| California Community Colleges chancellor addresses need to improve transfer rates to universities |  |  |  |
| Written by California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office | |
| Saturday, 30 January 2010 | |
| DALLAS – California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott on Friday stepped in for Dr. Jill Biden and delivered the closing keynote address at the 8th Annual National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students Conference in Dallas, Texas. Chancellor Scott, a former California State Senator who spent much of his political career championing education issues, focused his remarks on the necessity of improving articulation between community colleges and four-year institutions. “When courses do not transfer from a community college to a four-year institution, students lose valuable time and taxpayers waste a lot of money,” said Chancellor Jack Scott. “Improving how colleges and universities prepare students for transfer is a cost effective strategy for increasing graduation rates. My advice to cash strapped states is to invest a small amount of resources into developing common transfer agreements. Once transfer between systems becomes easy for students to understand, two and four-year colleges will recoup the economic benefits of running more streamlined institutions. In turn, these systems will successfully serve even more consumers.” A recent study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office indicated that in the 2007-08 academic year, taxpayers spent about $28 million on excess units taken by students to achieve a bachelor’s degree. In general, community college students transferring to a California State University graduated with an average of 162 units when the minimum required is 120. Chancellor Scott has set as one of his top priorities improving transfer rates for students attending California’s 110 community colleges. Scott supported legislation to permit community colleges to offer an associate degree in a major with the designation for transfer. Studies show transfer students do as well or better than native four-year students in terms of GPA and degree completion. In Scott’s address he emphasized the need to improve national transfer rates. |