Jennifer Bento: [00:00:00] All righty Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us for tonight’s webinar, Learn About Mass Transfer. Uh, my name is Jennifer Bento Pinion. I am Director of K12 Services here at MEFA, and we are excited to spend some time exploring, uh, Mass Transfer. And I’m pleased to introduce, uh, tonight’s presenter, Art Esposito.

He’s d- the Director of Academic Affairs and Student Success at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. Uh, so Art brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, uh, and will talk us through this statewide program. Uh, we’ll, uh, learn about how the program works and the opportunities and resources available, uh, to help students navigate the process.

Uh, but before we get started, just a few logistics. Uh, the chat feature is actually disabled. Uh, if you have a question during the, the webinar, uh, maybe hold, [00:01:00] uh, because Art may address, uh, many of these, uh, questions that you’ve started off with throughout the presentation. Uh, so we’ll, we’ll address those questions towards the end.

Any that come in, you can just pop those in the QA. Um, closed captioning is available. You can enable that at any time, and if you need to leave early, no worries. We are recording this session and will, uh, send the recording, uh, following the webinar. Uh, so just a couple words about MEFA. MEFA is the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority.

We’re a quasi-state authority that’s been helping families plan, save and co- uh, pay for college for over 40 years. Uh, supporting students and families throughout that college planning process, um, continues to be at the heart of our mission. Uh, so with that, Art, thank you so much for being here tonight with us, and I will turn it over to you.

Arthur Esposito: Thanks so much for, uh, for inviting me again, uh, Jennifer. I was– It, it’s, it’s, it’s nice to come into this space and be able to share [00:02:00] about Mass Transfer. Uh, you know, a- as a, as a, a coordinating office, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, um, has the, uh, the unique relationship with the 28 institutions, uh, uh, in the public system of, uh, of higher ed, uh, that w- we, we don’t, um, we don’t control them.

We’re not a controlling entity. We’re, uh, we’re a collaborative coordinating body, so most of the work that we do on public spaces like the one that you’re looking at is explain a lot of things about the process. And, um, I, I love talking about, uh, vertical transfer. I’ve been in higher ed for, um, really all of my adult life.

Um, I’ve spent, uh, the, the previous 25 years, um, as an instructor in higher ed, as an academic advisor in higher ed, and as an advising leader, uh, unt- until finally moving to the department, uh, back in 2023. Uh, I’ve been managing the Mass Transfer [00:03:00] platform, uh, from– for the department for the last three years, and I really like the- Talking with folks about what it’s all about, um, because it, it, it feels like it’s a little bit more of a mystery than it ought to be.

Um, I don’t even create PowerPoints anymore. I just use the website as, um, as the kind of guide for my talk, and I’ll try to, um, at least in a summary way, let you know what Mass Transfer is about. Um, there are lots of tools on the website that can be helpful in planning. Um, but honestly, most of these tools are most effective once you’ve started your community college career working with academic advising at whatever institution you’re attending, because they’re the ones who are, um, they’re the ones whose primary role it is to help you follow the pathways that you can find on, on the site.[00:04:00]

So with all of that having been said as backdrop, let’s dig in a little bit. Um, Mass Transfer is, um, is, uh, a, a program that, um, w- we started calling it Mass Transfer back in 2008, um, and that was just the, the most recent rebranding of it. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the public institutions within the Commonwealth have been collaborating and coordinating on transfer since 1974.

Uh, so this isn’t a new thing for the institutions. They know it well. Um, and, and the Mass Transfer policy, um, and language in, uh, in the legislature, uh, it was sort of written after the fact. It was said, “You’ll build this thing,” but it’s what the institution had been doing this whole time. So our website becomes kind of this clearing house or a mirror image, if you will, of the policies and rules at each of the institutions.

That’s how we try to build it. So [00:05:00] without further ado, let’s talk about what, um, what Mass Transfer actually is. It’s a series of, um, agreements that the community colleges and the baccalaureate institutions have, uh, have signed onto, and it’s to help students start their higher education career at a community college, finish the associate degree there at that college, transfer to a baccalaureate institution or a four-year institution, and finish their bachelor’s degree.

