Can You Use ASU Universal Learners Credits for a Community College Associate Degree to Transfer?
Last Tuesday, I found my 19-year-old Javi sprawled across our kitchen table, a half-eaten everything bagel leaking cream cheese on a crumpled printout of Mesa Community College’s associate degree requirements. His laptop was open to the ASU Universal Learners homepage, and he’d scrawled question marks in the margins of the printout next to every general ed line. “Mom,” he said, not looking up, “this says these classes are $400 each, and you only pay if you pass. If I take these here, can I transfer them to Mesa to get my associate, then transfer to a 4-year later? Is that even allowed?”
Javi graduated high school a year and a half ago with a 3.2 GPA, turned down the spot at a private 4-year that would’ve left us with $30k in loans before we even got to sophomore year. He got a part-time barista job, wanted to take it slow, save money, and figure out what he actually wanted to study instead of picking a major on the first day. A coworker told him about ASU Universal Learners, and it sounded perfect—he could take one class at a time around his schedule, no big upfront cost. But he was stuck on the transfer question, so we decided to head to Mesa’s transfer advising office the next day after his morning shift.
Ms. Rita, the transfer coordinator, has worked there for 27 years, drinks peppermint tea from a chipped mug with the college’s 1998 graduation logo on it, and never makes you feel stupid for asking basic questions. She pulled up our question on her computer before we even finished explaining it, said she gets this question at least three times a week.
The short answer, she said, is usually yes—but there’s one non-negotiable step you have to do before you sign up for any class. That’s check with your community college’s transfer credit office first, before you pay anything or start the course. She said the biggest mistake people make is taking three or four classes first, then finding out none of them count toward their degree. That’s an easy mistake to avoid, though, if you spend an hour doing your homework up front.
For Arizona community colleges, a lot of ASU Universal Learners classes are already pre-approved for transfer. You can go to the community college’s transfer credit database, search for Arizona State University as the sending school, and filter for Universal Learners courses. If it’s on the list, you’re good to go. If it’s not, you just fill out a short course evaluation form, upload the course syllabus from ASU’s website, and wait—most schools get back to you in 7 to 10 business days. She said 80% of the lower-division gen ed classes from ASU Universal Learners get approved, because ASU is regionally accredited, which is the standard all community colleges accept.
Once you finish the class and get your final grade, you just order an official transcript from ASU (it’s $5, last I checked) and send it directly to your community college’s records office. Once they process it, the credits get posted to your community college transcript, and they count toward your associate degree requirements exactly the same as if you’d taken the class on campus. From that point on, when you apply to transfer to a 4-year school with your completed associate degree, the whole package transfers just like any other associate degree from that community college. The ASU credits are already part of your transcript, so you don’t have to get them re-evaluated by the 4-year school in most cases.
There are a few key gotchas to remember, though, that Ms. Rita pointed out right away. Most community colleges have a limit on how many transfer credits you can apply to an associate degree. For a standard 60-credit associate, that’s usually 30 transfer credits maximum—half the total degree. So you can’t do all 60 credits through ASU Universal Learners and just get the degree mailed to you; you have to take at least half your credits at the community college. That’s fine for Javi, who was planning to take half his classes on campus anyway to get used to in-person learning, but it’s a big thing to check upfront if you were hoping to get your degree mostly through cheap online courses.
The second gotcha is that some career-specific programs—nursing, engineering, early childhood education—require that certain prerequisite classes are taken at the community college or a specific in-state institution, even if ASU’s class covers the exact same material. So if you’re going into one of those regulated programs, double check the major requirements before you sign up for any ASU classes.
We left the advising office that day with a list of three pre-approved classes Javi could take, starting with intro to business. He finished that class over the summer, got a B, paid the $400, sent the transcript, and two weeks later it was posted to his Mesa transcript, counting for one of his core major requirements. He’s taking his first in-person class at Mesa this semester, still working 25 hours a week at the coffee shop, and he’s on track to finish his associate degree in three years. That’s slower than the traditional two-year track, but it means he’s working enough to pay for every class as he goes, no loans so far.
A friend of mine has a daughter going to community college outside Austin, Texas, who did the same thing last year. She wanted to knock out two gen ed classes while working full-time, submitted her syllabi for evaluation, got approved, transferred the credits, and they counted toward her communications associate degree. The only difference for out-of-state schools is that most don’t have pre-approved lists, so you just have to do the evaluation step before you enroll, which takes 10 minutes to fill out the form.
Last night, Javi texted me a photo of his first paper for his in-person business class, with an A written at the top. His professor noted that he already had a solid grasp of the basics, which he credited to the ASU class he took over the summer. We still don’t know if he’ll end up transferring to ASU’s main campus when he finishes his associate, or if he’ll pick a different 4-year, or even if he’ll change his major to environmental science like he was talking about last month. This path isn’t for everyone—if you want to go full-time and finish in two years, it’s slower than taking all your classes at community college. But for kids who want to go at their own pace, work while they study, and avoid taking on thousands in student debt early on, it works. You just have to spend an hour checking with your community college first, before you click “enroll.” That’s the only trick.
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