Transfers

The Barriers Committee also flagged the many challenges confronting students who wish/need to transfer among the schools and colleges. The College of General Studies has given considerable thought to this problem, given that its success depends on the ability of students to transfer smoothly from CGS to their ultimate degree programs. But, in general, the wide range of GPA requirements summarized by the Barriers Committee poses a challenge to the One BU concept and the Task Force looked further into the issue. One approach has been to discuss the rationale for these GPA requirements with the academic leadership of the schools and colleges. A number of issues emerged:

  1. Some schools and colleges have used GPA requirements to control enrollments so that they guard sufficient resources to meet the needs of their students.
  2. Programs have set internal (and often different) GPA standards to meet the demands of combined undergraduate/graduate programs or internship placement when mandated by professional associations.
  • We propose the creation of an “Integration & Accessibility Committee” that will be charged with finding solutions and developing policies to increase access to courses across the campus by qualified students who are currently barred by unnecessary or excessively specific prerequisites.(24)
  • We propose that schools and colleges adopt consistent GPA requirements that promote the fluid movement of students throughout Boston University. The need for further resources to handle additional students must be carefully evaluated, but where there is no compelling internship-, curricular-, licensure-, or accreditation-related argument against it, the minimum GPA required for intra-University transfer should be the same—2.0—as that for graduation. The “no resources” argument should not be used aprioristically to exclude students.

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24. Or for which they could be sufficiently prepared by means such as the blended modules described above under “Technology.”