Spending the first two years of their education at the community college is far more cost-effective than starting that career at the baccalaureate institution, paying full tuition for the whole four years. Because of the, the new financial aid policy, MassEducate- Um, you can attend any one of the 15 community colleges in the state, in, in the Commonwealth, um, with, with [00:06:00] no tuition.

It’s a tuition-free program. It’s not completely 100% free. It’s called Free Community College, but really the focus of it is to make sure that you’re not paying tuition and you’re getting a, a, a break on fees as well. There’s also a stipend now that helps you with a little bit of extra money to pay for books and things like that.

Um, even without it being completely free, it is far more cost-effective and, and, and way more affordable than it was prior to this, and certainly far more affordable than trying to finish all four years of your baccalaureate degree at the four-year institution that does not have the benefit of MassEducate So what we’re looking at here on the screen are the, the various levels of Mass Transfer benefit.

Um, and it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a stepwise, um, uh, acceleration of benefit. Um, the General Education Foundation is a, a block of, [00:07:00] of courses and, and credit hours. Um, that’s the language of higher education. A course is worth X number of credit hours. Most courses are worth three credit hours, some are worth more.

Uh, the General Education Foundation is a collection of courses in subjects that are, um, basically the foundation of any higher education degree. It’s, it’s English composition, uh, mathematics, sciences, social sciences, and, and humanities and fine arts. These are the, the subjects that at all 28 institutions in the undergraduate system, the community colleges and the baccalaureate institutions alike, this is, this is a, a sizable portion of one’s education.

Um, the General Education Foundation ensures that a student who attends a community college but does not finish their associate degree, who has finished the 11 courses and the t- and the 34 credits that make up the General Education Foundation, [00:08:00] gets those requirements waived at the baccalaureate institution when they transfer.

So to put the case in point, if you’re attending Bunker Hill Community College and you finish their version of the General Education Foundation, your transcript is, is indicated with, with a marker that when it’s sent to the baccalaureate institution you transfer to, the receiving institution says, “Oh, they finished their general ed foundation.”

That graduation requirement is checked off. Um, that is a, a, a universal block of classes that’s accepted at every community college and every state university and UMass campus in this system. The next level of benefit, um, is called our associate to bachelor’s degree. Um, it’s, it’s shortened to A2B. Um, and this amounts to, uh, these benefits are, are earned by completing an associate degree at the community college before transferring.

We’ll talk a little bit later because a, a question was forwarded to me from, [00:09:00] uh, from some of the, the requests that you made, that you submitted, to talk about the difference between, and, and outcomes between students who transfer with an associate degree and who transfer without. It’s very significant and, and most of our programming is, is built to encourage you to finish the associate degree before you transfer because there are all sorts of benefits that, that you earn by doing so.

Um, these benefits are- Are scaled as well, and they’re based on your cumulative GPA at the end of your associate degree pathway. If you’ve earned a 2.0, all of your admissions applications, fees, essays, and letters of recommendations are waived. Uh, you’re also guaranteed to have a minimum of 60 credits.

Whatever credits you earned for the associate degree, those are guaranteed to transfer to the baccalaureate institution, and you’ll start at that institution with the registration status of junior. [00:10:00] So at the higher ed in- institutions, when you register for classes each semester, they start with the seniors, they go to the juniors, they follow that with the sophomores, and the last people to register are freshmen.

When you transfer after having th- completed two years of your degree already, you’re joining the junior class in, in that registration status This doesn’t guarantee that you’ve taken all of the courses in the major. So, so when you go to the institution, you’re accepted at the institution, and the major that you’re following might have some difference in their, their academic curriculum, but at, at least you know that you’re, you’re s- you’re, you’re maintaining all of the credits and all of the e- education that you’ve earned at the community college.

