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Higher Education: Students Need More Information to Help Reduce Challenges in Transferring College Credits

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Congress asked the Government Accountability Office how much college credit disappears when a student changes schools. The answer, from federal longitudinal data on students who transferred between 2004 and 2009, was 43% on average. The loss was smallest between two public institutions and nearly total from a for-profit college to a public one. GAO also reviewed college websites and found most published a transfer policy without publishing the list of schools they had agreements with, which is the part a family would need to plan around.

Who published it
GAO, 2017
What it is
Government audit
Where the data comes from
National

What it found

  • An estimated 35% of college students transferred at least once between 2004 and 2009, and 62% of those transfers were between public schools.
  • Students lost, on average, an estimated 43% of the credits they had earned.
  • Between two public colleges the loss was 37%. From a private for-profit college to a public one it was 94%.
  • About 29% of the school websites reviewed gave a transfer policy without listing the schools the college had articulation agreements with.

What it does not show

  • The report is about transfer students generally. It does not separate credits earned in high school from credits earned in college.
  • The credit data stop in 2009, and the website review covered a non-generalizable sample of 214 schools.

How the study was done

Analysis of Department of Education longitudinal data on students who transferred from 2004 to 2009, a review of 214 school websites, and interviews with stakeholders at 25 schools.

Why this matters to a family

This is the figure behind every warning that credits might not count, and it is the reason the receiving college’s answer matters more than the awarding college’s.

Sources

Rules change. These were checked September 2026. Confirm the current version with your school before you act on any of it.

About FastTrack Advising

. FastTrack Advising works on dual enrollment and nothing else. We help families choose college courses a high schooler can take now that will still count toward the degree later, we check every course against the transfer rules of the colleges they name, and we stay in the picture through registration so the plan gets used. When the answer for a student is to wait a term, we say that too.

Reading the evidence before a decision?

Save this page and it sits on your own My FastTrack page alongside your state's deadlines and the tools. Deciding which of these findings apply to one teen, in one state, aiming at particular colleges, is what a roadmap engagement settles.

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