College transfer is the movement of students from one higher education institution to another and the process by which academic credits are accepted or not accepted by a receiving institution.

College transfer and articulation involve planned and unplanned movement of students among institutions of higher education. Planned transfers may be facilitated by carefully negotiated articulation agreements between institutions, and enable students to start an academic program at one institution with the knowledge that they will continue their program and obtain their academic credential at another institution. It is important to note that not all planned transfers are based on such prior institutional arrangements, and that students may independently plan to transfer from one institution to another without having complete knowledge of the credit-acceptance policies of the institution to which they intend to transfer.

Unanticipated factors and the general mobility of our society create numerous circumstances under which students must move from one institution to another without prior planning. Reasons for such movements can range from mismatches between students and institutions, employment, military movement, to geographic relocations by the families. The fundamental challenge with college transfer, whether planned or unplanned, is to aggregate coursework conducted at different institutions with different academic policies, different curricula, and different levels of expected rigor into an academic credential that the issuing institution can stand behind. College transfer is complex, because disparate and sometimes non-comparable coursework is brought together, often without prior involvement of the institutions from which the student enrolls and expects to graduate.