Um, that’s with a 2.0. Um, if you’ve earned a 2.5, uh, the, the benefits of the, the gen ed foundation and the 2.0 [00:11:00] level are granted in addition to admission to the university being guaranteed. So whatever university you’re applying to, the s- uh, state university or UMass campus, you’re guaranteed to be admitted to the university.

You still have to go through any special admission requirements if you’re, if you’re applying for a s- particular major that has special admission requirements on it. I’m thinking about, um, engineering at UMass Amherst. The Isenberg School of Business also has some special requirements that need to be met before you’re accepted into that program.

If you’re going to any of the institutions and you’re thinking about a degree in the performing arts, auditions, uh, visual arts, portfolios, those things will still be required before you’re admitted to the major, but you’re guaranteed admission to the university with a 2.5 GPA. Um, and then the next step, uh, uh, the, the, uh, [00:12:00] benefit is, um, is with a 3.0 GPA, you become eligible for another affordability measure.

It’s called the Mass Transfer Tuition Waiver or Credit. And, and this, uh, uh, in this case, if you’ve completed your associate degree, you’ve earned a 3.5 GPA, the receiving institution will waive the tuition portion of your tuition and fees, uh, for, for two years following your transfer, as long as you maintain a 3.5 GPA.

So this is the, the, the state university and UMass campus version of tuition-free programming. So, so the amount of mo- the amount of money that’s allocated for tuition in the, uh, in the total, uh, uh, fees that you pay, that’s waived at the baccalaureate institution if you have a 3.0 GPA. Um, those are the three steps [00:13:00] of the A to B pathway benefit.

The third level of benefit is the Commonwealth Commitment. This one’s a little bit more challenging. Um, in, in this case, you need to, um- Let me back up. Anytime you start higher education anywhere, and this isn’t a mass transfer conversation, this is about success in higher education. Um, anytime you attend an institution of higher education, whether it’s a community college or a baccalaureate institution, you need to immediately identify who your academic advisor is.

You’ll be assigned one at each institution, and if you don’t have one specific advisor, you might have, you might have, uh, two. You might have a faculty advisor and a professional advisor. Th- th- this very long story made short, find out who your academic advisor is, make friends with them. Know that you [00:14:00] can call on them at any time.

You can send them an email during business hours any day, and you’re likely going to get a response from that advisor within 48 hours. I say this because advisors are, um, they’re great regulators of thunkiness. Anytime anything gets weird and you don’t know who to ask the question of, chances are you can ask your academic advisor and they’re gonna know who you can talk to.

The reason I say this at this point with the Commonwealth Commitment is because this is a very advising intense program. With the Commonwealth Commitment, the student, you, need to commit to a particular major. You need to commit to registering for full-time enrollment, so a minimum of 12 credits every semester, four classes.

And you need to commit to transferring to a specific baccalaureate institution as soon as you finish your associate degree. Um, so those are, those are three big commitments that student has to make in their first 15 credits of study at the community college. So within your first semester [00:15:00] at the community college, you need to, to indicate that you want to participate in Commonwealth Commitment If you follow all of those requirements, and if you maintain eligibility throughout, um, the benefits are pretty significant.

Um, the first one is that tuition at the community college and the baccalaureate institution are both frozen to the semester that you start the program. So if you start the program, say, in the fall of 2027, and the next academic year the institution approves a tuition increase, you don’t see that tuition increase.

You pay the fees that were in place the semester you started the program of, of Commonwealth Commitment. And that holds true at the baccalaureate institution as well. So if you start the community college in 2027, and you transfer to the baccalaureate institution in 2029, you’re still paying the 2027 fees at the baccalaureate institution as well, [00:16:00] and that can be pretty significant.

Um, the second really important financial benefit is, um, is receiving a, a 10% rebate of tuition and fees at the community college, and a 10% rebate of campus fees at the baccalaureate institution. So, so this gets a little tricky when talking about, uh, uh, tuition and fees at the community college because all of our community college is now tuition-free.

