New England College and four other New Hampshire schools have joined a regional program that says they will automatically accept most students who have an associate degree from a state community college. 

The Transfer Guarantee Program, overseen by the New England Board of Higher Education, just launched in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont after running in the three southern New England states since 2021. It will go into effect for New Hampshire students entering this fall.

“What this initiative did is to make it easier to transfer. You don’t have to look at every course one by one but start to take in groups of courses,” said Patricia Corbett, Vice President of Academic Affairs at New England College, who served on the steering committee that made the initiative possible in New Hampshire.

It’s possible that not all credits will transfer, Corbett said, depending on the academic topic.

“If someone had, say, an automotive degree” from a two-year community college. “One hundred percent of those credits wouldn’t necessarily go into the nursing program, but there would be value in general education requirements, like composition, intro to psychology. Those could come in,” she said.

An analysis of the three years that the transfer program has run in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island found that students who transferred into four-year schools stuck with it – a 92% retention rate – and that 89 had obtained four-year bachelor degrees so far.

This group also gathered more financial resources such as grants and scholarships than might be expected. “Transfer students have historically missed out on merit aid as institutions have used it as a tool for enrolling admitted first-time full-time students straight from high school,” the New England Board of Higher Education wrote in a report.

Under the program, students who have earned a two-year associate degree at a state community college with a cumulative grade point average of between 2.0 and 3.0 – the exact GPA requirement is set by the receiving school – can apply for the upcoming academic year and are guaranteed admission, with the application fee and college essay waived.

Other New Hampshire participants in the rollout include Colby-Sawyer College, Franklin Pierce University, Keene State College and Plymouth State University, but most higher education institutions can get involved.

“Once you start, other institutions that are similarly situated will look around and say why can’t we do this,” said Sarah Kuczynski, director of transfer initiatives for the New England Board of Higher Education. “In Massachusetts we have schools that are still joining … reaching out as recently as this month, interested in figuring out how they can be a part of the group.”

This is among a variety of efforts being made by colleges and universities in New England to attract and retain students in the face of a continuing decline in the number of high school graduates throughout the six states.

Transfer programs between colleges often stumble over incompatible curricula that make it difficult for one institution to accept courses taken in another institution.

Corbett said New England College already had a strong transfer agreement with the state’s community college system and had to do little to meet the new initiative, but it still has value.

“It’s nice to have all these colleges work together, creating a partnership across the state,” she said.

The program only works within each state; it does not cross state borders.