Lessons From a Decentralized State

In 2016, four organizations -- the Michigan Community College Association, the Michigan Association of State Universities, the Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities, and the Michigan Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers -- partnered together to form the Michigan Transfer Steering Committee with a focus on increasing associate and bachelor’s degree completion among Michigan transfer students.

Their objective was to make the overall transfer experience more efficient, easy to understand and simple to navigate while optimizing credit transfer in a state with little higher education policy and no state agency to coordinate institutions. Their transformative work resulted in the creation of the MiTransfer Pathways, Michigan’s statewide transfer pathways. Through the MiTransfer Pathways, students can complete required and recommended coursework in the first and second year at any participating community college and be ready for enrollment in upper-division courses at any participating bachelor’s degree-granting institution in 10 program areas, including art, biology, business, communication, criminal justice, exercise science, mechanical engineering, psychology, public health and social work.

Why Was This So Transformative?

Overcoming barriers to seamless transfer is hard under any circumstance, but overcoming these barriers in a constitutionally decentralized state that grants considerable autonomy to all of its 28 public community colleges and 15 public universities makes the work even harder. While having a system to coordinate and support institutional reform efforts doesn’t guarantee progress, it certainly makes some of the foundational work of building transfer pathways easier. In the absence of a policy and regulatory structure within which to operate, the Michigan Transfer Steering Committee had to work to create the conditions for institutions to tackle the hard work of building clear and coherent transfer pathways. To develop the MiTransfer Pathways, Michigan hosted faculty from colleges and universities across the state to identify courses that are required, recommended, optional or appropriate for students to complete in the first and second year. The full report, “Points of Pride: Transfer Progress in Michigan,” describes how giant easel pads and mailing labels were used to identify courses quickly.

In even highly structured systems, cross-institutional faculty engagement is sporadic, limited to annual meetings of faculty in certain disciplines and disconnected from broader efforts to improve student success and close equity gaps. The process crafted in Michigan through the committee initiated engagement between faculty from community colleges, public universities and independent institutions. By collectively identifying and creating transfer opportunities across sectors, and bringing private and public universities to the same table, the MiTransfer Pathways project has shown what’s possible when institutions come together voluntarily. With 28 community colleges and 30 public and independent bachelor’s degree-granting institutions participating in the MiTransfer Pathways, students now have more equitable access to transfer opportunities in Michigan. To participate in the pathway, participating colleges and universities must accept and apply every course from every participating community college (with few exceptions). Community colleges can deliver on the promise that students can “start here, go anywhere” because we know that every MiTransfer Pathway course will meet program requirements at participating universities.

Counselors and advisers have plenty of topics to cover with students in regular advising sessions including exploring careers, selecting a major, gaining professional experience and making connections with campus and community resources. Advising need not focus entirely on elaborate course selection. The MiTransfer Pathways simplified course selection for students and course scheduling for colleges. Since faculty identified a narrow(er) set of major-specific courses in the first and second year, students no longer need to select from the à la carte menu of courses, and colleges can serve a balanced meal of program-specific courses that are more likely to fill and less likely to be canceled for low enrollment. Prospective psychology majors, for example, can begin with the four psychology courses identified in the pathway and have more meaningful conversations with trained and experienced counselors and advisers.

The MiTransfer Pathways courses allow colleges to focus attention on foundational, program-specific, lower-division courses. Colleges can transform these courses from a basic introduction to the discipline to an engaging learning experience where students are oriented to the discipline, learn how to learn, are provided the opportunity to engage in research or apply and deepen knowledge and skills through projects, internships, co-ops, clinical placements, group projects outside of class, service learning or study abroad.

While the explicit goal was to build MiTransfer Pathways, with over 60 institutions involved in the statewide transfer work, community colleges cultivated more meaningful relationships with peers at institutions across the state. There is not a widget or website that can replace relationships between faculty across institutions.

What’s next? The statewide transfer work has been a catalyzing experience for community college faculty, staff and administrators in Michigan. Although there has been significant progress improving transfer opportunities, there is more work to be done.

• Data analysis: Community colleges are often data rich and analysis poor. The secure area of the Michigan Transfer Network available to faculty and staff offers an incredible opportunity to expand the use of data, facilitate communication between institutions and provide support to faculty, staff and administrators to take on the hardest conversations and the most important work.

• Pathway development: Leveraging the model created for this project and partnering Michigan’s community colleges with universities interested in building pathways in applied degree programs and additional liberal arts and humanities disciplines in our decentralized governance structure is one cost-effective path. While there’s much more work to be done in creating clear and coherent pathways for learners in Michigan, our MiTransfer Pathways framework has created additional momentum around our most important attainment and equity goals.

• Faculty engagement: Faculty are interested in discussing pedagogy, learning outcomes, assessment and emerging opportunities to develop “light the fire” learning experiences with their peers. Rather than viewing cross-institution dialogues as a box to check, faculty see the MiTransfer Pathways framework as a meaningful way to engage in statewide faculty conversations about student learning, issues of access and equity, and improving student success outcomes. Faculty are hungry and grateful for authentic opportunities to connect, and the work in Michigan has shown promise for building longer-term structures for peer learning and community-building among faculty.

• Advising resources: Advisers, counselors, admissions officers, formal or informal faculty advisers, front desk staff and a host of other staff at community colleges are officially or unofficially responsible for advising students. The Michigan Center for Student Success is facilitating opportunities for Michigan’s community colleges to work together to develop more robust advising resources that community colleges can adopt or adapt to meet their needs. By creating a repository of resources and opportunities for engagement, we expect to see informal advising communities of practice emerge as the work matures in our state.

• Equity: Improving transfer can be a powerful tool to increase equity. As we engage in our ongoing work, we continue to center equity in all of our projects and work with our transfer partners to increase equitable transfer opportunities. This means not only a commitment to disaggregating data, it also means a commitment to listening to transfer students themselves and grappling with long-standing structures that raise barriers to the students who can least afford additional obstacles.

Erica Lee Orians is executive director of the Michigan Center for Student Success at the Michigan Community College Association, where, since 2015, she has supported community colleges in their efforts to improve student success.