This rebate, though, is not a rebate of what you pay, it’s a rebate of what you’re supposed to pay. So even if you are, uh, uh, uh, paying no tuition or fees, the institution knows what the tuition and fee amount is and will give you a rebate of 10% of that amount at the end [00:17:00] of each semester in which you maintain, um, a 3.0 GPA And then the final component of that, since you’re, um, since you’re maintaining the 3.0 GPA that’s required for the, um, the Mass Transfer tuition waiver, tuition credit, you’re also eligible for the, the…

You’re automatically eligible for the Mass Transfer tuition waiver when you get to the baccalaureate institution. So the difference with the Commonwealth Commitment, um, is that there are some pretty significant financial incentives when you follow this program. Now, it can be challenging to be a full-time student, especially for, for any of you out there who, um, who may need to work, uh, uh, any of you who have, um, who have responsibilities in the home, taking care of younger siblings or, um, or elderly family members.

Um, it can be challenging to, to find the time in your life to be successful at 12 credits per semester because learning at the higher [00:18:00] education level is different than learning in high school. You’re in class in college, you’re in class half the amount of time that you’re in class when you’re in high school, but that doesn’t mean it’s, it’s, it’s half as difficult.

That just means the other half of your time you need to spend on your own studying. You need to spend on your own working on the subjects, uh, in order to be successful at the college level. That’s a significant time commitment, and that can be challenging if you’ve got a part-time job, if you’ve got responsibilities in the home.

It’s the institution’s job to help you make that work, though, and the more frequently you’re in communication with academic advising and academic support at these institutions, the better able, uh, the better able you’ll be to respond to those competing requirements I say that just to kind of, to, to put it out there.

The Commonwealth Commitment sounds like an easy thing. You commit to doing [00:19:00] these certain things, but it can be challenging, and you’ve got to really stay focused on it. Um, there are other pieces of Mass Transfer that I don’t think are as specifically meaningful to talk about at this point, so we’ll move on from talking about the benefits.

And I just want to show you a couple of the tools that we’ve got on the website that, that can help you understand these things a little bit better. Um, one of our primary tools, uh, on the website is our course equivalency database. This is, um, this is a searchable database of, uh… I think we- the, at last count, we were somewhere around 10,000 courses.

And, um, the course equivalency, uh, database basically shows you, um, whatever course you’re taking at a particular community college, um, this database will show you what that course transfers as, if it transfers. So let’s say you’re attending Cape Cod Community College, [00:20:00] and you’re taking a bunch of biology courses, and you want to see how they transfer to Bridgewater State.

Um, you click List Courses, and here are all the biology courses at Cape Cod that transfer to Bridgewater. Sometimes they transfer as an elective, sometimes they transfer as a specific course. Um, we don’t have any that are popping up here as not transferrable, transferrable at all. Sometimes that happens.

Um, the extent to which you’re in communication with your advisors and advisors at your, at your home institution are in communication with the institutions you’re planning on going to, the, the, the easier it is to kind of sort those questions out. So we’ve got a searchable database of, of course equivalencies on the website.

Um, we also have, um, a way to search for Gen Ed Foundation courses. Remember I told you the Gen Ed Foundation was, um, a block of classes, um, [00:21:00] that, that transfers as a unit if you have to or feel like you want to leave the community college prior to earning your associate degree. If you complete these 34 credits, um-

We used to have a list of them. Here we go. Um, you can search for what the, what courses at each institution satisfy these categories. You take two courses in composition and writing. You take three courses for nine credits of behavior social science, three courses, nine credits of humanities and fine arts, one math or quantitative reasoning class, and, and two, uh, natural science or physical science courses for seven credits.

And you can say, “What does that look like if I’m going to Cape Cod Community College?” And these are all the options for each category. You take the appropriate number of courses in each category, [00:22:00] and you’ve satisfied the Gen Ed Foundation. This is just another one of the helpful planning tools that you and your advisor can look at when you’re digging into things and when you’re trying to benefit from the money-saving option of starting your career at a community college and finishing it in the baccalaureate institution I’ll also take a second to show you our A2B pathways.

