The UW System Board of Regents will consider a plan later this week to make it easier for students to transfer credits between technical colleges and UW schools. System officials said Tuesday a legislative credit-transfer bill will aid that plan.
UW System President Katharine Lyall outlined four parts of the plan for the state Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities Tuesday:
- Students would receive a guaranteed transfer contract if they planned their course load using an online system that cross-references all tech-school and UW courses.
- Students could transfer up to 25 credits from an approved list of general education classes from any campus.
- The tech and UW systems would establish more \2 + 2"" programs, such as nursing, where students could complete two years in the tech system and then two at UW to receive a bachelor's degree.
- Occupational programs from the tech system would transfer to the UW system.
The board of the Wisconsin Technical College System has already endorsed the plan and Lyall predicted the Board of Regents will approve it this week. Meanwhile, an Assembly bill introduced by state Rep. Gary Bies, R-Sister Bay, would require UW schools and Wisconsin technical colleges to accept all of each other's credits.
Bies' bill and the system's plan do not exactly match, but Lyall said the system supports the idea behind the bill and hopes its focus can be narrowed.
""We want students to be able to save time and dollars on coursework,"" she said.
Regent Nino Amato, who is also president of the Wisconsin Technical College System Board, said if the Assembly passed the bill it would help to speed up completion of the new credit transfer process.
""Unless this body holds our feet to the fire with a time frame, it's not going to happen,"" he said.
Several members of the Committee on Colleges and Universities raised concerns with the bill as they heard testimony Tuesday.
Committee members wondered if tech students could meet UW admissions standards and said it was already easy to transfer credits from the Madison Area Technical College to UW-Madison.
Supporters countered that students would still be subject to admissions standards under the new plan.
They also said it is not as easy to transfer credits from other technical schools as it is to transfer from MATC.
