Publications

This report tells the story behind Transfer Explorer—charting its design, pilot, launch, and ongoing improvements—to illuminate the decisions, and partnerships that made it possible and to highlight how Transfer Explorer may be leveraged in the future to improve credit mobility policies and procedures across the country. In doing so, the report is less about the outcomes of Transfer Explorer itself and more on the processes that shaped it.

To understand the complex nature of learning recognition and credit transfer in American postsecondary education and examine the systemic barriers to entry many students face as they navigate its institutions, Ithaka S+R conducted a series of qualitative interviews in fall 2024 with state and system-level leaders in Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, and the University of North Carolina System, and representatives from Charter Oak State College and Florida International University.