We’ve created curriculum guides. They’re– We, we call them A2B pathway maps because we’ve, we’ve convened, um, uh, uh, collaborative groups of faculty members from community colleges, state universities, and UMass campuses, and we’ve asked them to think about what the best advice would be to give a student who’s thinking about transferring when they’re attending Cape Cod, and they wanna go to Bridgewater State, and they wanna study some kind of earth natural science, biology or something like that.[00:23:00]

Um, when you plug those criteria into the search engine, we see a list of options. You can, you can start at Cape Cod Community College. You get an assoc-an Associate of Arts in Biology and transfer to Bridgewater State and earn your Bachelor of Science in Biology. And here is the recommended sequence of courses that you should take.

Um, these courses at Cape Cod Community College will be accepted at Bridgewater State as the courses in the right-hand column. And in this last column, we tell you how those courses are typically accepted. In this case, uh, these courses are accepted as major requirements, but they also satisfy Gen Ed foundation requirements because y-you’ll note that Biology 151 is a natural physical science.

It’s worth four credits, so it satisfies a [00:24:00] requirement in this category. We’re, we’re trying to help students understand not just that the courses transfer to the receiving institutions, but we’re also trying to give you a sense for how they’re going to be applied to the, the audit of your degree and, and what requirements it’s going to help you satisfy to earn the bachelor’s degree.

And there’s a– The– Each of these maps is, is quite lengthy. We deal with the major requirements for the bachelor’s degree in the top section, and then in the lower section of these pathway maps, we talk about the Gen Ed foundation, in this case, the STEM Gen Ed, which is slightly reduced in the humanities and social science areas so that you can take a larger number of science courses, um, to, to prepare you for a more, um, supported transfer into a STEM degree at the baccalaureate institution Um, [00:25:00] the…

I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on the Commonwealth Commitment page, um, because it’s, um, it’s complex, and I, I think understanding, at this point, understanding that this option is there is enough. You don’t really need to dig into the nitty-gritty of this until you’re at the point where you’ve started your career at the community college and you know you wanna do this.

I’m, I’m kind of setting the stage for you so that when you do start at the community college, or if you go right to a baccalaureate institution, if you start at a community college, I’m trying to plant these ideas in your head so that you know to talk with your academic advisor about Mass Transfer.

There will be presentations at every orientation session, and there will be presentations probably at every open house that you attend for that community college on Mass Transfer. But the real work that you need to do [00:26:00] is with an academic advisor in one-to-one appointments from your first semester. Uh, the, the, the best time, research tells us the best time to start thinking about transfer is, is one to two years before you actually execute that transfer.

And I’m sure all of you have heard community colleges referred to as two-year colleges, because it’s mathematically possible for you to complete your associate degree in two years. Um, it’s not a bad thing if you don’t, we just don’t want that to happen accidentally. Um, there’s a lot of conversation in the national dialogue on transfer talking about completing on time and making sure you’re not spending too long in college.

And it’s understood that the longer amount of time you spend in college, the less time you’re spending out in the world of work, and it, it reduces your earning opportunity. However, just because you’re [00:27:00] spending a longer time at the, at the community college does not mean, or a longer time at the baccalaureate institution even, it does not mean you’re wasting money or wasting time.

There are two ways to waste time and money in higher education, and those two ways are to take the wrong courses so that they don’t apply to your degree, or to do poorly in the courses that you have to take so that you’ve gotta take them over again. Those are the only two ways to waste time or money.

It’s understandable that, that you’d, you’d want to be working sooner rather than later, and there are ways to manage that, but being part-time is not- Is not specifically causally correlated to academic underperformance, and it’s definitely not related to a, a, a waste of time or a waste of money. So don’t feel bad if you need to be part-time.

