Course equivalency is the term used in higher education describing how a course offered by one college or university relates to a course offered by another. If a course is viewed as equal or better than the course offered by the receiving college or university, the course can be noted as an equivalent course. A course equivalency can be unilateral, meaning it is deemed equivalent by the receiver. Or, it could be bilateral, meaning both sender and receiver acknowledge their acceptance of each other's course as equivalent. The methods and measures used to determine course equivalency vary by institution, state, region and country.
College transfer often requires the determination and evaluation of prior course learning. Receiving institutions usually maintain course equivalency tables listing how courses equate by sender institution. Unless the receiving institution maintains an online public reference to the course equivalency tables, sending institutions often have difficulty projecting transferbility of their course offerings. As a result, student transitions from sender to receiver, if outside the normal path, can be very problematic. This has led many states to legislate reforms, regulations and mandates to augment the tracking of course equivalencies in recent years. On the federal level, Congress and the Department of Education have been debating the issues well documented in the GAO report to Congress, October 2005[1].
Colleges and universities historically have utilized standalone electronic tools to track course equivalencies and facilitate the course evaluation process. Institutions, led by state education agencies are shifting to collaborative tracking tools sharing course repositories like the National Course Atlas[2] developed by AcademyOne, Inc.[3] to facilitate how institutions and their faculty propose, evaluate and manage course equivalency decisions online in a proactive manner. Institutions and state education agencies also utilize shared portals publishing the output of their proactive efforts to help improve student transfer guidance. The national portal, CollegeTransfer.Net[4] has the largest database of course equivalencies spanning states and institutions in the United States published by 1,000 institutions mapping 3 million course decisions. Further, utilizing shared collaborative tools enables institutions, faculty, departments and administrators to ensure systematic procedures applied quickly, accurately, and equally by reducing the duplication of effort and the lack of transparency across institutional curricula since both sender and receiver see the results when sharing a common repository like CollegeTransfer.Net.
The most common course attributes evaluated to determine course equivalency are description, academic credits, accreditation, type of instructor, method of instruction, length of the course, number of meetings, total class time, level of rigor, level of instruction, learning outcomes, grade scale, pre-requisites, co-requisites and textbook. This is not an exclusive list of course attributes. Generally, faculty perform the determination of course equivalencies. Course equivalency decisions can be appealed by presenting evidence to an academic department.