MINNEAPOLIS — The University of Minnesota plans to accept fewer transfer students in coming years — a move that officials at two-year colleges say contradicts the state’s commitment to improve access to four-year degrees.

The university said it plans to trim transfer-student enrollment about 8 percent, or about 300 students, over the next few years to stabilize its transfer program. Traditionally, about 30 to 40 percent of its students have come from its transfer program, and the school wants to keep the rate stable at 33 percent — still well above levels of comparable universities in other states, according to a St. Paul Pioneer Press report.

“There’s this perception we’re talking about obliterating transfer students,” said Bob McMaster, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education. “The decrease we’re looking at is really a drop in the bucket.”

But the move concerns officials with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System, which supplies 45 percent of transfers to the university. Interim vice chancellor Larry Litecky called the plan “troubling and disappointing,” saying it would disproportionately affect under-represented students at a time when their numbers have been increasing.

“In a lot of ways, this decision couldn’t be timed any worse,” Litecky said. “It’s a time of record-high demand.”

Transferring into the University of Minnesota is already competitive. About 9,350 would-be transfer students applied last year and about 2,050 enrolled this fall, or about 22 percent.

One reason for the high demand could be money. The average tuition in the MnSCU system is $4,800 a year, less than half of the University of Minnesota’s.

That could be why enrollment jumped almost 20 percent in the past five years at Normandale Community College, the top feeder school to the university with 338 transferring students last year.

If the trend continues at community colleges, schools may have to start planning for larger transfer populations. Janet Marling of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Texas predicts that more schools will take a closer look at their transfer policies.

“Institutions will have to examine what their missions truly are with regard to transfers,” Marling said. “That’s very different from what we’ve done in the past, when our focus was almost exclusively on freshmen.”

The University of Minnesota said it’s already begun investing in transfer students, in part by working to improve their social experience.

Music major Rebecca Bies said she’d welcome that kind of effort. She said when she transferred from Carthage College in Wisconsin, she had to talk to three or four administrators to try to understand why most of her credits did not transfer.

“The U needs to consider that having a student population — including transfers — is important,” she said.