"Competency based education" - what it needs to work ... and why you should care

There has been much written about “competency based education” in the higher education media lately and how it can make the prospect of earning a degree for working adults much more feasible. Yet as important, and challenging, as it is to explain and define this concept – it is distinct from, yet complementary to direct assessment – the simple fact is this: the true promise and potential of competency based education cannot be achieved without a rethinking of our federal student financial aid system.

That reality was a central topic of discussion at a hearing recently of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce titled “Keeping College Within Reach: Meeting the Needs of Contemporary Students” at which Capella testified along with several other higher education leaders. Capella advocated for the need to support innovation through a restructuring of our federal financial aid rules in order to allow competency based learning and direct assessment to truly benefit the millions of college students who depend on federal financial aid.

Also making news in the competency based education arena is a new report funded by the Gates Foundation titled “Competency Based Education and Federal Student Aid” that summarizes the history and growing popularity of competency based education and direct assessment. But just as importantly, it also highlights how our current financial aid system is not designed to support a successful competency based education, direct assessment model.

This matters because the typical college student today is a working adult, with years - sometimes decades - of professional experience, who must juggle the competing responsibilities of family, work and school. These learners need a new model for earning a degree that respects and acknowledges their career experience and time constraints. And our country needs them to earn degrees in order for the US to remain globally competitive.

For employers, particularly those who have been vocal about the fact that they have jobs to fill but lack enough employees with the skills to be successful, competency based education can help meet an important need. It’s about building an educational system around the competencies necessary for success in specific professions, giving employers the confidence that graduates have mastered the skills they need to be successful.

But again, none of this can scale without a rethinking of our federal financial aid system. One idea that is worth serious exploration is a congressionally sponsored demonstration project (such as HR 3136, the Advancing Competency-Based Education Act) or the U.S. Department of Education’s experimental site initiative that centers around innovation in direct assessment programs. Both options provide an opportunity for institutions that are currently offering competency based direct assessment programs and those institutions who are interested in offering these programs, to test new approaches in this model with appropriate government oversight. This process would result in thoughtful and robust policy recommendations for both legislative and regulatory fronts. Some opportunities for competency based education and direct assessment experimentation include:

  1. Freedom from the credit hour: a true direct assessment program cannot be tied to the credit hour as an artificial indication of the amount of learning that has taken place. The demonstration of competencies ultimately gauges mastery; direct assessment programs like FlexPath allow students to move more quickly through the concepts with which they are familiar and to take more time on those concepts that are unfamiliar, regardless of the amount of time it takes.

  2. Aid for education delivered in a hybrid model: current rules limit a student from taking both direct assessment and traditional educational offerings at the same time. With freedom from this requirement, students would be able to create an educational framework that best suits them as they move through their programs. Credit for prior learning assessments should also be aid-eligible.

  3. Release of time-based constraints: concepts that are directly tied to time components, such as measuring satisfactory academic progress and rules around return of aid when students drop courses, need to be revisited. What happens to these cornerstones of the federal student aid program when we strip time from the equation?

Competency based education holds too much promise, and is too critical a concept for adult learners and for our nation as a whole, to let it stagnate under antiquated federal financial aid rules and constraints. This innovation deserves to be allowed to breathe and evolve and develop into the sort of material progress that our higher education system sorely needs.

Scott Kinney
President of Capella University

Don Blohowiak, PhD

Leader of Volunteers for California State Parks

9y

You write, "our country needs [ adult learners ] to earn degrees in order for the US to remain globally competitive." I believe you want to suggest that adult learners need to learn new, relevant *knowledge* and improved, needed *skills* for the US to remain competitive. Equating degrees with achieving competitive competency is analogous to the inadequate proxy of the Carnegie hour for learning, which you correctly assail.

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