<p>Higher education systems have expanded access, transfer opportunities, and re-enrollment pathways to accommodate increasingly diverse and nonlinear student trajectories. Yet persistence and completion outcomes remain uneven, particularly for learners whose academic histories span multiple institutions, timeframes, and instructional contexts. Although scholarship has documented phenomena such as credit loss, transfer shock, and stop-out patterns, these challenges are typically examined as discrete events rather than as features of cumulative academic trajectories. This article introduces Academic Pathway Coherence (APC) as a conceptual framework for examining how institutional policies and practices shape the accumulation of learning across institutions, time, and instructional modalities. Within the U.S. public higher education context examined here, APC conceptualizes coherence as a structural property of institutional arrangements governing transfer and credit recognition. By shifting analysis from isolated transition points to pathway-level design, the framework reframes familiar challenges—such as credit loss, repeated coursework, and delayed completion—as outcomes of institutional arrangements rather than solely as matters of student navigation. The article synthesizes existing scholarship on transfer, student mobility, and curricular organization to situate Academic Pathway Coherence within broader discussions of institutional design and student success in contemporary higher education.</p>