Although the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), in Arizona, maintains an exemplary relationship and numerous transfer agreements with the state's public universities, systematic and operational problems still exist. Systematic problems include the accumulation of excessive college credit hours; changes in applicable transfer course equivalents and departmental elective credit; "upper-division creep" or changes at universities of lower-division courses to upper-division courses; lack of state-wide lower and upper-division course criteria; and downgrading upper-division credit courses to lower-division courses. Operational problems include a tendency to ignore formal articulation processes to deal with changes in equivalency, the absence of a tracking system for"upper-division creep," a lack of monitoring and sanctioning systems, short-term validity of equivalent courses, different university policies regarding transfer hours and standard numbers or required upper-division credits, and faculty attitudes toward transfer. To address these problems, the MCCCD has proposed the following solutions: (1) the Arizona Transfer Partnership Degree (ATPD) or the MCCCD Transfer Partnership Degree (MTPD), state-wide plans to standardize transfer policies, lower and upper-division courses, and course validity; (2) requiring universities to provide upper-division credit to transfer students when "upper-division creep" occurs; (3) establishing sanction policies for universities who do not follow established formal processes; (4) requiring universities to accept 72 hours in transfer from community colleges and to standardize the number of required upper-division credits; and (5) providing training to faculty in the requirements of transfer partnerships and the resulting process and equivalencies should be monitored. Contains 15 references. Models of the ATPD and the MTPD are appended. (TGI)