Joint Leadership Statement on Commitment to Transfer

Our students vary in age, come from differing economic backgrounds, include many first generation participants, and are often place-bound due to financial limitations and family/employment obligations. These changing demographic factors have altered the patterns of attendance, and many of our students now access higher education through multiple institutions. The mobility of our students creates a joint student body, whose participation and success is a shared responsibility bay all Missouri higher education institutions.

The success of our collective student body requires that Missouri institutions operate in a coordinated fashion to ensure that higher education is accessible and affordable. The determinants of success of the mobile student must drive the transfer process, and not institutional habit, convenience, or territoriality.

Based on their joint commitment to ensure access, affordability, and success of the transfer student, the leaders of Missouri institutions of higher education with their signature below commit to:

• Work collaboratively with all Missouri institutions in higher education to improve the total transfer process at the institutions both as a receiver and sender of transfer students;
• Provide academic and financial support for the transfer student that is commensurate with the support provided for native students;
• Develop an efficient transfer policy that minimizes the loss of course credits and curtails any unnecessary duplication of learning;
• Share in the responsibility and cost for the development and implementation of articulation agreements;
• Work to create a consolidated, multi-institutional database, searchable by institution, which provides common access to current course equivalencies and articulation agreements;
• Identify and share best transfer practices.

The leaders of public higher education agree to review the current joint statement every three years and revise it accordingly, and re-engage Missouri institutions of higher education to be signatories to the revised statement.