Next week, more than 30 students will begin classes for a new bachelor’s degree program at Cape Fear Community College.
The program is in partnership with Wesleyan College and offer degrees in business administration and elementary education.
Evan Duff is vice president of adult education at Wesleyan. The school has agreements with several community colleges across North Carolina allowing students with associate degrees to transfer their credits to Wesleyan’s four-year programs.
But he says that housing the initiative on Cape Fear’s northern and downtown campuses is a new approach.
“This is the first partnership in several years where we’re physically offering the degrees on their campus accommodating their students. So, this is kind of the first of its kind for the college.”
He says many students with an associate degree in applied science, from two-year vocational programs at Cape Fear, have trouble finding four-year colleges that accept their credit hours.
“Schools, public and private, are very limited with the amount of credit they will accept from an Associate of Applied Sciences student. Typically, they don’t transfer in a lot of their credit hours because they’re more technical in nature.”
With the Wesleyan program, students can transfer up to 64 of their credit hours, which is the maximum amount that a four-year school can accept for a two-year degree.
An additional 60 students are in the process of applying for the program, which will start classes every eight weeks.