RFP-FSU-27-02 Transfer Credit Evaluation and Articulation System

Framingham State University seeks proposals for an enterprise-level Transfer Credit Articulation Engine that will automate, centralize, and scale the University's transfer credit evaluation process. The solution must replace fragmented and repetitive manual activities with a rules-first decision engine that produces consistent, explainable, and auditable transfer credit outcomes.

The selected solution will serve as the source for institutional transfer policies and articulation rules; receive structured course and transcript data from external sources; apply approved policies and equivalencies; route unresolved work for review; and transmit completed decisions to institutional systems.

Institutional Objectives

• Provide admitted and prospective students with earlier, clearer, and more consistent information about how prior coursework applies at Framingham State University.
• Reduce repetitive manual review while preserving appropriate faculty and administrative authority over equivalency decisions.
• Apply institutional transfer policies consistently across academic programs.
• Capture approved decisions as reusable rules and progressively increase automated articulation coverage.
• Maintain a complete, searchable, and auditable record of articulation rules, exceptions, approvals, and changes.
• Integrate transfer evaluation decisions with Banner without duplicate data entry.

Scope

The successful vendor will provide software licensing, configuration, integrations, data migration, implementation services, testing support, training, documentation, maintenance, and ongoing technical support. The scope includes both administrator-facing transfer evaluation functions and public or student-facing access to approved equivalency information, when offered by the proposed solution.

The system must automatically evaluate structured academic data against institutionally approved articulation tables, equivalency rules, and transfer credit policies. All official credit determinations must be based on rules approved by authorized University personnel and must be reproducible and auditable.

If the proposed solution uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, or natural language processing, the vendor must disclose how these technologies are used; identify the data used to generate recommendations; explain how recommendations can be reviewed, validated, and audited; and describe safeguards against bias, inaccurate recommendations, and unauthorized disclosure. University data must not be used to train shared or public models without the University's express written authorization.

Submission

It is the sole responsibility of the vendor to submit his/her proposal to the Framingham State University, Business Office contact listed below by postal services, package delivery or hand delivery per the deadline noted below. Any and all proposals received after this time will be considered non-responsive and will be rejected.

The Technical Proposal and the Price Proposal shall be submitted in separate, sealed envelopes, each labeled with the RFP Number. One thumb drive will contain your firm's Technical Proposal. A separate thumb drive will contain the Price Proposal.

Scoring

The contract will be awarded to the proposer who completely meets all of the University's requirements as outlined and whose proposal is rated the highest, taking into consideration the Minimum Quality Requirements, and Technical Requirements, Evaluative Criteria and Price. A rating system of Highly Advantageous, Advantageous, and Not Advantageous will be utilized in reviewing each vendor's Technical response. PRICING PROPOSALS will be opened after the review and rating of the TECHNICAL PROPOSALS is completed.

Contract term

The contract term shall be for three years with the possibility of two annual renewal options at the discretion of the University. The final implementation date shall be on or around April 2027.

The selected vendor will be required to sign the *Commonwealth of Massachusetts Standard Contract Form* along with the *Commonwealth Terms and Conditions for Information Technology Contracts*. No revisions to these two documents are permitted.