Students under this campus-wide mechanism will have up to 12 credits of graduate courses taken as undergrads transferred to their Master’s program in the first semester they are Master’s students. These 12 credits are commonly referred to as double-counted because they are used to meet both the requirements for the BA degree and the requirements for the MA degree. This transfer policy works nicely if a student manages to end his/her BA study with a perfect class schedule, i.e., a class schedule filled with all remaining courses for the BA including double-counted graduate courses, no more, no less. However, most students will not be able to have a perfect class schedule for their last BA semester. In other words, they will have a partially filled class schedule with a few remaining required courses for the BA. Although they will likely have the time and desire to start taking graduate courses for their MA, i.e., graduate courses that are not used for their BA degree (not double-counted), the current transfer policy does not allow them to do so in their last BA semester because the limit is to transfer only the 12 double-counted graduate credits into their MA program.

A real case in point is that a student first takes CSCI 715 (together with other required undergraduate courses), followed by CSCI 700 and 722 in the following semester (together with additional required undergraduate courses), then enrolls in four 700-level CSCI courses in his last BA semester. One of those four graduate courses is double-counted to complete his BA degree, the other three are not part of his BA study and are meant for his MA program. However, the current transfer policy as stated in the above paragraph will transfer only CSCI 715, 700, 722, and another double-counted graduate course into his MA program, leaving the other three in his BA record for no productive purpose.

The CS Department has requested for a more reasonable and student-friendly transfer policy to transfer up to 12 double-counted graduate credits plus additional graduate credits that have not been used to meet the BA requirements, giving students the full flexibility of overlapping their last BA semester with their first MA semester. This improvement will make it possible for students to complete 120 credits including 12 double-counted credits for their BA plus a couple of additional graduate courses by the end of their last BA semester, then take four more graduate courses in their first MA semester and earn their MA degree by the end of the semester – a truly accelerated BA/MA experience for the highly motivated and most outstanding students. Financially, it would be fair to both the students and the College for the 12 double-counted graduate credits to be charged at undergraduate tuition rate and any additional graduate credits that are meant for the MA and not used for the BA to be charged at graduate tuition rate.

Our request is consistent with the 6/25/2018 Memo on 4+1 Bachelor’s/Master’s Programs across the University from the Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost, and the CUNY Wide “4+1” Bachelor’s/Master’s Program Policy and Implementation Procedures from the Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost. These CUNY-wide documents only recommend a limit of up to 12 double-counted credits, without any restriction on graduate courses that are not double-counted. In fact, CUNY’s policy even allows students to be admitted to a CUNY college’s master’s program while they are undergraduates in another CUNY institution.