The Ethics of Inclusion

My experiences as an intern with William Peace University’s Center for Student Success (hereafter referred to as the CSS) have not afforded me much direct exposure to ethical quandaries that I myself must address. This isn’t necessarily surprising, however, given the fact that I’m a part-time, temporary employee working only 10 hours a week. If anything, it seems more reasonable to assume that such dilemmas would be handled by full-time CSS staff, who possess the authority to make, execute, and enforce decisions that impact students, faculty, and staff in significant ways.

Still, this is not to say that I haven’t observed what I consider to be ethical dilemmas. Indeed, the most significant of these dilemmas, to me, is how WPU treats its transfer and nontraditional students.

A sample success plan that first year WPU students are provided to help guide them in the development of their own plans.

For example, I have yet to hear of or encounter any retention initiatives specifically designed for transfer and nontraditional students within WPU’s Office of Retention and First Year Experience, despite the fact that there are many initiatives specifically designed for traditional first-year students: 1) peer mentors embedded in freshman seminars; 2) first year success programing on topics like time management, getting involved on campus, connecting with faculty, etc.; 3) the requirement that first year students develop a success plan that details campus resources they intend to make use of; and 4) the creation and sending of birthday cards to first year students.

For my part, I’ve attempted to account for transfer students when I can. I distinctly remember having to ask to receive a full list of incoming transfer students, for instance, when I was initially tasked with creating and sending birthday cards to new students, as I was only provided a list of incoming first year students. I’ve likewise suggested that WPU extend and tailor its retention strategies specifically to the needs of transfer and nontraditional students. Transfer success programming, for instance, would likely correspond at least somewhat with existing first year success programming, and therefore require minimal modifications and planning to implement. After all, incoming transfer students also need support familiarizing themselves with campus resources, how to get involved, etc. Such requests and suggestions have been received overwhelmingly positively; however, I have yet to see any actual progress made to explore and develop my ideas.

The only area in which I’ve seen transfer and nontraditional students explicitly discussed is within WPU’s Office of Academic Advising, where they often consult with faculty to determine whether transfer credit will be awarded for courses completed at other institutions and how these credits will applied toward WPU’s degree plans. Fortunately, my sense is that WPU’s faculty and advising staff seek to award transfer credit as much as possible, as evidenced by the fact that they accept up to 90 transfer credits, which equates to about three years’ worth of coursework. Considering the fact that all undergraduate degree programs are designed to be four years long, this means that a transfer student could theoretically plan and complete the majority of their coursework elsewhere – e.g. a community college, where costs are significantly less than a four-year institution – and then finish their degree program at WPU. In fact, this is precisely what my own brother did, and when everything was said and done, the total cost for his bachelor’s degree came out to be $31,600 – only $5,000 less than the average annual cost of tuition, room, and board at four-year institutions during the 2016-2017 school year (NCES, n.d.).

All of this is to say that I consider WPU’s transfer credit policies and practices especially commendable (and therefore ethical), especially when accounting for the fact that transfer students often lose a significant number of their credits upon transferring. A 2017 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for example, found that students who transferred to a different institution between 2004 and 2009 lost, on average, 43 percent of their credits, which represents a significant loss in time and money for students. As a result, I view such decisions regarding whether students receive transfer credit, as well as how those credits are applied, to be intrinsically ethical. The day-to-day work of WPU’s Office of Academic Advising is thus a constant demonstration of their professional ethics.

Nevertheless, WPU’s advising office represents just one of the many functional areas on campus that could be serving transfer and nontraditional students but aren’t. Returning to WPU’s Office of Retention and First Year Experience specifically, I wonder if this lack of attention stems from the fact that WPU has effectively combined two different functional areas: retention AND first year experience. To be sure, first year experience programs and initiatives are a retention strategy; however, they are not the only retention strategies that an institution can and should make use of. Or, perhaps WPU’s transfer and nontraditional students are retained at higher rates than first year students, and so WPU staff and faculty do not see as much cause for transfer-specific programs and services. Whatever the reason, I question what it says about an institution’s professional ethics if it largely ignores certain student populations in all but the one office that must attend to them (i.e. academic advising). For my part, such decisions suggest that the university’s professional ethics correspond, first and foremost, with the needs and priorities of the institution rather than those of the students.

References

NCES. (n.d.) Tuition costs of colleges and universities. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2017). Students need more information to help reduce challenges in transferring college credits. Retrieved from https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-574