Fewer than half of college students graduate on time and complete their four-year program and approximately one million students drop out of college each year with three quarters of these dropouts being first-generation college students. The statistics are worse for community college students, with fewer than 20 percent of students earning an Associate’s degree of certificate, according to published reports.
Based on a 2022 survey of more than 2000 college students and recent graduates, below are three top hurdles that prevent students from completing their Bachelor’s degrees, according to a new ebook The Definitive Guide to Course Sharing for Higher Education, from course sharing platform provider Quottly.
- Lack of access to courses needed to complete degree requirements. Approximately one-half of students reported they were wait-listed for courses they needed. Nearly one-fourth of recent graduates said they changed their major or minor according to course availability. And 41 percent of current students reported they were forced to take classes at another institution in order to fulfill their degree requirements.
- Lost credits resulting from a complicated transfer process and incomplete or incompatible course equivalency. In the Quottly study, one in two students changed schools, and more than half (55%) rated the transfer process as moderately to extremely complicated. Alarmingly, 33 percent of current students lost at least half of their credits when they transferred schools.
- No existing or limited student-facing pathways for students to help plan and monitor their progress to completion. The Quottly study revealed that more than one-fourth (26%) of students still hadn’t mapped out their degree plan by the beginning of their fourth year.
Hundreds of institutions are overcoming these challenges with course sharing, which relies on collaboration between higher education institutions to streamline course and program access and delivery. Participating schools make courses available to one another’s students for credit at their home college or university.
The benefits of course sharing are very apparent. Students get to take courses from other institutions, opening new programs and expanding offerings to underserved students. Course sharing supports degree completion and boosts the likelihood of on-time graduation. It also ensures that students receive credit for every completed course by leveraging existing transfer equivalencies.
Course sharing is also beneficial to colleges and universities, optimizing course capacity and filling empty seats while improving retention and increasing on-time completion rates. Course sharing also helps institutions create new programs without adding instructional costs. It also helps streamline administrative procedures and registration processes.
Currently, there are two main ways for colleges and universities to participate in course sharing. Cross registration builds on existing transfer equivalencies using an up-to-date transfer articulation database and a searchable course exchange to provide students with information on how courses they take will transfer to a new school. The other approach relies on agreements between institutions and lets a home institution choose courses from a partner institution to offer to students as if the courses were given by their own school.
There are five best practices to implementing a course sharing arrangement, according to Quottly.
- Create the framework. Identify institutional objectives that the arrangement will support, clarifying the positive impact the initiative can have on student and institutional goals and objectives. Involve the right people, including all key decision-makers and senior representatives from various offices including financial aid, the transfer office and registrar or enrollment management.
- Ask the right questions. Consider tuition and financial aid, examine and explore regional and interstate accreditation and build on what you have in place to create your initial offerings.
- Set up the technology. Establish integration processes for SIS, payment processing, learning management systems and more. Determine your potential vendor’s security certifications.
- Identify your metrics for success. Quantitative measures might include improving rates of progression and on-time completion, increasing the number of offered courses and expand enrollment and increase retention. Qualitative measures can include improving equity and access to courses, reaching underserved populations and increasing diversity in course and program offerings.
- Look to the future. Join or create peer networks to learn how other states or systems have used course-sharing platforms, and consider forming your own consortium or partnership. Document your process, developing guides and templates to simplify course sharing implementation in the future and track and analyze your progress and results.