We know that that’s a reality. I was [00:28:00] part-time for a, a great portion of my higher education career. I took two extra years to finish my bachelor’s degree. I took two extra years to finish my master’s degree. I’ve been on hundreds of job interviews in my life, and I’ve never been asked how long it took me to finish my degree.

They just want to know how well I did. So I’m just putting that out there. Um, I think, Jennifer, that that ends the show and tell portion of the, uh, of the conversation, and it’s time to talk about questions and seeing if I can answer anything more or demystify the process any more for our, uh, our attendees.

Um, so maybe I’ll stop screen share?

Jennifer Bento: Sure, yes.

Arthur Esposito: Okay. This

Jennifer Bento: is great. So we don’t have any pending questions in the QA. Okay. But folks, Art’s here to answer your questions, so pop them in the QA if you have any.

Arthur Esposito: Oh, and I want to pull up a document because I took some notes. Uh, Jennifer shared with me, um, some questions that [00:29:00] some of you put into the, the registration form.

Um, and one of them in particular was, was asking about, uh, any data we had on, um, baccalaureate degree completion, um, compared between, uh, Mass Transfer students and non-Mass Transfer students. Um, the, the data we have doesn’t make that distinction because we’ve built Mass Transfer benefits in such a way that, that they’re sort of transparent for the student.

Um, you don’t need to, to sign anything, or you don’t need to opt in to receiving Gen Ed foundation benefits or A to B pathway benefits. You just need to finish an associate degree, and the institution, before they send your transcript to the baccalaureate [00:30:00] institution, is going to say, “This student deserves A to B pathway benefits, and this student deserves Gen Ed foundation.”

So the, the data I’m about to, the statistics I’m about to say do not differentiate between Mass Transfer and non-Mass Transfer students. This is simply about transferring with an associate’s degree versus transferring without one. So when a student finishes an associate degree prior to transfer, 69% of the transfer students in Massachusetts finished their bachelor’s degree in an additional four years.

Um, the students who didn’t finish their associate degree fortra- before transferring, only 51% of them finish within four years. So that’s a significant difference and, and those are local data. The national statistics and the national data on the same topic say the same thing, that students who finish an associate degree prior to [00:31:00] transfer are significantly more likely to finish their bachelor’s degree in a timely manner.

They’re also significantly more likely to finish their bachelor’s degree with a higher GPA. Um, th- there are also, there is also data, and this one’s, this one’s, this one’s almost anecdotal for me because I don’t remember the exact number, but transfer students are also more likely to have, to earn higher wages when they finish their bachelor’s degree.

Um, so, uh, uh, finishing your associate degree is really positively correlated to every level of academic success that any higher education institution in the US measures. So it, it’s, it’s really an important thing.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. So we do have a couple of questions that have come in. Okay, great. Yeah. All right.

So, um, if you can maybe only take two courses per semester, w- Mm-hmm … could you still [00:32:00] qualify for a guaranteed transfer to, say, UMass Lowell or other UMass schools?

Arthur Esposito: Yes. The only thing that that’s gonna prevent you from participating in is the Commonwealth Commitment. But, but every other benefit is, is there for you Even if you can only take two, uh, two courses per semester.

Uh, the, the, you know, the national dialogue on transfer used to, to really encourage, um, students to be full-time enrolled if they could, but we’ve come to understand over the years that it’s just not that easy to be enrolled full-time. And it- it’s, it’s higher ed’s responsibility to make it okay that, that you can still participate.

We don’t wanna tell part-time students that they can’t come and they’re not gonna be successful. You can be successful, and the institution will help you be successful. So, so all of those benefits are there for you. The current recommendation is to be as registered as you can be. [00:33:00] So if you can only take two courses during each long semester, think about using summer sessions to your benefit.

Most institutions have at least two summer sessions in which the courses are, are taught i- in a shorter period of time, and maybe a little bit more accelerated pace, but you can really earn a, a great deal of credits in the course of a summer so that, you know, no, you’re not finishing in, in two years, but maybe you’re finishing in three.

