Students lose nearly half of the college credits they earn transferring from one school to another, placing them at risk of exhausting federal grants and loans to repeat courses, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office Wednesday.
To save money, some students start at low-cost community colleges before heading to a university to complete their bachelor’s degree. They are often frustrated to learn that the math or science courses they took do not meet the standards of their new school, where they must now enroll in classes they’ve already completed. That means more money and more time before they can graduate.
Using the most recent available data from the Education Department, researchers at the GAO estimate that students who transferred from 2004 to 2009 lost on average 43 percent of their credits. Two thirds of those transfer students had federal loans and almost half received Pell grants — aid for students whose families typically earn less than $60,000 a year. Both forms of student aid have eligibility limits based on lifetime use or program length, 12 semesters for Pell and six years for direct loans.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/13/colleges-need-to-do-more-to-help-students-transfer-credits-gao-says/