ASA University Bangladesh (ASAUB) Admission on Credit Transfer to Undergraduate Program

Students desiring to take admission transferring their credits from other Universities are expected to have at least a CGPA of 2.5 in all previous exams (SSC and HSC or equivalent) for admission to the University.Students intending to transfer to ASAUB must have to submit syllabus and official transcripts from previously attended Universities colleges and Universities along with the fill up admission form, Transfer students may be allowed to transfer credits if a minimum of "B" grade is obtained in the respective courses or if ASAUB Equivalence Committee recommends such credit transfer.

Younghusband Bersaudara Bakal Ramaikan LPI

\ Manila: Liga Primer Indonesia (LPI) yang digagas pengusaha Arifin Panigoro akan lebih semarak. Pasalnya dua bintang yang bersinar bersama Timnas Filipina, Phil dan James Younghusband, akan bergabung dengan Jakarta 1928 FC. Demikian penuturan Lorenzo Franco, salah satu petinggi manajemen Timnas Filipina, Senin (10/1) kemarin. 

Menurut Franco, seperti diklaim Allvoices, kesepakatan mengenai kontrak kedua pemain yang pernah menempa ilmu sepakbola di Chelsea itu akan dibahas dengan dewan pengurus Jakarta 1928. Delegasi tim yang berkompetisi di LPI itu akan terbang dan mendarat di Manila pada Rabu (12/1) besok. 


Meski tidak diakui PSSI dan diancam FIFA, LPI tetap bergulir dan mendapat animo bagus dari masyarakat luas. Laga pembuka dimainkan di Solo yang memperemukan Ksatria XI Solo FC kontra Persema Malang. Animo itu terbukti dari jumlah penonton yang memadati tiga pertandingan yang telah dimainkan sejauh ini. 

Kedatangan Younghusband bersaudara diharapkan lebih mendongkrak LPI. Selain piawai memainkan di kulit bundar, keduanya turut mengantar Filipina ke semifinal Piala AFF sebelum ditundukkan timnas, adik kakak yang berselisih hanya 11 bulan ini memiliki paras tampan. Keberadaan Irfan Bachdim dan Kim Jeffrey Kurniawan saja sudah membuat para wanita muda rela mendatangi stadion.

Why Reverse Transfer?

Today's Inside Higher Ed covers an article I wrote with UW-Madison doctoral student Fabian Pfeffer on the topic of reverse transfer. The basic gist is this: reverse transfer may be more common now, but it's certainly not benign. Students who reverse transfer tend to have parents who aren't highly educated, and therefore not as informed about how to navigate the game of 4-year college life. And in turn, the degree completion rates of these students-- who move from a 4-year to a 2-year school, are correspondingly low.

The article responds to anecdotal evidence suggesting that a lack of money drives the decision to leave a 4-year college for a community college. While we're the first to admit that money matters-- probably a LOT (see my other investigation into this) our national data indicates that the underlying reason has to do with a lack of information (since the greatest SES disparities are based on parental education not family income).

To illustrate this point, here are some examples:

Despite reasonably strong academic preparation, Joe has a C average in the first year of college. He's working nights at the local grocery store, and falling asleep in class. He doesn't see a way out-- when he calls home, Dad says he hasn't gotten any money to help, and Joe keeps working. Eventually, lacking a better solution, he leaves and moves back home to attend community college.

Mary also feels she doesn't have enough money to persist in college. Her family financial situation has changed when her mom lost her job, but she doesn't know that her financial aid officer can help. Instead of submitting a new FAFSA (a complex process), she switches to the less-expensive local community college.

Suzanne did well in high school, and has enough financial aid to get by. But when her initial grades freshman year were low B's, her feelings were hurt and she didn't know what to do. Her parents didn't go far in college, and couldn't help her understand what might explain those grades (one possibility is grade deflation; another might be her writing abilities). Demoralized, she leaves to go to a school where she thinks she can do better.

In each case we might mistake the underlying reasons for the student's reverse transfer decision. In Joe's case and Mary's it looks like money. In Suzanne's, it looks like grades. But when we look at thousands of these students, and begin to look closely- comparing apples and apples-- a common theme emerges. The underlying issue is a lack of information.

What if an advisor or a professor helped Joe find a job that let him sleep at night? What if Mary's financial aid officer checked in with her, and explained there was more aid available? What if Suzanne's professor called her in to discuss her grade, and explain how she could improve?

In each case, the information provided by the 4-year college could help fill in information these students couldn't get from their parents. Note: I do NOT fault the parents for not having more education. Since we know many students in need do not access already available services for good reasons (e.g. they are working long hours, etc), we need a multi-pronged approach (involving both faculty and staff, for example) and likely a mandatory one. How about a required check-in every term, or twice a term-- during class time? It could help.

Treatment of Transfers

What to do, what to do about those pesky community college students? Their graduation rates are so low, they lack big ambitions, they bring those families and kids and jobs, they're "older," they're poorer, they're loan averse... no wonder their transfer rates to 4-year schools are so low!

Sound familiar? To those of you familiar with the extended policy and academic debate about the educational opportunities created by or diverted by community colleges, well, it should.

I reported Friday about the increasing numbers of students changing colleges. And yet, and yet...here's an excerpt from a recent New York Times online chat with a couple of admissions gurus from 4-year colleges:

QUESTION: I’m curious as to how admissions criteria are altered or shifted in importance for a transfer applicant compared with a freshman applicant.