Maybe you’re finishing in two and a half, depending upon how effectively you use those summer sessions and how, how, how high you’re keeping your GPA. GPA is so important in higher education. If you’ve got a high GPA, you can start introducing yourself like that. “Hi, I’m 3.5.” Um, doing well is so significantly important.

I can’t stress that enough. Mm-hmm. But, but yes, even, even six credits a, a semester, you can even qualify for Federal Student Aid as a part-time student with as few as six credits. So there’s [00:34:00] no detractive there. Don’t, don’t feel discouraged about that if that’s your con- condition.

Jennifer Bento: Yep. Get your FAFSA in.

Arthur Esposito: Right.

Jennifer Bento: Yep, yep. All right. That’s great. Thank you. Um, so couple more questions. Um-

Arthur Esposito: Yeah …

Jennifer Bento: is there a deadline for the Commonwealth Commitment while in community college? Could you-

Arthur Esposito: Yes, you have to sign in… You have to sign on to the, the Commonwealth Commitment within your first 15 credits of study.

Jennifer Bento: Okay.

Arthur Esposito: Now, if, if any of you are also doing dual enrollment or if you’re doing early college programs where you’re earning college credit at your high school, those don’t count in that 15 credit limit.

So, so if you brought dual enrollment with you or you brought early college courses with you, the, the, the clock starts when you start at the community college. So the, the, the cutoff is the semester in which you’ve earned your 15th credit at the institution. So you have to act fast, and, and, and that’s with good reason.

There’s, there’s a whole bunch of research out [00:35:00] in the, the higher ed world, uh, correlating early academic advising and early decision-making, um, positively correlating that to increased levels of academic success, higher GPAs, um, and, and, and shorter times to degree.

Jennifer Bento: And connecting with that academic advisor, right?

Yeah. Very important, you said.

Arthur Esposito: Yeah. It’s so important to have a person.

Jennifer Bento: Yeah.

Arthur Esposito: Your academic advisor is your person at that institution. They’re there to help you. They’re there to engage in a, a civic kind of friendship with you. Mm-hmm. Your success is the most important thing to them, and you’re, you’re connected in that way.

Jennifer Bento: Yeah, so important. Okay, one more, one more lingering question. Yeah. So, um, if the GPA is 3.0, then there is a 10% rebate on tuition and fees, but if the tuition- Yes … at the community college remains free, then what is the rebate based on? Only the fees paid? [00:36:00]

Arthur Esposito: The, the rebate is based on the-

The dollar amount of attendance, not what you paid. So y- you’re, you’re gonna have… The, the way that the tuition-free college works is that the Department of Higher Ed, our Office of Student Financial Assistance pays the fees. So when you enroll at a community college, that institution sends a reimbursement request to the Department of Higher Education, and the request, the amount of money that they request is the balance of the total fees that a student pays.

So a non-Massachusetts resident who attends the community college does not benefit from [00:37:00] MassEducate. They pay a particular dollar amount. It’s a per credit, uh, tuition charge and additional fees. That’s the sum that is, is refunded to you. The rebate is a check that comes to you at the end of each semester.

So it’s based on what you would have paid were you not a MassEducate student.

Jennifer Bento: Okay. All right. Thanks for

Arthur Esposito: explaining that. I don’t know if that made sense. Uh, it’s, it’s complex. It’s

Jennifer Bento: a little

Arthur Esposito: com-

Jennifer Bento: And- Yeah, it’s

Arthur Esposito: a little complicated … and I spent, I, I spent three weeks- … my first, my first month, uh, in the office getting my head around that.

Yeah. It was very challenging. Well, you explained that well. And I was, I was in there with some really smart people, too. And they were, you know, it, it was something.

Jennifer Bento: You explained that well.

Arthur Esposito: Great.

Jennifer Bento: All right. Okay, so we got one more in. I keep… One more, one more. Um- Last one … so, yep. So, um, so is there ever a benefit to taking a more undeclared approach to one, to a, an [00:38:00] associate versus taking, uh, one geared toward a particular major?

