The University of Arkansas System is rolling out a common course numbering system that will, among other things, make transferring between UA System schools simpler for students.
The change should help remove barriers to higher education, offer operational insights, and realize cost-savings for students and institutions, according to Marla Strecker, Student Lead for Workday Enterprise Management Cloud in the office of UA System President Donald Bobbitt and a catalyst for this project.
The common course numbering "will go live" for the UA System's two-year institutions next year, and for the four-year institutions -- and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences -- in 2025.
"So many students transfer -- it's a normal and affordable path -- and this will be a clear benefit to students and parents," Strecker said.
The UA System enrolls more than 70,000 students and includes two medical school campuses, which have a number of undergraduate programs; an exclusively online school that offers 22 undergraduate degrees; five traditional university campuses; and seven community college campuses.
The largest higher education institution in the state is the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, with over 30,000 students.
"We've all heard the stories -- or had the experience of -- taking classes at one institution, transferring to another, and not all of those [credits] transfer," said Steven Fulkerson, vice president and chief information officer in the office of the UA System president.
He said that is understandable when transferring from one state to another, because "those things don't always align" state to state, but "that shouldn't be the case within a state, and this solves that problem systemwide."
The common catalog of course numbers will use a standardized schema of course discipline prefixes, and courses with the same learning outcomes will be aligned to use the same course number, Strecker said. "We very much want courses labeled accurately, and if things are alike, they need to be labeled the same."
For those not ensconced in higher education, course labels can be "mysterious," but this new system will "de-mystify them," she said. "It's like putting labels on canned goods at a grocery store; we're not opening up the cans and changing what's inside any of them, just labeling them."
Michael Moore, the UA System's vice president for academic affairs, said the new system will especially benefit the first-generation college student.
"[If] you're not familiar with higher education -- and we have a lot of first-generation college students in Arkansas -- all the numbers and codes can be confusing and intimidating," Moore said. This new system "will be a tremendous advantage for students and parents in the state, particularly those approaching college for the first time."
Summer DeProw, chancellor of the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, the largest two-year school in the UA System, said the "complexity of transcripts can be overwhelming for students, particularly first-generation students, and they can get really tangled up."
The new system will show students clearly how to "get in and out" of higher education.
This will build upon the existing Arkansas Course Transfer System (ACTS), which contains information about the transferability of courses within Arkansas public colleges and universities, but which asks students/parents to do a lot of work on their own, Strecker said. ACTS is "a great idea, but it's not so simple."
This is ACTS "2.0 -- we've leveled up -- [as it] puts the burden on" the institutions to do the work, she said. "Who knows better what's in a course than" the institutions offering those courses?
VARIETY OF BENEFITS
Credits sharing a course number will transfer among system institutions -- although academic officers at individual institutions will retain final authority over whether to accept incoming course credits -- and it will remove some labor from those working in registrar's offices.
Those employees won't have to manually verify a transferring student deserves credit for every class, Strecker said. "There's no discernment needed -- the discernment already happened [on the front end] -- because the numbers are the same."
It also makes academic advising easier, she said. "Advisers can help students with courses because, again, the numbers are the same, so there's no mystery behind it."
Knowing the intentions of students is "huge," because then "we can allocate resources to [assist] them," Fulkerson said.
This new system will "provide better operational insights into what our students want to do."
It will also help students complete college, and do so faster, as they shouldn't have to repeat courses they've already passed when transferring because their new institution doesn't accept them, or take the wrong courses for their intended degree, Strecker said. "To take the wrong class erroneously is heartbreaking, because it's a lot of hours and thousands of dollars."
It will be easier for students to start their college career at, say, the University of Arkansas Community College at Rich Mountain, then transfer to UA-Fayetteville, before moving onto UAMS, Fulkerson said. "You can easily build out a degree [path] right from the start."
Moore said that it will "remove confusion and ease communication." Several states, including Florida, have already made similar moves for their colleges and universities, and "I expect other states will follow suit, [because] states tend to follow one another, especially if [something] is successful."
This won't require the renaming of courses or realignment of academic departments, and it won't constrain academic freedom, Strecker said. "This won't impede on faculty governance of teaching methods."
AN ARDUOUS PROCESS
Institutions were asked to provide a complete course list matched to the subject codes provided so a complete system course list could be constructed matching equivalencies and renumbering, with syllabi and course objectives/learning outcomes for all courses also collected, Strecker said. There are more than 21,000 unique courses in the UA System, and existing articulation agreements between institutions were also used to match up courses.
