It’s Time To Lower Our Academic “Tariff” Barriers

Posted on February 19, 2008 by David Gray

Anyone who was old enough to vote in the 1992 U.S. presidential election is likely to remember the spirited debate among the presidential candidates over the then-proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Who can forget the great line from third-party candidate H. Ross Perot during the presidential debates? Perot stated, “There will be a giant sucking sound going south,” in reference to the American jobs that would presumably be lost from NAFTA implementation. NAFTA went on to be signed by President George H.W. Bush in late 1992 and was implemented by President Clinton after Congressional passage in 1993 (for more details on NAFTA, see this Wikipedia article). While I am sure some die-hards will continue to debate the issues surrounding NAFTA, it is apparent to me that free trade among the three countries of North America did not lead to the economic demise of the United States. Indeed, as subsequent events have made clear, there was an inevitability to the forces of globalization that facilitate the free exchange of goods, services, and ideas.

Ironically, against a backdrop of evidence that unfettered exchange is a force for positive change in our world, much of the academic world continues to cling tenaciously to barriers that inhibit a free flow of perhaps the primary units of academic output, i.e., courses and credits earned. Students who try to transfer course credits from institution A to institution B are often in for a rude awakening. While the credits will frequently be “accepted,” the student will sometimes come to find out that the transferred credits may only be counted toward the new institution’s elective requirements and not toward either general education or academic major requirements. Precious time and money are frequent casualties of our academic tariff barriers. Very well preserved in all of this, however, is the institution’s sense of academic integrity since, of course, our courses are better than yours.

Fortunately, the pendulum is beginning to swing. Some public institutions (frequently with prodding from state authorities) have begun to tear down the barriers of credit transfer between institutions. One such example is the “Academic Passport” program that supports credit transfer between and among the community colleges of Pennsylvania and the fourteen universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). In the southern region of the United States, long known for its academic cooperation between and within states, five states (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas) have implemented common course numbering systems at their public two-year and four-year institutions to facilitate easy credit transfer (for more details, see the Southern Regional Education Board’s study, “Clearing Paths to College Degrees: Transfer Policies in SREB States“). In the New England region, a 2007 memorandum of understanding was signed between the Connecticut Community College System and the Connecticut State University System to streamline the transfer process between institutions in the two systems.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, we wait for enlightenment to arrive. While there are no systemic arrangements in place like those described above, there are rays of hope. On February 20, 2008, the Boston-area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC) is hosting an Information and Communication Technology Transfer Summit in conjunction with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and the Commonwealth Alliance for IT Education (CAITE). BATEC, an NSF-funded educational initiative which covers Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts, is sponsoring the transfer summit in the hope of fostering “a culture of seamless transition between community colleges and four year colleges and universities for our students here in Massachusetts.” While a much broader and more systemic articulation/transfer system is what Massachusetts really needs for the long haul, it is encouraging that a grassroots effort is attempting to light the path. In the end, the people who are injured the most by academic protectionism are the citizen-students whose academic progress and economic and social mobility we desperately need to encourage and sustain. It’s time to lower the barriers.