Two new policies will place a greater emphasis on completing a degree and make it easier for students to transfer completed courses from Ivy Tech Community College in 2012.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education approved last week a new general education certificate that will encourage students unsure of their educational plans to take a set of core classes designed to transfer across degree programs to any Indiana college or university.
“This gives students a defined set of courses if they know they want to transfer but don’t know their degree program,” said Jason Bearce, Associate Commissioner for Strategic Communications and Initiatives for the commission. “This will be very adaptive to other programs.”
Bearce said the certificate requires a specific set of classes —from English composition to mathematics to humanities — from the Indiana Core Transfer Library that are sure to transfer, rather than the wider variety of classes students could dabble in that may not count toward a bachelor’s degree.
“It provides students choice, but structured choice,” he said.
The certificate, which will require 30-34 hours of coursework, could be completed in a year. Bearce said it’s not meant to replace an associate’s degree, however.
“It’s currency to be applied to any degree. Once students finish this they can transfer or stay and finish their associate’s degree,” he said. “It’s an incentive and a milestone, but it doesn’t have that kind of value in the professional world.”
Mary E. Ostrye, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Ivy Tech, said the certificate is a step toward making sure no student takes a class that amounts to no credit after transferring.
“The Commission for Higher Education is working on establishing a more accurate system to track transfer students. There is a clearinghouse that the college belongs to that provides us a general idea of how many students transfer in-state, but it does not break down the data well enough to track retention and graduation,” she said. “We often rely on our four year partners to report, anecdotally, the success of our graduates who transfer. And in most cases those reports are very positive in nature.”
The commission also overhauled the rubric for performance-based funding to colleges and increased the percentage of funding based on that formula in the future, to 6 percent in 2014 and 7 percent in 2015.
The new calculation will reward graduation rate; degrees earned by low-income students, especially those who receive federal Pell grants; degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields; students who pass basic math and English courses after completing high-school-level remediation classes; students who reach credit completion milestones, such as 15, 30 and 45 hours finished; on-time graduation; and individual metrics defined by colleges and approved by the commission.
“There’s more than one path to productivity, and we’re giving institutions some flexibility,” Bearce said of the diverse set of metrics. “It’s all about raising education attainment in the state.”