The nine academic universities of the University of Texas System are dedicated to facilitating the successful transfer of students into and out of the System’s universities, helping students complete degrees in an affordable and timely manner, and removing barriers that stand in their way.
Work to improve transfer student success and experiences entails close attention to student experiences, data and outcomes; better advising; partnerships with community colleges; and helping students feel like they belong at their transfer destination.
The UT System Transfer Advisory Group
The Transfer Advisory Group was convened in August 2019 to support the success of transfer students across the UT System. The group has coalesced around a set of strategic objectives which:
- Recognize that transfer students are not monolithic in their needs and experiences.
- Put data and students at the center in the implementation of its goals and work, including disaggregation of student data and attention to different supports needed for diverse student populations.
- Work to ensure continuity of transfer student enrollment in terms of matriculation, progress, participation and performance; completion and post-graduation.
- Interpret, disseminate and provide guidance to ensure that the interests and needs of University of Texas students and institutions are well represented in the implementation of how SB 25, the transfer bill passed in the 86th Texas Legislature.
- Collaborate across UT System and other two- and four-year colleges and universities, with the Texas Higher Educating Coordinating Board, the Texas Association of Community Colleges, and other state and national initiatives focused on transfer student success.
- Identify and guide communication and implementation of effective and targeted resources and support to transfer students.
- Advise and identify support needed from the UT System to ensure transfer student success.
The group includes 2-3 representatives from each of the UT System’s academic universities who hold roles and work in units essential to providing transfer students with smooth pathways to majors, degrees, post-graduate study and jobs. It serves to bolster the UT System’s Student Success Framework, built around the three pillars of Finances, Advising and Belonging, and contribute to the THECB educational attainment plan, 60X30TX.
A list of members can be found here.
How are University of Texas institutions working to improve transfer for students? Learn more here.
About SB 25: Designed to facilitate transfer, academic progress, and timely graduation of Texas students in public higher education, major components of SB 25 include: reporting by colleges and universities on credit and courses not accepted for transfer at universities; filing of degree plans by students at certain milestones; publication of course sequences and articulation agreements; and a study of the core curriculum and meta-majors culminating in a report with recommendations to the legislature. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is charged with determining processes and mechanisms for how the bill will be implemented.
Other Transfer Initiatives
The Faculty Decisions and Credit Transfer Project
The University of Texas (UT) System, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Texas at El Paso, and the University of Texas at Tyler are partnering with the higher education research organization MDRC to identify existing course articulation and applicability policies and procedures and how they shape students’ transfer credit outcomes. The partnership aims to identify how faculty and others make decisions about credit course equivalency and applicability and builds on other initiatives facilitated by the UT System relevant to credit mobility and transfer student success. Through funding from Ascendium, project deliverables include the development of tools for postsecondary education administrators and faculty designed to mitigate barriers to credit transfer and applicability.
All-Texas Academic Team Medallion Ceremony
The UT System is proud to collaborate with the Texas Association of Community Colleges with the annual All-Texas Academic Team Medallion Ceremony and on initiatives like the 2022 Transfer Advising Institute offered to advisors at UT institutions and their community college partners.
Texas Transfer Alliance
The UT System also participates in the Texas Transfer Alliance, a statewide, cross-sector collaboration hosted by Educate Texas designed to achieve equitable student success through improvements in credit mobility, academic transfer, and credentialing.
