Begun in 2022, the Minnesota Private College Council’s Transfer Initiative aims to improve support for community college students transferring to member institutions to earn their bachelor’s degrees.

Twelve member institutions that have block transfer acceptance policies for students earning associate degrees or completing the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum are full participants in the Transfer Initiative.

• Augsburg University
• Bethany Lutheran College
• Bethel University
• College of Saint Benedict  
• The College of St. Scholastica
• Concordia College, Moorhead  
• Concordia University, St. Paul  
• Hamline University
• Saint John's University  
• Saint Mary's University of Minnesota
• St. Catherine University
• University of Saint Thomas   

The Transfer Initiative has three key elements:

• The development of the Transfer Admission Guarantee for students earning associate degrees at Minnesota community colleges.
• The creation of six shared discipline-specific pathways to help community college students see clearly how they can plan for and earn an intended major when transferring.
• Improvement of web resources for community college students.

Twelve institutions offer the Transfer Admission Guarantee, which was announced in 2022. Building on their existing block transfer of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum, these 12 colleges and universities guarantee admission for students completing the AA at a Minnesota State community, technical or tribal college. Students must still complete the application process, submit official transcripts and meet specific GPA requirements and eligibility criteria. Similar policies have been established elsewhere, including among New England institutions.

The Transfer Initiative’s pathway work supports participating institutions establishing consistent pathways for six disciplines: psychology, English, biology, chemistry, communications and history.

We are building on the existing statewide pathways that Minnesota State has created and community college students are currently using. The shared commitment of the member institutions is to build consistency in accepting lower division course work in the major pathway to improve degree progression in transfer and strengthen our member institutions standing as excellent destinations for degree completion. The pathway development work involves admissions, academic affairs and the academic departments. We’re also fostering connections among the discipline faculty at member institutions and community colleges.

In addition to our psychology pathway guides, this fall we added transfer pathway guides in biology and communications to our website. These join our list of completed pathways in 32 majors with the Minnesota State community colleges statewide. All pathways can be found at mnprivatecolleges.org/transfer-pathways for easy access by advisors and students. Additional transfer guides will be added as completed. Use our search tool to find guides by major, community or technical college or Minnesota private college or university.

We are building out better web resources to help community college students understand and navigate their options. Providing accessible credit transfer information for our colleges is an important ingredient to ensuring our institutions are transfer-friendly. We’ve added information on the established pathways, with a new search tool added by early 2023.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to the Transfer Initiative’s Minnesota Private College Council staff contacts:

• Judy Niemi Johnson, assistant director of admissions and transfer
  [email protected]
• John Manning, director of marketing and communications
  [email protected]

The Transfer Initiative is supported by grants from the Teagle Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.