QUESTION: How are transfer applicants from community colleges viewed in the admissions process? What advice would you offer these applicants?

ANSWERS:
Mr. Poch of Pomona: There are huge variations in transfer student possibilities from institution to institution. Some have lots of room and some little or none. USC enrolls more than 1000 transfer students each year. Pomona has room for 10 to 15. Obviously different factors affect both of these patterns and common answers will be hard to find.
Transferring to Pomona is tough. There are proportionally many fewer spaces than there are for first year students in huge part because of the high graduation rate of our incoming first years. Space doesn’t open up. We look at the high school record, especially for those seeking to transfer as sophomores. We look closely at the college record and the extent to which the student has pursued a general education program which would leave them time to dedicate the time they and we would wish to their electives and their major when they enroll at Pomona. We will explore the reasons for transfer and to understand as best we may about why Pomona and how the student sees life changing in our educational environment. Are they transferring FROM something or TO something?

Mr. Brenzel of Yale: Our unusual system of residential colleges makes the freshman year and sophomore years critical to our undergraduate program. So we maintain only a very small transfer program, limited to 24 places each year.

Mr. Syverson of Lawrence: In the case of transfers, the bulk of the academic evaluation focuses on the college record. We welcome transfer applicants from community colleges and treat them essentially the same as transfer applicants from four-year colleges.

What is wrong here? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. Mr. Pomona--A nice back-handed slam against USC for admitting plenty of transfer students, by not-so-subtly suggesting that only poor retention rates could lead to another places for transfer students (Pomona's 6 year grad rate is 93%, USC's is 84%). Not true: underclassmen require different classes and services than upperclassmen. Schools often find they can fit more upperclassmen on a campus even when retention rates are quite high.

2. Mr. Pomona again-- Oh, beware that wayward transfer student who is just trying to escape from a crappy school and come running to yours... Yeah, we all know about those community college transfer students banging on the doors of 4-year schools like Pomona, just dying to run from their community college

3. Mr. Yale-- Yeah, I'm sure the 1st two years of Yale make it so different that students who did their first two years elsewhere could never merit your precious degree.

4. Mr. Lawrence-- Why treat applicants from community colleges the same as those from 4-year colleges? Why is this something you are showing off, like it's a good thing?

Bottom line- why aren't more kids transferring? Open your eyes: it's all about preserving privilege. Make the kids spend more time on our campus before they can get a degree (read: pay more money to our school). Keep out those bottom-dwelling community college goers who might try to sneak past the gates. Watch out, in all fairness, students who had an opportunity to earn a BA must be treated the same as those coming from a school that doesn't grant one!

At least there it all is, in the New York Times!

Not Coming Back for More?

According to ACT, Inc (Midwestern counterpart to the SAT), the number of college freshmen returning for a second year at their original "4-year" institution is on the decline.

Shocking, I know... (Ok, I'm being ironic-- I wrote a dissertation about the "swirling" students who attend multiple schools, and have been quite vocal about the importance of mobility to debates over student success and degree completion.)

Approximately 2/3 of students who enter 4-year colleges stick around for another year. That number used to be (somewhat) higher (closer to 70-75%). Something to get worked up about? Depends on how you approach the question.

If you're a higher ed administrator focused on dollars and cents, sure you're not going to like it. Fewer returning students means more empty seats in upper-level courses, which you should but probably aren't filling with transfer students. It also means your institutional degree completion rates are lower.

If you're an educational reformer focused on student success, you probably see things differently. Before getting upset, you'd first want to know: Are students leaving school 1 to drop out of college? Or do they move to school 2, find a better fit (financially, academically, socially?) and end up with a degree? Are students moving because moving is a fact of their life, they've always been mobile, and they're not attached to colleges in the "traditional" sense of one student/one school? Or, are schools serving them poorly, eventually encouraging their departure?

My own work has identified some causes for concern. Students do not change schools in equitable ways-- meaning that the more advantaged kids tend to leave one 4-year college for another, and not suffer much in terms of BA completion, while the less advantaged (read: lower levels of parental education) tend to leave 4-year colleges after struggling academically in their first year (this is NET of high school prep, btw), and end up at a community college. Those folks hardly ever get degrees. All of this is described in my 2006 paper in Sociology of Education, and a forthcoming paper in the same journal.

The ACT folks say the trend "suggests that more students may be opting out of college during or after their first year." First, as a sociologist let me gag openly at the idea of "opting out." Second, having not accounted for changes in the composition of college freshmen that could account for changes in retention rates, it's not clear what we do with this trend.

From a research perspective, we should also ask why we're stuck with ACT data on this one-- they aren't capturing enrollment beyond school 1 (as we can with national datasets such as the NELS) and so can't dig underneath the trendlines. Why are we stuck? Because the kind of longitudinal student unit record data we'd need to do the analysis is only collected by the feds every 10 or so years-- hard to establish much of a trend with that. If you just compare NLS-72, HSB, and NELS, it doesn't look like much of a trend... More micro, more interesting.

So we're left with a bunch of hypotheses, for now. The ACT guy thinks students leave 4-year colleges for financial reasons. Maybe. My own analyses suggest that family income doesn't have much to do with it though. We can sort of test this in my study, by estimating a causal effect of financial aid on first year retention. With the first cohort of kids in the middle of the school year right now, you'll have to bear with me... I'll try to find the answers.

In the meantime, let's get focused on whether and when students graduate. Not where they finish. That is: a student-focused rather than school-focused approach to success. Whaddya say?