The Transfer Maze
A three-state accounting of credit loss at transfer, and of the students who never complete the move.
How many earned credits survive a transfer, and what predicts the ones that do not?
Credit loss is the most expensive invisible cost in public higher education, and it falls hardest on students who can least absorb it.
Key findings
median share of earned credits lost in a cross-sector transfer
median loss for students transferring across state lines
transfer attempts traced across three states
About the project
Students lost a median of 21% of earned credits when transferring across sectors, rising to 38% for those moving between states.
Articulation agreements reduced loss substantially only where they specified course equivalences rather than credit-hour totals.
The project closed in 2022; its data now feeds the Completion Gap Atlas.