Colleges streamline core classes
4- and 2-year schools asked to work together
By Jordan Funderburk, staff writer
Posted on December 4, 2006

Future Virginia college students have just been given another green light in choosing community colleges over universities.

Virginia’s Senate and House of Delegates have seen fit to push for smoother transitions between community colleges and four-year schools. Both the Senate Bill 538 and House Bill 57 have asked universities to reform their general education requirements to fall in step with community college classes.

Responsibility for enforcing these bills goes to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. To respond to the bills, SCHEV ensures all Virginia’s four-year colleges partner with the Virginia Community College System to match their course offerings with those of Virginia’s community colleges. 

By partnering with the VCCS, 13 Virginia colleges and universities have streamlined the transfer process to make two-year college courses and associate’s degrees match up with their own courses.

Not on the list of four-year colleges signing systemwide agreements with VCCS is JMU. Madison does not offer guaranteed acceptance of graduates of community colleges, but instead has different methods in place to smooth the transfer process.

Craig Herndon, the associate for academic affairs at SCHEV, said guaranteed admissions is only one of many useful tools.

“What JMU has is articulation agreements,” Herndon said. “These spell out to students exactly what courses they need to take. If they know they want to go to JMU, then they can simply follow that guideline.”

JMU may still bring guaranteed admissions to JMU for transfer students with an associate’s degree. The Virginia schools that have already signed agreements with VCCS are mostly using guaranteed admissions as a way of easily fulfilling the policies of the Senate and House bills.

“Guaranteed admissions act as an umbrella to articulated admissions and are enhanced by them. They go hand in hand,” Herndon said.

This may not go over well with students who have already gone through the stressful admission process.

Freshman Caitlyn Plotkin instead favored JMU’s current policy of reviewing a transfer student’s transcript individually.

“It is a more fair way,” Plotkin said. “A student that has done a more intensive first two years should receive preference over a student that took a less intensive two years.”
But are community college courses actually less rigorous than four-year university general education courses?

“I think it is more of a money thing,” freshman Blake Snyder said. “What you pay for is what you get.”

However, Herndon saw the transfer process as more than just academic.

“College transfer is more than just about credits. It is about the social connection too. Our policy does not address this part, but we encourage universities to form policies that give transfer students equal status.”