Dean’s List: New tool to help community college students earn 4-year degrees. Here’s how

Much of the narrative around community colleges surrounds what the students at those schools plan to do next — with many saying they want to use the credits they earn at their two-year college to move to a four-year university.

But that’s not always how it works out.

Nationwide, just 13% of community college students go on to earn a four-year degree within eight years of leaving their two-year school, compared to an estimated 83% who plan to transfer to a four-year school, NPR reported last month . Those figures are based on data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Texas-based Center for Community College Student Engagement, respectively.

There are plenty of factors that might affect a student’s ability to transfer from a community college to a four-year university, including work and family responsibilities. But the process can also be confusing or hard to navigate.

With a set of new online tools, the UNC System is hoping to make the transition a lot easier.

Welcome to Dean’s List, a roundup of higher education news in the Triangle and across North Carolina from The News & Observer and myself, Korie Dean.

This week’s edition includes more information on the new transfer guides for community college students, an update on active-shooter training for faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill and more.

New transfer guides expected to help NC community college students

Nearly 1,400 transfer guides are now available online, on both the College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC) website and the websites for all 16 universities in the UNC System.

Using the user-friendly, interactive guides, community college students can select the four-year major they’re interested in pursuing, along with the school they’re interested in attending, and get a recommended list of major-specific courses to complete at their two-year school to receive credit toward their associate’s degree and anticipated bachelor’s degree. The tool will also provide students with a list of the remaining courses they would need to complete at their new university in order to receive their four-year degree.

The new guides replace the Baccalaureate Degree Plans, which were previously used by the North Carolina Community College System to help students transfer to four-year schools. The guides will be updated annually.

The new guides are expected to “increase the students’ confidence in the courses they’re taking at the two-year and knowing that they’re accurate, so that when they go from the two-year to the four-year that those transfer,” Bethany Meighen, UNC System vice president for academic and student affairs, told The N&O.

The guides come after two years of work by a UNC System committee made up of representatives from the university and community college systems. A UNC System news release about the tools said that the guides better fulfill “the 2014 Comprehensive Articulation Agreement, a statewide pact among community colleges and universities to help students move among them.”

“This represents a significant milestone in our ongoing, collaborative commitment to enhancing economic mobility for families across North Carolina,” North Carolina Community College System President Jeff Cox said in the release. “Community college students now have a clearer pathway to a bachelor’s degree, and our academic advisors now have better resources to support students as they pursue their academic and career goals.”

North Carolina community colleges fare well when it comes to transferring to a four-year school, Meighen said. In a typical year, about 15,000 students graduate from the state community college system, with about 10,000 of them transferring into the UNC System, she said.

But with the new tool, college leaders hope those numbers go even higher — potentially seeing 12,000 to 13,000 community college students transferring to the four-year system.

UNC System President Peter Hans , who previously served as president of the community college system, said in the news release that college leaders “need to make it easy for talented, ambitious students to continue their education.”

“College courses should be challenging” Hans said, and “college transfer should be simple.”

The transfer guides are available at cfnc.org/transferguides .

Majority of UNC faculty complete active-shooter training

About 83% of active faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill completed new emergency and active-shooter training prior to the first day of classes this semester, university spokesperson Erin Spandorf told The N&O. That accounts for nearly 2,800 faculty.

This semester marked the first time that faculty were asked to complete emergency training, which has been offered on a voluntary basis but not previously required. That information came to light, including through The N&O’s reporting, after last fall’s fatal campus shooting.

Provost Chris Clemens had asked all faculty teaching a course this semester to complete the 20-minute, online module prior to the first day of classes, Aug. 19. The count Spandorf provided to The N&O was up-to-date as of Aug. 16, a few days prior to Clemens’ “strongly” encouraged deadline.

Darrell Jeter, the university’s emergency management and planning director, previously told The N&O that university leaders would be able to track how many faculty completed the training, but hesitated to comment on potential consequences for those who did not do so.

Higher education news I’m reading

• UNC senior Karsen Kitchen briefly flew into space last month, making her the youngest woman to cross the Kármán line, “the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles above sea level,” The Daily Tar Heel reports. Her father, UNC business professor Jim Kitchen , flew into space in 2022.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw a “precipitous” decrease in the percentage of Black, Hispanic and other demographic groups in its incoming first-year class, the first to be admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the consideration of race in admissions, The New York Times reports.

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That’s all for this roundup of North Carolina higher education news. I hope you’ll stay tuned for more.

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