College students often want to apply course credits they have earned at one school toward the degree requirements at another. But when they do, they frequently find that the new institution rejects some, maybe most of those credits. That means that they must spend more time and money in college.

This is a well-known problem, but not much has been done about it. In today’s Martin Center article, Matthew Rohl looks at the credit-transfer problem.

He writes,

In the post-pandemic age, the college world has witnessed a resurgence in students seeking to transfer their credits to other institutions. After an alarming 14-percent drop in transfer enrollment between 2020 and 2022, rates climbed 5.3 percent in fall 2023 and 4.5 percent in fall 2024. Although these findings may bring a sigh of relief from those who cheer academic flexibility, they veil an unavoidable reality: Transferring credits is still hard.

Rohl points out that colleges could do much more to help students avoid or at least minimize this problem. A few states, such as North Carolina, have taken steps to make transferring credits easy within their university systems. Rohl argues that other states should follow suit.