Last year, Portland State paired with Portland Community College to create a reverse transfer agreement, and on Feb. 6 the university made the same agreement with Mt. Hood Community College.
The new reverse transfer agreement ensures that students who attended a community college and transferred to PSU before they received their associate degree are still eligible to receive it.
Cindy Skaruppa, associate vice president for enrollment management at PSU said that “the main purpose [of this agreement] is to acknowledge what students have accomplished.”
To achieve this, students will need to be co-admitted to both schools and still take the classes required for an associate degree. They also will need to have a minimum of 24 credits from MHCC and have a combined total of 90 credits.
Students will need to fill out the correct forms for receiving the degree at the community college.
Before this agreement, students were only able to receive an associate degree while attending their community college.
So far, only PCC and MHCC have a reverse transfer agreement with PSU. However, the university is hoping to reach out to others over the next few years.
“President Wiewel has a desire to expand the reverse transfer with all community colleges,” Skaruppa said.
Part of the reason why MHCC and PCC were chosen first for the reverse transfer agreement was because they’re the two top community colleges in Oregon that feed into PSU. According to Skaruppa, PSU enrolled 1,282 students from PCC and 288 from MHCC in fall 2013.
Another push for the agreement is due to Senate Bill 253, which was approved by the Oregon Legislature in 2011 and aims to see 40 percent of Oregon residents obtain a bachelor’s degree or higher, 40 percent an associate degree or higher and 20 percent with at least a high school diploma by 2025. This is called the 40-40-20 plan.
“[The reverse transfer agreement] gives students credentials they earned and helps us maintain the 40-40-20 goal,” Skaruppa said.
