Mr. Spock once famously said (I may be paraphrasing):

"There are two possibilities. Either they are unwilling to respond, or they are unable to respond."

Much of the discussion of this topic seems aimed at the idea that there are bureaucratic obstacles that are preventing something good from happening. This is the "unable" prong of the dilemma.

I suspect that there may be deliberate action at the core of these "handshake" problems -- that the problem is that they are "unwilling". Do the powers in charge of, say, Harvard, Chapel Hill, Notre Dame, Berkeley, or Michigan *really want* students to be able to earn half of their credits at what they probably view as somewhat inferior institutions?

Do the faculty want to sacrifice their control over what sorts of things their students can be expected to know?

My suspicion is that, if there is going to be anything done about the portability problem, it will be done in the context of dividing the schools into "academic leagues" in much the same way that they are divided into separate, formal athletic tiers. Credits will only be portable intra-tier -- with possible exceptions for certain basic or highly specialized classes that may be transferable across gaps of two or more tiers.

In my state we have been both willing and able to respond. For many years now we've had "guaranteed transfer" agreements between all state institutions. Pretty much all those institutions' gen-ed courses are now "GT" courses, and any state institutions' gen-ed requirements can be met by taking GT courses.

Transfer credit from private and out-of-state institutions is still evaluated case-by-case. Could we reach similar GT-style agreements with all of these? Not on our own, but maybe with the help of some nationwide effort to centralize information and standardize the notion of "equivalence" between courses. Personally, I don't think that would be worth the effort. Let the students do the work--all they have to do is make an appointment with the appropriate department chair, bring in their old transcripts, course catalogs, and syllabi, and odds are they will walk out ten minutes later with any transfer credit they've legitimately earned. It's not very difficult, but too often it doesn't happen. Why? Usually because of some combination of poor advising and student passivity.

When a transfer student first gets advised, what often happens here is that they're told something like this: "This course and that course have been accepted automatically as transfer credit because they are GT courses. If you want credit for these other courses, you need to take this form to Dept. Chair Smith and Dept. Chair Jones and get their approval." The student then walks out of the advising office into the warm September sunshine, flips open the phone and starts texting or chatting away, and forgets all about Smith and Jones.

Perhaps what is needed here is more hand-holding. Then again, perhaps students ought to take more responsibility for their academic careers. You make the call.

One downside to the guaranteed-transfer approach: some of the instructors that my own department has let go for incompetence and/or for giving away too many A grades are now teaching down the street at a CC branch campus--and we have to accept those students' transfer credits. I suppose that the schools above mine in the academic pecking order make the same complaint about us. Oh well.