Assigning the Blame for Transfer Problems

To the Editor: Beverly T. Watkins’s article on transfer of community-college students to bachelor’s-degree programs seems to place the burden of blame for the transfer difficulties . . . on the two-year institutions (“Two-Year Institutions Under Pressure to Ease Transfers,” February 7). However, the experience of most community colleges is that the difficulty in transferring lies in . . . bachelor’s-degree programs’ unwillingness to accept community- college education as equal.

The real heart of transfer problems can be resolved, I believe, with increased communication at the departmental level, between faculty members at both institutions. . . . Projects involving faculty exchanges and joint departmental meetings would go a long way toward improving articulation between institutions and to easing the transfer process for the community-college student.

W. Gary McGuire
Vice-President of Community Education,
Niagara County Community College, Sanborn, N.Y.

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To the Editor: The tone of your February 7 story intrigues me.

Community colleges, about a third of whose students are members of minority groups, are, you report, “trying to identify in their academic practices any stumbling blocks to transferring.” But we do not read as much about credible and welcoming efforts on the part of baccalaureate institutions to recruit community-college products. . . .

Not every state recognizes that the best community-college graduates frequently add unique diversity to the institutions to which they transfer. That happens if, and only if, they are welcomed as whole persons rather than aggregations of 60 or more credits. . . .

It is sad that, as you report, a cottage industry in transfer is being created and that legislators are having to become impatient with academic turf wars. In my own experience in two states, it is, ironically, often easier for a bright community-college graduate to move on to a more selective (= self confident?) institution than to a place that is trying to prove its academic standing.

Jonathan M. Daube
President, Manchester Community College,
Manchester, Conn.