Transfer Policy for Public Two-Year and Four-Year Institutions in South Carolina

The South Carolina Course Articulation and Transfer System serves as the primary tool and source of information for transfer of academic credit between and among institutions of higher education in the state. The system provides institutions with the software tools needed to update and maintain course articulation and transfer information easily. The student interface of this system is the South Carolina Transfer and Articulation Center (SCTRAC) web portal: https://www.sctrac.org/. This web portal is an integrated solution to meet the needs of South Carolina’s public colleges and universities and their students and is designed to help students make better choices and avoid taking courses which will not count toward their degree. Each institution’s student information system interfaces with https://www.sctrac.org/ to help students and institutions by saving time and effort while ensuring accuracy and timeliness of information.

Admissions Criteria, Course Grades, GPAs, Validations

All four-year public institutions will issue a transfer guide annually in August or maintain such a guide online. Information published in transfer guides will cover at least the following items:

1. The institution’s definition of a transfer student.
2. Requirements for admission both to the institution and, if more selective, requirements for admission to particular programs.
3. Institutional and, if more selective, programmatic maximums of course credits allowable in transfer.
4. Information about course equivalencies and transfer agreements.
5. Limitations placed by the institution or its programs for acceptance of standardized examinations (e.g., SAT, ACT) taken more than a given time ago, for academic coursework taken elsewhere, for coursework repeated due to failure, for coursework taken at another institution while the student is academically suspended at his/her home institution, and so forth.
6. Information about institutional procedures used to calculate student applicants' GPAs for transfer admission. Such procedures will describe how nonstandard grades (withdrawal, withdrawal failing, repeated course, etc.) are evaluated; and they will also describe whether all coursework taken prior to transfer or only coursework deemed appropriate to the student's intended four-year program of study is calculated for purposes of admission to the institution and/or programmatic major.
7. Institutional policies related to "academic bankruptcy" (i.e., removing an entire transcript or parts thereof from a failed or underachieving record after a period of years has passed) so that re-entry into the four-year institution with course credit earned in the interim elsewhere is done without regard to the student's earlier record.
8. "Residency requirements" for the minimum number of hours required to be earned at the institution for the degree.

South Carolina Transfer and Articulation Center (SCTRAC)

All two-and four-year public institutions will publish information related to course articulation and transfer, including but not limited to items A through D mentioned above, on the South Carolina Transfer and Articulation Center website (https://www.sctrac.org/). Course equivalency information listing all courses accepted from each institution in the state (including the 86 courses in the Statewide Articulation Agreement) and their respective course equivalencies (including courses in the "free elective" category) will be made available on https://www.sctrac.org/. This course equivalency information will be updated as equivalencies are added or changed and will be reviewed annually for accuracy. Additionally, articulation agreements between public South Carolina institutions of higher education will be made available on https://www.sctrac.org/, will be updated as articulation agreements are added or changed, and will be reviewed annually for accuracy. All other transfer information published on https://www.sctrac.org/ will be reviewed at least annually and updated as needed.

Statewide Articulation of 86 Courses

The Statewide Articulation Agreement of 86 courses approved by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education for transfer from two- to four-year public institutions is applicable to all public institutions, including two-year institutions and institutions within the same system. In instances where an institution does not have courses synonymous to ones on this list, it will identify comparable courses or course categories for acceptance of general education courses on the statewide list. This list of courses is available online at https://www.che.sc.gov/ as well as on https://www.sctrac.org/.

Assurance of Transferability of Coursework Covered by the Transfer Policy

Coursework (i.e., individual courses, transfer blocks, and statewide agreements) covered within this transfer policy will be transferable if the student has completed the coursework with a "C" grade (2.0 on a 4.0 scale) or above. However, the transfer of grades does not relieve the student of the obligation to meet any GPA requirements or other admissions requirements of the institution or program to which the application has been made. In addition, any four-year institution which has institutional or programmatic admissions requirements for transfer students with cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) higher than 2.0 on a 4.0 scale will apply such entrance requirements equally to transfer students from regionally accredited South Carolina public institutions regardless of whether students are transferring from a four-year or two-year institution.

Any coursework covered within this transfer policy will be transferable to any public institution without any additional fee and without any further encumbrance such as a "validation examination," "placement examination/instrument," "verification instrument," or any other stricture, notwithstanding any institutional or system policy, procedure, or regulation to the contrary.

Additional transfer information

Greenville Technical College provides students and other interested persons access to transfer articulation information through the transfer center, Planning and Transfer Headquarters (PATH) located on the Barton Campus in the University Transfer Building, Room 139. Currently enrolled students are encouraged to obtain transfer and articulation information related to their specific transfer plans by meeting regularly with their assigned advisors. Advisors assist students with selection of courses best suited to their planned academic major subject areas and university destinations. Students are responsible for using the services of advisors to guide their transfer planning.

Transfer information is available on the Internet at the institution’s home page at https://www.gvltec.edu/transfer/ and at  https://www.sctrac.org/.