Slowly, often grudgingly, colleges are making it easier for adults to earn credits for skills and knowledge developed in the military and on the job. What's called "competency-based" education has two possible meanings. If there's a reliable way to measure proficiency, it's a great way to save time and money. If the tests are very easy, as in high school "credit recovery" programs, then it's worthless.
California wants to make it easier for military veterans to earn college credits for prior learning, reports Emma Gallegos for EdSource.
Her lead anecdote features Alice Keeney, who attended the Navy's nuclear power school, operated naval nuclear plants powering submarines and aircraft carriers, and became an instructor. When she enrolled in chemical engineering at Cal Poly Pomona in 2012, she didn't receive a single credit for her classwork or experience.
The California Community College Chancellor’s Office hopes to expand credit for prior learning to non-veterans as well, writes Gallegos.
At some community colleges, instructors are pushing back against "competency-based" programs, writes Adam Echelman on Cal Matters. They say it's difficult and time-consuming to set up effective programs.
The key is to design tests that reliably measure what students need to know.
There are plenty of ways to learn online -- for free -- writes Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Modern States Education Alliance, on U.S. News. The challenge is linking online learning to college credit.
Modern States has "created a digital library of free online courses in 32 foundational college subjects, from biology to English literature to Spanish," he writes. "We funded professors at leading universities to build these courses; Johns Hopkins faculty teach college algebra, for instance, and a former dean of George Washington University’s law school teaches business law."
All courses cover material tested by College Board's College Level Examination Program, known as CLEP. Most community colleges and state universities treat CLEP credit like transfer credit, Klinsky writes.
What's needed to expand the model are "more academic courses, more vocational classes, more credit-bearing exams, wider acceptance of these exams, lower exam fees or no fees, tie-ins to work opportunities and more," he concludes.
The navy NPS program is considered one of the hardest courses to actually make it all the way to graduation and as I recall, a person accepted into this program starts at E-3, and upon graduation is promoted to E-4 (petty officer 3rd class)... The military could solve a lot of this simply by awarding college credit for each section completed successfully...
"The challenge is linking online learning to college credit."
Doesn't seem like that much of a challenge. Nuclear Power Program curriculum, well known, should be pretty straight forward. I went through the same program, got the same amount of credit when I went back to school.