Measures of Articulation Coverage and Credit Granting

This article examines the comprehensiveness of institutions’ articulation agreements and how well they utilize those agreements in granting credit to transfer students. The study introduces the Articulation Coverage Score (ACS) and the Artificial Intelligence-enhanced ACS (AI-ACS) as measures of articulation agreement coverage. Additionally, it proposes measures to identify extra equivalencies, credits awarded beyond formal articulation agreements, and unused equivalencies, credits that have been articulated but not applied for student credit. Utilizing data sets from the The State University of New York (SUNY), the largest intersegmental system of higher education, we investigating articulation agreements from 21 community colleges and 24 universities. We find a high percentage of unused credits, 39%, along with significant variability between community colleges and 4-year institutions, with average AI-ACS of 32% (SD = 15) and 34% (SD = 19), respectively.