A Student Transfer Primer - Page 3
"I Want to Transfer Colleges"
Guess What? You are not alone.
Millions of students transfer colleges every year.
Navigating College Transfer, An Introduction Page 1, 2, 3, 4
As a society mostly influenced and built by immigrants, we are motivated by our drive for a better world through diversity and respecting differences. Our communities reflect special partnerships and social networks reinforcing social institutions. Industry and government continue the push to explore the commercial value of research and the creation of new knowledge to better mankind.
Our society also revels in educational attainment. Completing your AA, BA, BS, MS or PhD generally increases your earning potential. Individually we learn to compete and drive for our self interests - both material and spiritual. Industry strongly influences government while it drives for work force productivity gains. Companies everywhere feel the sense of urgency to be more competitive locally and globally, as innovations continue to march forward. No one wants to be left behind.
We are a nation of individuals built on the values of freedom and independence, which makes us all lean toward non-conformity even though we are socialized to conform in schools. The economic circumstances thrust upon us are not fairly distributed nor are things uniform across the nation. Yet, we all strive to see the positives, even through our frustrations dealing with monolithic institutions that dominate our horizon tend to de-personalize and ignore us individually.
We have seen higher education evolve from serving the elite few in the 19th and 20th centuries to serving the masses with diversity of purpose and results. This has been made possible by political movements and leadership pushing for funding and expansion of access to higher education while retaining the diversity of institutions. Instead of focusing on a one-size-fits-all model, our nation has continued to invest and respect the diversity of higher educational institutions at the cost of transparency and comparability. Imagine if attending college was like shopping at Wal-Mart or Amazon? You could go to any outlet or venue and receive the same services and acquire the same products.
Our society, at the moment has chosen flexibility and decentralized forms of education over managing our education investment like the Army or Navy attacks our country's security challenges with logistics and operational excellence. Imagine if education was delivered like Fed Ex or UPS? We would have the most optimum system of delivery, but at what cost? The same diversity that reinforces a college's identity (and loyalties), in addition to the local drive to keep it that way, makes transfer perplexing because the differences of programs of study and courses vary so greatly across institutions in-state and across the nation.
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TIP: Schools that are less transfer friendly tend to reveal a battlefield mindset which originates from a drive for rankings and level of selectivity. What is the value of selectivity? Can you find the difference in what employers would pay for a starting graduate's salary? Completing a college degree can be correlated to employment success. The nurturing acquired through college and the confidence gained through completion is often the greater determinant demonstrated to employers that will last a lifetime.
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This is all the more reason to understand the pathways and differences where institutions publish their college transfer partners. Most students would be better off following the guidelines, if only they knew them and understood them rather trying to randomly take courses hoping one day they will mean something. And, one must realize the brand of the institution attended will also have a diminishing return the farther one moves away in time and distance.
| TIP: Institutions that tend to focus on career preparation tend to focus on majors and programs of study upon entry. Institutions that tend to focus on liberal arts education tend to focus on general life skills and competencies that prepare one for further study or work. The subtle differences should be noted. |
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