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| S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
COURSEWORK CONCERNS
Bill Dudley has far-ranging perspectives. He remembers those
rousing days when new blood, over-pondering, off-base percep-
tions, academic traditions, anemic opposition, and feeble argu-
ments confounded the transfer of credit issue. He recalls, too, one
seldom-mentioned issue that stood in the way of the transfer of
credit. It was a deal killer that had to come down. Come then,
class, identify it.
Essential to facilitating the technical college transfer of credit was:
A. Adopting the same textbooks in tech colleges and
universities
B. Converting tech colleges from the quarter to the semester
system
C. Aligning technical college curricula objectives with
university objectives
D. Standardizing admission requirements across the board
Dr. JimMorris was system director when this seemingly small
change took place just prior to the 1990s. At this juncture, it
bears restating what Morris believes is his tenure’s most import-
ant achievement. “Well, I think the most important achievement
was we got the Commission on Higher Education to agree that
all technical colleges should have the college transfer program.”
Down came the barrier. According to Dudley, “To make the
transfer penalty easier, the system went from a three-quarter cal-
endar to a two-semester calendar.” If you chose B, you get an A.
Aligning academic calendars was central. Think of the headaches
conflicting schedules would have engendered. Not converting
the technical colleges from the quarter system to the sacrosanct
semester system would be like living in one time zone and work-
ing in another. Always out of sync. As well, the academic weight
courses carried had to be standardized.
Another academic bastion underlay the transfer issue: ac-
ademic performance. Some educators anticipated—a bias?—
that tech college students wouldn’t perform as well as university
students.
The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
