The University of Minnesota has announced that it will soon be accepting fewer transfer students.
According to a piece by Tim Post at Minnesota Public Radio:
After spending two years looking at how transfers students adjust to their new school, university officials decided they have too many, [Dean of Undergraduate Education Bob] McMaster said. He said the university, which now admits about 2,500 transfer students a year, plans to have transfer students make up 33 percent of the student population.
As a result, the university will accept 300 fewer transfer students next fall. McMaster said that will allow the school to concentrate more resources on fewer transfers. “Our transfer students on balance do not have the same kind of positive experience here as our undergraduates,” he said.
In other words, they’re not graduating. According to the article while the five-year graduation rate for the university as a whole is 70 percent, it’s only 55 percent for transfer students.
McMaster also told Post that the university needs to do a better job helping its transfer students, including “tracking their academic progress and making sure they enroll in the classes they need.” There is, however, no indication the university actually plans to do this.
So where will all those hard working, middle class community college students go? No one knows.