Registrar offices matched courses for which there are known equivalencies, starting with ACTS courses, then expanding out, and roughly 1,600 courses are now common numbered, she said. "They did a lot of work for this, above and beyond their" other duties, which "just shows the value of this."
And the number will likely continue to grow, she said. Subject codes with the most common numbering are areas of common transfer, such as English, History, Business, Accounting, Education, Biology, and Psychology.
This has been "a priority" for Bobbitt for a long time, and it's a key element of his vision for the system, Fulkerson said.
"This is a monumental change for the UA System and a huge step forward for higher education."
Retaking courses students "have already passed as a consequence of a change in major or transfer between institutions has a financial cost for students and their families," but UA System students "can be confident that the system's institutions of higher education are proactively developing approaches to keep the cost of their degree down by removing barriers for attaining a college education," such as common course numbering system-wide, Bobbitt said.
"By aligning offerings under a common course numbering system across the entire UA System, we are ensuring that courses will transfer between institutions, thereby eliminating wasted effort, moving students toward graduation quicker, and at lower cost by eliminating redundant credits."
All the planning for the common course numbering was "done with sustainability in mind," Strecker said. It "will be a living system that adds equivalencies, updates course catalog information, and provides course updates to all institutions at the time of the changes."
EXPANDING ACROSS THE STATE?
All other colleges and universities in the state are welcome to join in order to make higher education more accessible and affordable for all Arkansans, Strecker said.
"We are very encouraged by the reaction of our sister institutions in the state, and -- from a student-centric point of view -- there's really not a reason not to" do this.
"The heart of our mission is serving students and living up to the expectations of stakeholders," Fulkerson said.
"We've had some interest" from other schools already, and "I'm optimistic that as we roll this out, more will look to adopt this when it's right for them."
Moore is sanguine that other schools in the state will adopt the same framework eventually, but "let's not kid ourselves; there's still a lot of work to be done," he said. "It'll take years to get there."
It "made sense" for the UA System to do this now, because the system is transitioning to a new Student Information System, Moore said. It's also judicious for the UA System to "take the initial pass at this, [because] we have such a diverse system -- from small community colleges, to the state's flagship university with more than 30,000 students, [to a medical school] -- and a fair amount of complexity, already."
The UA System "is showing great leadership in initiating a common course numbering system [that] will be extremely beneficial to students as they transfer between system institutions," said Maria Markham, director of the Arkansas Division of Higher Education.
"I have heard from several non-system schools that they plan to voluntarily join the effort to better serve their students, [and] it is my sincere hope that all of our colleges and universities will transition to common course numbering as they have the resources and technology to do so."
This new system is "flexible enough for other schools to jump on board, and we all want to be reading from the same sheet of music," Moore said. "We'll be speaking the same language."
The Arkansas State University System has discussed common course numbering "as part of a larger review, analysis, and execution of improving intra-system student transfers, [but] we have not implemented this because it did not seem to be the biggest hindrance to transfer," according to Jeff Hankins, vice president for Strategic Communications & Economic Development for the ASU System.
"That said, we are always open to ways of improving student success and convenience and would welcome a discussion with higher education colleagues in the state."
Though "there is no plan at this time for Harding University to change course numbering as part of this initiative, Harding is a transfer-friendly university and works with students from any Arkansas university or college to make sure that credits are equated and transfer to Harding," said Katie Clement, Harding's manager of news services.
"Although aligning Lyon College's course numbering system with state schools is not something we're currently pursuing, we're always working to make it as easy as possible for new students to transfer to Lyon College from anywhere," said Kurt Grafton, provost at Lyon College, which is in Batesville.
In addition, Lyon College currently maintains articulation agreements with the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville and other community colleges in the state.
"We're aware of the change [by the UA System] and studying the implications for our internal systems," said Brooke Zimny, assistant to the president for Communications & Marketing at Ouachita Baptist University.
"No decision has yet been made."
Strecker foresees an Arkansas where the struggles she experienced transferring from a private college to UA-Fayetteville are only a distant memory.
This is "an opportunity for our system to lead the state in something that is really groundbreaking for Arkansans and changes the landscape," she said.
"Our grandchildren will be using these course numbers, and the barriers we faced to transferring will be gone."