Texas Common Course Numbering

Under Texas Education Code 61.832, the Texas Common Course Numbering System (TCCNS) was developed to facilitate transfer of general academic courses among Texas public institutions. Common courses are included in the Academic Course Guide Manual (ACGM) for lower division courses which is published by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  The ACGM may be used to determine how freshman and sophomore level courses transfer from and to Texas public institutions. The statewide TCCN may be accessed at this url: www.tccns.org

The common course number has a standardized four-letter prefix followed by a four-digit number, for example, ENGL 1301. The four-letter prefix identifies the subject area. Each digit in the four-digit sequence gives additional information about the course. The first digit identifies the course as either freshman level (1) or sophomore level (2). The second digit identifies the number of credit hours a student will earn upon completion of the course. Most often this digit will be a 1, 2, 3, or 4. The final two digits serve to establish the sequence in which courses are generally taken.

In the course description sections of the catalog, the common course number is shown in parentheses, for example, (ENGL 1301). In most cases, the common course number is also the course number at the community or junior college. For other institutions, if two courses share the same common course number, no matter what their actual institutional number is, they will be accepted as equivalent for transfer. For a complete list of all the common course numbers currently adopted by Texas State, visit the General Education Core Curriculum section of this catalog.