An Exploratory Review of Transfer Policies for Certified Private Pilots in Collegiate Flight Programs

Abstract

Research problem: Universities often admit students who have already completed a portion of their flight training outside the collegiate environment and who want to transfer in their previous flight experience in fulfillment of a flight degree. There is no widely-published standard by which to evaluate or successfully integrate transfer flight students into a collegiate flight training curriculum. This research aims to learn how common it is for students to enroll in a flight program with a Private Pilot Certificate, how university flight programs are evaluating and integrating these students into their existing curriculum, and whether or not there are any differences between ab-initio and transfer students in terms of graduation rates or other measures of success. Research questions: (1) What are common ways that flight programs award credit for private pilot certificates earned outside of the university? (2) What, if any, supplemental instruction or evaluation actions are transfer students required to complete before they start post-private training? (3) If supplemental instruction or evaluation actions are being completed, are those actions working as intended? (4) When considering two suggested measures of success, are universities finding any differences between ab-initio flight students and transfer flight students? Summary: This study explores why students may want to complete Private Pilot training before entering a collegiate program, shares how some collegiate flight programs are managing the flight transfer process, reports how successful these transfer processes are, and identifies additional areas of needed research in order to identify best practices.