The number of two-year degrees awarded through the University of Hawaii’s community colleges has doubled in recent years thanks in large part to an initiative that tracks transfer students who move on without an associate degree.

Roughly one-third of the Associate in Arts degrees UH conferred in 2013-14, and a little more than a quarter of the associate degrees awarded last school year, were awarded through a practice known as reverse transfer — a program growing in popularity nationally.

According to the Credit When It’s Due program, a national grant initiative aimed at expanding the practice, reverse transfer programs allow a student to satisfy the degree requirements for a two-year degree while pursuing a bachelor’s degree. The program is funded by multiple foundations, including the Lumina Foundation, Hellos Education Foundation, USA Funds and Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation.

Hawaii was among 12 initial states awarded close to $6 million in competitive grants in 2012 to develop and implement programs and policies around reverse transfer. UH used its $434,000 grant to develop software that pores over student data and automatically grants associate degrees once requirements are met.

“We now can run an automated job in the computer sense every semester to look at students who transfer to a four-year campus without a degree, and we can look at every one of the courses they’re taking, see how it applies back down at the two-year campus and whether that then enables them to fulfill the degree requirements for the associate degree,” UH system President David Lassner said in an interview.

“And then it’s pretty much magic,” said Lassner, who had been the university’s longtime information technology executive before being tapped two years ago to lead the 10-campus system.

Jason Taylor, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah who is co-leading the national research for the Credit When It’s Due program, said the initiative is focused on transfer students “who end up in that ‘some college, no degree’ category.”

“About 40 percent of transfer students don’t complete their bachelor’s degree within six years of transferring, so we’re really talking about a sizable proportion of transfer students who may end up with no bachelor’s degree at all,” Taylor told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “So that’s one of the motivating factors for these types of programs.”

Research suggests students who attain an associate degree are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree. Those with an associate degree, on average, earn nearly one-third more in median lifetime earnings than those with just a high school diploma, according to a 2011 study by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University.

The University of Hawaii’s seven community colleges enrolled more than 30,300 students in the fall, representing more than half of all UH students.

Of those who transfer to a four-year campus — UH-Manoa, UH-West Oahu or UH-Hilo — only about 1 in 4 students have an associate degree in hand at the time of transfer, according to Taylor’s research. That’s slightly better than the national average of 1 in 5 transfer students having an associate degree.

“Again that goes to why these programs are important or relevant and why there is so much momentum in states,” Taylor said.

He said the idea of transferring credits back to the community college level isn’t new, but is growing in popularity. “It’s a phenomenon that is certainly expanding and experiencing a lot of momentum,” he said, adding that about a dozen states have legislation calling for the development of reverse transfer programs.

After formally launching its reverse transfer program in the fall of 2013, UH awarded 2,805 Associate in Arts degrees in 2013-14, up from 1,360 degrees five years earlier. Of those, 954 degrees — or 34 percent — were awarded through reverse transfer, university data show.

In 2014-15, UH awarded 2,396 associate degrees, of which 26 percent, or 628 associate degrees, were issued through reverse transfer. And it appears the trend will continue. For the 2015 fall semester alone, 313 students were eligible for degrees via reverse transfer.

Lassner said he was concerned initially that the program might be short-lived.

“I actually thought when we first did this that we would harvest a bunch of people who had transferred a long time ago, and I was worried it would peak, but it turns out the number is actually growing,” he said. “So it’s clear this is a very useful option for our students.”

“As students transfer who haven’t completed their associate degree, having this tool available ensures that we can recognize them with the degrees that they’ve earned, whenever that occurs,” Lassner said.

Taylor said that among the 12 initial states funded, Hawaii conferred the largest number of associate degrees via reverse transfer in the first two years of the grant and saw the largest percentage increase in associate degrees awarded.

UH has seen a nearly 18 percent increase in the average number of associate degrees awarded annually, compared with most other states, which saw growth in the 2 to 5 percent range.

“Certainly, Hawaii stands out as a state and a system of higher education that has embraced reverse transfer, and the results speak to that and are pretty evident that there’s been a lot of success,” Taylor said.

Aside from the increased earning potential, the value of an associate degree appears to vary among individual students.

“We’re still analyzing data, but we have had some students who have transferred to a four-year institution tell us that they’re not interested in an associate degree, that they’re on a baccalaureate pathway,” Taylor said.

“Whereas, we’ve had other students … that got their reverse transfer associate degree tell us that it had some impact on their lives — that it was a milestone, a benchmark in the progress toward their baccalaureate degree that validated their learning, their effort, their work, that it was valuable to their employer,” he said. “So I think it might have a mixed effect, if you will, on students. I think that’s to be determined.”

For Kapolei resident Danielle Pagat, receiving her associate degree in the mail from Leeward Community College after studying for a couple of years at UH-West Oahu was a welcomed encouragement.

“I had put off math till the very end. In my junior year at UH-West Oahu, when I finally completed it, I got the letter in the mail saying I’d earned my associate’s degree,” the 28-year-old mom of three said in an interview. “That was really cool because it was something. I thought, if I stopped now or if something happened tomorrow, I would still have earned an associate degree. I would have something under my belt to get a better a job.”

Pagat said she enrolled at Leeward Community College after high school, but being a young mom, she stopped and restarted her studies a few times.

“But I continued because if you have an associate degree, you’re halfway there. So I kept going, finished up my bachelor’s degree, and now I’m in graduate school,” she said. She’s in the Doctor of Psychology in clinical psychology program at Argosy University.

“It’s the small steps that amount to a big stride,” Pagat said.