What are Types of Articulation Agreements?

  1. Transfer Credit Agreements: These agreements indicate which courses will transfer for university credit, at a minimum. Courses that are approved for transfer credit do not necessarily count toward general education or a major at the university. CoA courses that transfer for credit to California State University or University of California (also known as the UC Transfer Course Agreement – UC TCA) are identified in the COA catalog at the end of the course descriptions, or on the ASSIST web site.
  2. Course-to-Course Agreements:  The purpose of a course-to-course agreement is to determine if a specific course taken at one college will satisfy a requirement at another college. For instance, if a community college course is approved as “comparable” to a university course, it may fulfill the same general education and major preparation requirements that the university course does.
  3. General Education:

1) Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC): (IGETC) is a general education program which community college students can use to satisfy lower-division general education requirements at the CSU or UC systems without the need to take additional lower division general education requirements after transfer. IGETC is often not recommended for high-unit majors, like engineering.

2) CSU General Education-Breadth (CSU GE): CSU GE is a general education curriculum that identifies courses that students may take to fulfill the lower division GE requirements for the CSU campuses.

3) Campus-Specific General Education: Students may opt to follow the general education pattern specific to a university campus. Articulation agreements also exist between COA courses and general education requirements at UC campuses and private colleges and universities.

  1. Major Preparation: Major Preparation agreements specify courses that meet the lower division requirements for a major at a four-year college or university.
  2. Course Identification Numbering System (C-ID):C-ID is a statewide numbering system that can be used to determine course equivalency between California colleges.  If two courses from two different colleges share a specific C-ID number the courses can be considered “equivalent” so that they can be used in lieu of the other college’s course to meet college degree, certificate and prerequisite requirements.  However, this equivalency does not extend to transfer General Education (e.g., IGETC, CSU GE) or articulation for a major at a university campus.  Course articulation for transfer to UC and CSU can be found at ASSIST.org.

C-ID is still relatively new, but continues to grow and expand.  COA courses that have been approved for C-ID to date are listed at https://www.c-id.net/course_compare.html