Improving transfer outcomes has become a central focus for systems and institutions committed to expanding access to bachelor’s degrees—particularly for community college students, who are disproportionately from historically underserved populations. At the City University of New York, a digital platform called Transfer Explorer—known more commonly as T-Rex—is helping address one of the most persistent barriers to student success: the uncertainty of how credits transfer.

T-Rex was developed to provide clear, accurate, real-time information on how courses transfer across CUNY’s 20 undergraduate colleges. But it does more than show whether a course transfers. It also indicates whether that course will fulfill a student’s major, minor or general education requirements—or whether it will transfer only as elective credit. That distinction matters. Although all CUNY courses transfer as at least elective credit due to systemwide policy, elective credit alone does not guarantee timely progress toward a degree—students also need to satisfy their major and any minor requirements.

By improving transfer credit transparency and reducing information gaps, T-Rex is designed to help students make smarter course-taking decisions, especially important goals for making the critical transition from a community college to a four-year institution. Early findings from our study suggest the tool may be delivering on that promise. Students who logged in to T-Rex were found to transfer or enroll in more courses that fulfill nonelective degree requirements.

Why We’re Studying Credit Mobility

Community colleges play a central role in expanding access to higher education, enrolling approximately 40 percent of all undergraduates in the United States. The vast majority of these students—around 80 percent—intend to transfer to a four-year institution and complete a bachelor’s degree. Yet despite those aspirations, only about 16 percent do so within six years.

Among the primary barriers is the issue of credit loss. Students who transfer from a community college often find that their credits do not count toward major or general education degree requirements at their new institution, delaying their progress and increasing the likelihood of stopping out. Research has shown that students who successfully transfer all their credits are far more likely to graduate than those who lose credits in the process.

These inefficiencies are more than technical issues—they carry real consequences for students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds and communities of color. Inconsistent advising, unclear articulation policies and limited access to accurate information all contribute to credit loss and excess credit accumulation.

CUNY’s Transfer Explorer was developed to address these challenges by improving transparency around how courses transfer and apply to degree requirements. By making this information easily accessible to students and advisers alike, T-Rex aims to reduce uncertainty, support informed planning and boost academic momentum. Our research explores whether the platform is achieving those goals and what its early usage can tell us about improving transfer systems more broadly.

The Research Question: Does Using T-Rex Matter?

In a partnership between Ithaka and the CUNY Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics, our team set out to evaluate whether use of T-Rex was associated with more successful transfer outcomes among over 28,000 students who transferred from a CUNY community college to a bachelor’s college between fall 2020 and fall 2024. T-Rex use was defined as whether a student had ever logged in to T-Rex (most of the information on T-Rex requires no log-in, but some functions, such as having a transcript—as opposed to individual courses—evaluated for transfer credit, require log-in). Two measures were examined as outcomes:

• The total number of credits that successfully transferred; and
• The number of transferred courses or first-term post-transfer registered courses that fulfilled nonelective degree requirements (meaning they counted toward a major, minor or general education requirement).

Our analysis included both administrative and platform usage data, and we controlled for a range of academic, demographic and institutional factors across a series of nested regression models.

What We’re Seeing So Far

Preliminary results show a clear pattern: T-Rex use was not significantly associated with the total number of credits transferred. Yet it was found to be positively associated with the number of courses transferred or taken in nonelective categories.

This association held across all five regression models we tested, even after adjusting for differences in cumulative GPA, credits earned at other institutions, major and receiving college. In short, students who used T-Rex were more likely to have their coursework, including transferred coursework, count in ways that help them progress toward a degree by fulfilling specific academic requirements, rather than being counted only as electives. Students who logged in to T-Rex were found to have taken or registered for approximately half a course more, a 4 percent increase, of nongeneral elective degree requirement–fulfilling coursework.

In other words, almost one out of every two students who logged in to T-Rex transferred or enrolled in an additional course that fulfilled nongeneral elective degree requirements.

These results are consistent with the platform’s purpose. T-Rex was designed not to replace CUNY’s existing credit transfer guarantees, but to enhance outcomes by making credit transfer applicability to degree requirements clearer and more actionable. In doing so, T-Rex supports stronger credit mobility and more efficient academic planning.

Why This Matters

Getting credits to transfer is only half the battle. When students discover—often too late—that transferred credits only count as electives, they may be forced to retake courses, exhaust financial aid and delay graduation. They may even abandon their academic goals altogether. These setbacks are especially costly for students balancing work, family and financial pressures.

T-Rex addresses a fundamental challenge in the transfer process: the lack of clear, timely and trustworthy information. It helps level the playing field by providing all students—not just those with access to insider knowledge or institutional advocates—with the same ability to plan their course taking strategically. For students navigating complex academic pathways, that transparency can translate into real, accelerated progress.

Importantly, this also positions T-Rex as an intervention that supports social mobility. Community colleges tend to enroll higher percentages of students from underrepresented groups (e.g., low-income, first-generation, etc.), making these same students more likely to experience transfer credit loss or confusion. A tool that reduces credit transfer uncertainty and supports more efficient decision-making can help mitigate some of these disparities.

Looking Ahead

Our study is ongoing, but the early signals are clear: Informational tools such as T-Rex are associated with better credit mobility and more efficient academic progress. We are looking forward to these benefits being extended far beyond CUNY. A national version of CUNY T-Rex is now live with data from institutions in four states, with more institutions and states to be added in the next year.

These insights are especially relevant as systems and institutions across the country work to strengthen transfer pathways and improve degree-attainment rates. Our findings suggest that scalable digital tools can play a meaningful role in that work.

We’ll be presenting this research in Denver on Nov. 12 at the 2025 meeting of the Council on Public Policy in Higher Education (a preconference of the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education). A more complete written version of the study will follow in 2026.