Doug Lederman
July 8, 2026
Improving credit transfer and learning mobility will make it easier for people to game the system. But that risk is outweighed by the far larger number of students it will help.
In what was little more than an aside in my last column about the potential desirability of taking a more metropolitan or regional approach to coordinating higher education, I mentioned learning mobility (a broader term for transfer of credit) as one of several issues on which colleges should cooperate more and differentiate less on behalf of learners.
On my LinkedIn post about the column, the sage higher ed economist David Feldman zeroed in on that issue and warned that I might be oversimplifying the problem.
“Credit portability is a tough issue,” Feldman wrote. “We do not want a race to the bottom in which the institutions that pump out credits with little evidence of student learning dictate the curriculum at more conscientious institutions.” He added a counterpoint: “I know it goes both ways. We do not want institutions refusing perfectly good transfer credits in order to pump up course demand (and revenue) from their students.”