We are all familiar with the term ‘dropout’, which refers to someone who quit some form of education or training and has many negative connotations. However, many of these students left their educational paths due to a factor outside of their control becoming more important than their ongoing education.
The same factors are behind many ‘stop-out’ students. Unlike ‘dropout’ students, they have not decided to quit education completely, but instead are taking an open-ended break from education while they deal with whatever issue caused them to leave, or until that issue decreases to a level that allows them to continue their education.
Stop-out students are also those whose mindset has changed after their first year. Some no longer see college as their best way forward, while others feel they did not fit well within the structure of their particular establishment.
Transfer-friendly degree programs
Regardless of the situation, students wishing to re-start their courses can benefit from transfer-friendly degree programs to continue their education. As already indicated, many students ‘stop-out’ due to a change in circumstances, including moving to an area where access to their previous campus is no longer easily possible. In circumstances such as these, moving to an alternate establishment is often the answer.
The same may also be the case where a student chose to remove themselves because they did fit into a particular college. They might wish to continue to do their degree somewhere they might feel more at home.
Regardless of the circumstance, there are many students who have part-finished a course and now might feel that they have lost the work they originally put in and the credits they had already obtained have gone to waste. Restarting a course could even mean restarting from scratch.
Articulation agreements
This might be especially true of students who have stopped-out for several years and feel as though they may have to attend additional courses to catch up before restarting their degree.
However, many colleges now offer the opportunity, via articulation agreements to transfer over a percentage of the credits that have previously been attained to their new course. In real terms, this gives some students the possibility of starting their course again pretty much where they left off. This can be an attractive proposition for students who left their previous course with a great deal of the work already completed.
Career Progression
An increasing number of roles in the workplace now require a degree, if not for entry, then certainly for any significant progression along a career path. This can leave many ‘stop-out’ students looking for a way back into their courses to complete what they started, in some cases, many years ago.
Transfer-friendly degree programs can provide a pathway back into education for those who left through no fault of their own, or whose mindset has changed to one where they see the benefits of continuing their course.
The benefits of this can be financial (through career progression and the salary increases this would normally bring) or simply the satisfaction of completing something they had to leave behind temporarily to take a different path.
