To ensure that America has the most competitive global workforce, President Barack Obama articulated a goal that, by 2020, every American should continue their educational training after high school so that the United States will increase its proportion of college graduates. This ambitious policy objective will require our postsecondary education system to embrace changes and find new ways to improve student success while maintaining affordability and quality.
One approach is competency-based education, which makes student learning-not time-the focus. Competency-based programs vary widely in their design, but they all explicitly articulate what students must be able to know and do upon graduation-and assessments validate that learning throughout a student’s experience in the program.
A new report by the Center for American Progress demonstrates the positive qualities of competency-based learning and identifies commonalities among student experiences that can inform the policy priorities for those looking to expand and reform postsecondary educational offerings.
Following are key topics addressed by the study:
- The rigor of demonstrating competencies.
- The transferability of competencies to the workplace.
- The value of flexible formats for adult returning students.
- The importance of a degree to advance in a career.
- The value of peer interactions.
- The importance of coaches, advisors, and mentors.
- The recognition that what individuals have learned at work also can “count” in a degree program.
- The importance of experimentation with financial aid programs decoupled from the credit hour standard.
- The need for quality standards for competency-based education programs.
- The value of enlisting workforce stakeholders to define competencies.
Competency-based degree programs would undoubtedly be a challenge to implement, especially across such a broad spectrum of degree programs, but the results of this study indicate that the idea certainly shows promise.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/CAEL-student-report-corrected.pdf
