Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went – NYTimes.com

• Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went – NYTimes.com

  Competency based degrees and certificates have arrived at the perfect moment with the internet and millions without a degree who don’t care for seat time but real world skills. Prove to employers what you have learned through a project just like doctors and engineers have prove their knowledge so must students and parents who pay thousands for a college degree of dubious value.

  tags: education learning degrees knowledge skills certificates employment

  • IN 1893, Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, introduced to the National Education Association a novel concept: the credit hour. Roughly equivalent to one hour of lecture time a week for a 12- to 14-week semester, it became the basic unit of a college education, and the standard measure for transferring work between institutions.

  • The seat-time system — one based on the hours spent in the classroom — is further reinforced by Title IV student aid: to receive need-based Pell grants or federal loans,

  • the system equating time with learning is being challenged from high quarter

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  • In response, public, private and for-profit institutions alike have rushed out programs that are changing the college degree in fundamental ways; they are based not on time in a course but on tangible evidence of learning, a concept known as competency-based education.

  • College leaders say that by focusing on what people learn, not how or when they learn it, and by taking advantage of the latest technology, they can save students time and lower costs. There are 37 million Americans with some college but no degree,

  • competency-based programs as the best way to get them marketable diplomas.

  • “Competency is a student-centered, learning-outcome-based model. Where you get the education is secondary to what you know and are able to do.”

  • Many are raising alarms that these untested offerings will limit or undermine the power of a university degree.

  • CERTIFYING learning, rather than time, is not an entirely new concept. For decades there have been other ways to earn college credits besides sitting in the classroom. You can “test out” of certain courses through A.P., CLEP or D.S.S.T. exams.

  • But not until Western Governors University was founded by a consortium of 19 states in 1997 was an entire degree program structured around assessments of learning

  • W.G.U., with 35,000 students, charges $5,800 a year. Typical time to degree is just under three years.

  • College for America, an online arm of Southern New Hampshire University, was the first program to get permission from the federal government to award degrees based on tests, papers and projects rather than class time

  • Speed, along with less contact with teachers, is the major source of cost savings in these programs.

  • Mr. Sherman was hoping for a promotion that has not materialized. He’s thinking about getting his bachelor’s.

  • “We have between 750,000 and a million people in Wisconsin who have some college but no degree,” almost 20 percent of the population,

  • Mr. Merisotis of Lumina says that deconstructing curriculum into abstract, interrelated competencies like these is the way of the future for all programs, whether based on assessment or credit hour.

  • Frederick M. Hurst, who directs Northern Arizona University’s new Personalized Learning Program, says that competency transcripts do a better job of communicating a graduate’s value to employers.

  • “It’s scary for faculty,”

  • “There’s a continuing sense that students can and do draw on so many sources of information that are now available at their fingertips. They don’t need to come to the monastery for four years and sit at the feet of the monks.”

  • . “I hear a lot of fear,” she confirms, ticking off concerns: What will happen to the bricks-and-mortar institution? Do students get the same quality of education?

  • Another missing piece is classroom participation and debate. Contact with peers is hard to foster when every student is working at his or her own pace.

  • Deborah Bushway, vice president of academic innovation at Capella University, says a too-narrow perception of competency-based learning could hurt its spread.

  • Dr. Bushway acknowledges that the word “competence” may be a branding mistake.

  • , in an environment of growing tuition and student debt, low-cost competency-based programs are sure to find an audience.

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