The Kentucky Student Success Collaborative (KYSSC), an initiative of the Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), recently released a statewide plan to redesign some aspects of the college admissions process. Five priorities were identified, with commitments to implement 11 actions in the next six to 12 months.
Several of the recommendations involve automating parts of the admission process. CPE is working with the National Student Clearinghouse to create the KY Postsecondary Transcript Exchange, which will enable schools to retrieve dual credit transcripts automatically, at no cost to students.
“This plan is informed by hundreds of reflections from Kentucky high school seniors and postsecondary practitioners,” said Dr. Lilly Massa McKinley, KYSSC executive director and assistant vice president for student access and success at CPE. “The priorities we’ve identified will promote earlier and more frequent outreach to prospective undergraduates and increase transparency around college costs, financial aid awards, housing, credit transfer and degree pathways.”
This effort is supported by a $150,000 planning grant from Lumina Foundation, which sponsors the Great Admissions Redesign, a national movement to make college admissions more accessible, transparent and streamlined.
“We are grateful to organizations like Lumina and Education Strategy Group (ESG), which have enabled CPE to connect with national peers and learn about research-based practices that improve student engagement and success,” said Dr. Aaron Thompson, CPE president.
Identified strategic priorities and actions include:
• Launching a centralized transcript retrieval system allowing institutions to retrieve student records with their consent.
• Establishing and training high school personnel on a common high school transcript submission protocol.
• Ensuring financial aid award letters comply with guidance from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and clearly identify total costs and renewable support.
• Creating a scholarship database within Futuriti.org, the state’s education and career portal, that shows institutional scholarships available at Kentucky colleges and universities.
• Raising awareness of Kentucky’s guaranteed transfer policy for associate degree graduates with a GPA of 2.0 or higher.
• Strengthening proactive communication between two-year and four-year institutions using intent-to-transfer flags.
The plan was developed by a workgroup composed of staff from public universities, Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) campuses, the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority (KHEAA), the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) and CPE
Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education