necessary in today’s quickly evolving, technology-focused workplaces. UNT Dallas, with support from the Dallas Transfer Collaborative, will help grow the pipeline of career-ready, degreed professionals for the DFW workforce.”
For students, time is money. Feyten said the new partnership gives TWU a sharper edge in its pursuit of helping students graduate without debt.
“In my mind, if we can help more students achieve the dream of higher potential with a bachelor’s degree, and to graduate with less debt, then we are winning as a society,” Feyten said. “And to that point, for TWU’s class of 2024, 43% of them are graduating with zero debt. Now, increasing transfer and completion rates and reducing overall time to completion leads to lower costs, and thus less student debt.”
The collaboration launches in the fall after five years of planning. The agreement got its financial seeding from the Commit Partnership’s Opportunity 2040 Fund and JPMorgan Chase. The Commit Partnership is a Dallas-based nonprofit with a goal to have at least half of all 25- to 34-year-old residents earning a living wage by 2040, regardless of race. Todd Williams, chair and CEO of the nonprofit, said education is a key part of its anti-poverty work.
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