Staff Edit: From one school to the next

Transferring from school to school may be a hassle for students still indecisive about where they want to be and which field of study they want to pursue, but it is no reason for the government to require all universities in the country to have standardized rules for transferring course credits.

There are thousands of schools across the country, and it would be impossible to ask a school to create a standard for all of them. A course completed at one university is not likely to be at the same level, or cover all of the same topics, as at another, and to establish guidelines which would determine each school’s level of coursework is to deprive each school of its independence, and its ability to decide for itself what it feels its students should be taught.

Any student who complains of the difficulty with transferring and registering for courses probably does not realize that less than a decade ago, the process was outstandingly more difficult, and students often had to wait in long lines without having the convenience of registering online.

To fill out a few sheets of paperwork comparing the level of coursework for similar classes at two different schools is not much to ask, and it should be the school’s discretion whether to admit a certain course as counting toward a student’s degree requirements. There are few enough transfer students that it can easily be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Administrators should place appropriate weights on courses completed at different schools compared to the level of coursework at Boston University, and decide on course equivalency based on these weights, not on a universal, standard system for rating coursework.

Each university has the right to enforce strict standards for achieving a degree at that school, and the government should respect each university’s independence in doing so, especially at private universities like BU. What makes a BU degree different from one obtained through another university should not be regulated by the government.

It may often be the case that transfer students have to attend school an extra semester, and pay the extra tuition, because of variances in transfer coursework, but students should not complain that they are wasting tuition on courses they have already taken, because if a university does not accept transfer credits for a certain course, it should only mean that the level of coursework at the previous university is not on the same par, or does not sufficiently cover the topics taught at BU.

Though finding a way to decrease paperwork for transfer students should be a welcomed effort, it should not come at the cost of weakening a university’s reputation or depriving it of its right to set its own policies.