So is undeclared… Can you, can you, uh, be undeclared at community college and

Arthur Esposito: Y- … does it make a difference? Um, technically most of the, the community colleges in the system don’t have that as an option. They really want to get you on a pathway. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and that’s for good reason. It’s, it’s thinking about, it’s thinking about where you’re going.

Um- There, there could be a benefit. Most of the colleges also have, uh, what they call a liberal studies or a general studies pathway in which you take the general education foundation and there are a number of directed electives that you get to take, and you get to choose what those electives are.

Ideally, you do that with your academic advisor, and you’re doing that with a mind of thinking about where you’re going with it. This all, this all wraps up into, um, you know, [00:39:00] the 20 years I spent in higher education as an academic advisor. Prior to coming to the Department of Higher Ed, I was directing advising offices that specialized in advising undeclared and exploratory students, helping them think about what they wanted these years of their life to mean when they graduated.

Jennifer Bento: Mm-hmm.

Arthur Esposito: Uh, there was, there was a statistic back then, this was early 2000s when I started, and the statistic was that 50% of the American workforce was working in the field of study that they majored in in college, and 50% were not. Mm. And the way that we got our head around that data was that there could be any number of reasons why that 50% who didn’t wind up working in that field didn’t wind up working there.

But there’s really one universal reason why 50% did go to work in the field they studied. That’s because they made a plan to do so, and they executed the plan.

Jennifer Bento: Mm-hmm.

Arthur Esposito: Um, so your time [00:40:00] in higher education can be incredibly impactful on, on the college to career bridge and, and the world of work that you go out into It’s only going to be that impactful if you work with academic advisors and you work with faculty members so that they can help you understand what it is that you’re going out into.

Faculty members are experts in their field of study, and they know what the world of work is outside it because they constantly study it, and they constantly update their curricula, and they constantly, constantly update their practice. Academic advisors, same thing. They’re trained to help you understand how this time in higher education, how these general education courses that don’t seem to mean anything to a biology degree, how meaningful they are in, in giving you durable skills to take out into the world to be responsive to whatever world of work you graduate into.[00:41:00]

Mm-hmm. And that’s a big question mark as well, because you’re starting and, and you’re not gonna go out into the world of work for four years, and the world of work is moving so fast now that, that there are jobs that are gonna be there that we have no idea about right now.

Jennifer Bento: Mm-hmm.

Arthur Esposito: So all of that is stuff that you need to think about.

You don’t need to obsess over it, and you don’t need to feel, um, overwhelmed by it. There’s support at the institution to help you figure those things out, and, and all of them are called academic advisors.

Jennifer Bento: Yeah. Uh, that’s great. Thank you. Uh-

Arthur Esposito: You bet …

Jennifer Bento: this is, this is amazing. No more lingering questions here in, in the QA.

No

Arthur Esposito: more? We got it all?

Jennifer Bento: We got it all. Such great- Okay, great … opportunities for students. Thank you for breaking this all down for us tonight-

Arthur Esposito: Of course …

Jennifer Bento: Art, and,

Arthur Esposito: um- And y- you’re gonna share my email address with them, right?

Jennifer Bento: Yes. I put the email addr- your email in the, in the q- in the chat. Hopefully- Great

that went through. And- Yeah … as well as the link to the website, to the Mass Transfer website.

Arthur Esposito: Super.

Jennifer Bento: Um, so yeah, [00:42:00] f- uh, folks, feel free to reach out to Art if you have any, any questions, and you can always, if you, if you can’t, if you didn’t get Art’s, uh, email address, you can reach us at mefa.org and we’ll, we’ll get you to Art.

Um, but thank you for joining tonight, and I hope e- thank you, Art, for, for-

Arthur Esposito: You bet.

Jennifer Bento: Thanks for having me … all of this great information. Okay. And have a, have a good night, everyone. Okay. Take care.

Arthur Esposito: Thanks a bunch.

Jennifer Bento: All right. Bye.