Across the United States, many community college students intend to earn a bachelor’s degree, but far fewer do so. A major reason is that transfer processes are often inefficient and opaque. In some cases, students lose credits they have earned, and in others they find that their transfer credits count only as elective credits, rather than helping them make progress towards their major or fulfilling general education requirements. This means transfer students too often need additional courses, time, and money to reach graduation.
The City University of New York (CUNY) created Transfer Explorer (T-REX) to help address these challenges. Launched in 2020, T-REX is a systemwide, public-facing tool that shows how courses transfer across CUNY’s 20 undergraduate colleges and, critically, whether those courses apply to specific degree requirements. By making transfer rules and course degree applicability visible and searchable, T-REX is intended to help students plan course-taking and transfer choices more strategically, and to reduce avoidable “credit drift” after transfer.
This report from Ithaka S+R examines whether using T-REX is associated with improved early transfer outcomes for CUNY students who move from a CUNY community college to a CUNY bachelor’s-degree-granting college.