When do community college credits expire

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Just a moment while we process your submission. Quite a Lot. Will My College Credits Expire? However, if the designation is not earned within five years, the course credits will expire, and the course must be repeated to meet the program requirements, where applicable.

But if the program is not completed within five years from the date a course was passed, the credits expire and the course must be repeated if it is needed to meet program requirements. Skip to main content. Search Enter your keywords. Alternatively, you may be asked to take a placement test to determine how much you have already learned about a certain topic. If you feel you are transferring into a higher quality school with tougher standards than your old school, you may want to go ahead and re-take select classes in order to bring your skill level up.

Make sure you know the accreditation status of the school where you took your old credits. Also, you may find that some more traditional campus-based schools are a bit resistant to accepting credits from an online school. This is certainly fading as more state universities and even ivy-league schools offer courses online, but you may need to be prepared to make a very complete case about the quality of your credits at an online school.

You may wonder if credits from schools that are known mainly for online degrees like AIU or Colorado Technical University are useless. But in fact, both these schools are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, a respected body that accredits most top schools. As such, the credits you earn at these schools may transfer to a new school successfully.

When do college credits finally expire? Also, make sure you know the accreditation status of the school where you have studied up to now. One of the main factors that will determine whether or not credits are eligible to transfer is how closely related they are to the program you wish to apply to. Another common criteria for transfer credits is recency, or the length of time that has passed since the credits were earned. Recency is more or less important depending on the type of course you would like to transfer.

For instance, courses in areas that evolve rapidly—such as the sciences or technology—are likely to have a shorter shelf life than those that tend not to change drastically over the years—such as humanities like history and English. General education courses, on the other hand, are likely to transfer more easily between schools, as they tend not to become outdated as quickly as other courses. Accreditation is an incredibly important factor to consider when transferring credits, for a simple reason: Accreditation speaks to the quality of the education that you have received.

If a program or institution is accredited, that means it has met certain bare minimums in terms of quality. In the United States, universities and colleges are typically accredited by at least one of 19 recognized accrediting organizations which fall under the Council for Higher Education Accreditation CHEA. Individual programs can also be accredited by additional accreditors. Institutions or individual programs which are not accredited typically have typically not met these minimum requirements.

Now that you know what factors affect the eligibility of your transfer credits, you can begin planning the next steps towards finishing your education.