Want a surefire way to transfer credits from one Pennsylvania college to another? The state says it has an Internet site for you.

The Pennsylvania Transfer and Articulation Center Web site, dubbed PA TRAC, was unveiled at a Harrisburg news conference yesterday by state Education Department officials, college executives and a state legislator involved in the effort. It is part of a decade-long push to improve college graduation rates by creating a statewide transfer system.

So far, 32 institutions are participating in the site found at www.patrac.org and it is hoped that more will eventually do so. Current members include the 14 community colleges and 14 state-owned universities required to do so under a 2006 law, as well as four other schools -- Lincoln University, Seton Hill University, St. Francis University and Lackawanna College -- that volunteered.

Once it's in use this fall, the site means there will be at least 1,100 courses between the campuses that can be transferred statewide, said Kathleen Shaw, deputy secretary for post-secondary and higher education. Students using the site can search for those courses and learn information about the process and the participating schools.

There are numerous voluntary transfer agreements between institutions that are sometimes specific to individual courses. Dr. Shaw called the new site a historic development in efforts to cut the number of credits that are lost because students discover too late that one institution's course is not accepted at another.

State Rep. Josh Shapiro, D-Montgomery County, said those lost credits effectively amounted to adding a tax on education that impeded students' flow into the job market. "We were forcing them to take courses and credits over and over," he said.

Slippery Rock University President Robert M. Smith put it another way as he touted the new on-line tool. "It is really cool," he said.