In his high-profile lawsuit against UTM, Adam Rogers has alleged that a mix-up over his transfer application cost his family their financial security. His case stands out, but Rogers is not alone. Approximately 1,000 undergraduates transfer to U of T each year. Some come from other universities, some from colleges. The process involves sheaves of paperwork. And for some, the transition means months of confl ict with U of T’s monolithic bureaucracy.

The credit transfer process is labour- intensive. Some courses have direct equivalents at U of T, but many transfer as generic credits, with a list of exclusions (in one case, all full-year HIS courses). New students negotiate their changeover with the transfer credit office, but that office doesn’t have the final word, explained Glenn Loney, Arts and Science Faculty Registrar.

“The exclusions, the prerequisites and the program requirements are all the department’s rulings,” he said. Fourth-year history student Tammy Sprung knows this only too well. She transferred from Dalhousie University two years ago.

“The transfer department actually granted me a 100-level history credit,” she said. “Then they said that I needed to get a 100-level history course specifically from the University of Toronto, which would not count towards my degree or GPA. What was I possibly going to learn from that?”

Sprung got special permission from the history department to forego the extra course—and department administrators ended up determining much of her program of study.

“Now I’m concerned about what’s going to happen when I apply for graduation,” she said. At least one crucial letter, which had granted her an exemption from another program requirement, is now missing from her file. Because she had to go back and take program requirements without credit, Sprung is currently taking six courses and planning on summer school so that she won’t have to take a fifth year.

Transfer students shouldn’t assume that they will graduate on time, said Loney.

“It’s rather like changing your program,” he said. “If you’ve done two years or three years and you change your program, it’s difficult to do that without complication, waste or making up lost opportunities.”

Matt Burgess faced a different problem when he transferred from Wilfrid Laurier University. Burgess had attended one year of CEGEP in Quebec, where he had completed a calculus course that would usually exempt him from MAT135Y1 at U of T. Laurier had allowed Burgess to skip first year calculus. Not so at U of T.

“The transfer credit office said that I wasn’t eligible for transfer credit,” he said. “They weren’t allowed to open my file because I had only done one year of CEGEP.” Burgess’s brother took the same course, but completed a year and a half of CEGEP and therefore received the credit at U of T.

Burgess’s department, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, came to the rescue, waiving the program requirement.

Some transfer students still say that they are glad to be at U of T. Sana Waseem began her post-secondary career at Selkirk College in British Columbia. She switched to U of T after one year, graduated four years later with majors in biology and human biology, and is now in teacher’s college. Waseem had to take retake organic chemistry, but is still glad that she switched.

College, with smaller class sizes and a chance to stay close to home before crossing U of T’s intimidating threshold, has its benefits. But college students don’t receive much credit for their work—no more than two credits for a year’s study, and a maximum of five credits for a three-year college degree. Universities need to start taking colleges seriously, says Joey Coleman, Maclean’s post-secondary education blogger.

“The University of Toronto sells itself as an elite university,” he said. “To them, the idea that a course such as Introduction to Psychology could be taught by a college […] is insulting.”

That attitude may be changing. A new pilot program, with details to be finalized soon, would make it easier to start in Seneca College’s general arts and science program and graduate from U of T.

“Clarity is what students need,” said Loney. “They need to know how they will go about this, and how long it will take them.”