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State Examples
At least 17 states have adopted common course numbering systems at the system level. These states include:
Alaska
Florida
Mississippi
South Carolina
Wyoming |
California
Idaho
Nevada
South Dakota |
Colorado
Illinois
North Dakota
Texas |
Connecticut
Minnesota
Oregon
Utah |
Below are examples of what some of these states are doing.
Colorado
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education developed the statewide Common Course Numbering System in response to House Bill 01-1298. Effective with the 2003-04 academic year for community colleges only, the system began as a way to organize courses with common credits, competencies and outlines. Faculty, in conjunction with the community college instructional leaders, identified more than 12,000 courses in a system database. Teams developed topical outlines and competencies for the courses, and over a five-year period worked at combining courses and deleting duplicates within each discipline.
The resulting common course number system database includes all courses taught both at the community college level and at area vocational schools. Each course listing included credit hours, a description, expected competencies and a course outline along with information on recommended prerequisites and co-requisites that students can access. See also: http://www.cccs.edu/cccns/Home.html
Florida
Florida statute mandates the development and coordination of "a common course designation and numbering system for postsecondary and dual-enrollment education in school districts, community colleges, participating nonpublic postsecondary education institutions and the state university system which will improve program planning, increase communication among all delivery systems, and facilitate student acceleration and the transfer of students. The system shall not encourage or require course content prescription or standardization or uniform course testing, and the continuing maintenance of the system shall be accomplished by appropriate faculty committees representing public and participating nonpublic institutions."
The Florida system standardizes course-identification numbers and prefixes for more than 120,000 courses offered by 38 state-supported vocational schools, 28 public community colleges, 10 state universities and at least two private two-year colleges. The system is maintained by approximately 170 faculty discipline committees, 78 institutional coordinators and two Department of Education employees. See also: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/educ/ccchart.htm.
Illinois
Administered by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI) is a voluntary agreement between community colleges and four-year institutions. The common course numbers come out of IAI’s purpose to identify common curriculum requirements across associate and baccalaureate degrees and across institutions to facilitate student transfer. The initiative includes a package of freshman- and sophomore-level courses that will transfer among more than 100 participating schools and fulfill the lower-division general education requirements at the school to which a student transfers.
The Baccalaureate Majors’ Recommendations build on the transferable General Education Core Curriculum by identifying major and prerequisite courses that students need to complete to transfer as a junior into a specific major. All community colleges in the state have voluntarily adopted this program. Because it is voluntary, institutions do not have a minimum number of courses they are required to submit to the numbering system.
The state program requires three Web site administrators, two co-coordinators, and 2.5 program management positions. Panels, including five general education panels (each with about 20 members) and 25 major panels meet twice a year to review all courses in the program. See also: http://www.itransfer.org/
Minnesota
MNTransfer, the Minnesota General Education Transfer Curriculum, was adopted in 1991 and revised in 2003. It requires the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities to develop and maintain course equivalency guides for use between institutions that have a high frequency of student transfer. Course equivalency guides are not required for vocational-technical programs that have not been divided into identifiable courses. Colleges and universities also are directed to develop and maintain a common numbering convention to distinguish remedial, lower-division, upper-division and graduate-level coursework. The governing boards of private institutions that grant associate and baccalaureate degrees also were requested to cooperate in the development of this numbering convention. See also: http://www.mntransfer.org/MnTC/MnTC.html.
Oregon
Oregon House Bill 2913 directed the Oregon University System and Community Colleges to jointly develop, to the extent possible, a common course numbering system for lower-division transfer courses. The Commonly Numbered Course List represents a good-faith effort to meet the requirements of the legislation and includes course descriptions, numbers and titles. See also: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/academic/cph1998/052_Commonly_Numbered_Course_List.htm.
South Carolina
South Carolina statute directed the adoption of a common statewide course numbering system for common freshman and sophomore courses of the technical colleges, two-year regional campuses of the University of South Carolina and the senior institutions. The statute also required the adoption of common course titles and descriptions to help reduce confusion among students about the equivalency of their two-year coursework with lower-division coursework at the four-year level. Legislators were determined the creation of a common system would improve the comparability of content, credit and purpose among the lower-division courses at public colleges and universities in South Carolina. They also wanted to help eliminate institutional disagreement over the transferability of much lower-division coursework, thus clearing a path for easier movement between the technical colleges and senior institutions. See also http://www.williamsburgtech.com/Trans_art.html.
Texas
The Texas Common Course Numbering System (TCCNS) is a cooperative effort among Texas community colleges and universities to facilitate transfer of freshman- and sophomore-level general academic coursework. The voluntary program allows students and advisors to determine both course equivalency and degree applicability of transfer credit on a statewide basis. When students transfer between two participating TCCNS institutions, a course taken at the sending institution transfers as the course cross-referenced with the same TCCNS designation at the receiving institution.
One hundred and ten institutions participate in the TCCNS project. Most community colleges have replaced their internal course numbering systems with TCCNS designations. The community colleges and universities that have not replaced their systems cross-reference their courses with TCCNS. See also: http://www.tccns.org/ccn/.
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