Students at New York’s public universities will soon have an easier time transferring between campuses. SUNY announced a new policy last week to help students finish their degrees on time.
Usually, students who transfer from one college to another face a lot of uncertainty. Courses completed at one school often do not carry over to the other. Until now, that’s even been true within the SUNY system.
The new policy creates a set of courses guaranteed to transfer among all SUNY schools. It also adds requirements to the community college degree, so graduates can enter as a junior at any four-year campus.
John Conners of Tompkins Cortland Community College says those expanded requirements reduce flexibility for students, though. A student who changes majors will have difficulty completing a degree.
“That’s part of what college is about – you should be exploring,” Conners says. “You should be experimenting and discovering what you don’t want to do just as much as what you do.”
Conners says the system does benefit students who enter school with a clear idea of what they want to study.