A flurry of recent activity will likely result in technical colleges developing so-called collegiate transfer programs. Two pieces of legislation introduced in August – AB 595 (Wood) and SB 279 (Brown) – would require the WTCS State Board to approve collegiate-transfer programs in districts that do not have a two-year UW college within their geographic boundaries. The bill, if passed, would apply to Chippewa Valley, Gateway, and Western Wisconsin.

Currently, only Madison, Milwaukee and Nicolet have the authority to offer collegiate transfer degrees.

While the bills are currently stalled in their respective legislative committees, work on the collegiate transfer issue has not slowed. Spurred on by potential legislative action, the technical colleges are working to quickly develop a set of procedures that provide for the review, adoption and implementation of collegiate transfer programs.

Under the collegiate transfer program development process – which is still under development – any technical college could request the WTCS State Board approve a proposed collegiate transfer program.

If approved by the WTCS State Board, the proposed program would be forwarded to the UW Board of Regents. Under current law, the regents have final approval over collegiate transfer programs proposed by the technical colleges.

Collegiate transfer programs differ from the technical colleges' current two-year Associate of Applied Sciences (AAS) degree in the amount of emphasis placed on general education coursework.

Associate of Liberal Arts are akin to the first two years of a baccalaureate degree.

These degrees typically required at least 90% of coursework be in general education.

Associate of Pre-Professional Studies, on the other hand, are geared toward students interested in transferring to a baccalaureate degree program in a specific field. Pre-professional degrees require approximately 60% of coursework be in general education. The remainder of the coursework is in technical studies.

Currently, a handful of colleges are contemplating proposing collegiate transfer degrees once the program development process has been finalized. It is likely that Chippewa Valley Technical College will be among the first technical colleges to propose a collegiate transfer program.