Transgender Students Working Toward Acceptance at Women's Colleges
(Originally for U.S. News University Directory)
The process for earning a degree was standardized long ago and hasn't changed much since. Although there are significantly more options for how a person can get an education now - from night classes and accelerated degree tracks to online universities - the basic structure of gaining a specific number of credits over a certain period of time has remained the same.
Some schools are now challenging the traditional degree track, testing programs that award degrees based on demonstrated knowledge rather than time spent working. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education announced plans to make some schools eligible for federal student aid without meeting all the usual guidelines if they host an approved competency-based program.
Experiments in Education
At the time of the announcement in July 2014, only two schools had permission to try such a program, Inside Higher Ed reports. Once the department announced that it would be adding to its list of schools designated as "experimental sites" able to test the initiative without losing federal funding, there were more than 350 institutions either offering a competency-based program or planning to start one.
The competency-based trial isn't the first experiment to be run by the department. However, it may be the most exciting yet, Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America Foundation, told Inside Higher Ed. While tight restrictions usually limit experimental sites to individual colleges, the competency-based initiative could give broader authorization for schools to try the new method, Laitinen said.
Paving the Way
Leaving schools with room to try new approaches and test their effectiveness as they go could provide valuable information on how to make a competency-based program work, according to Laitinen. It may also provide support for legislation that could make more universities eligible for such a program.
In July, a bill that would empower the Secretary of Education to make waivers available to up to 30 institutions - allowing them to introduce competency-based programs without losing federal funding - passed in the House of Representatives. The bill is still awaiting Senate approval. Another bill, the Higher Education Act, is due to be updated in the next few years and may provide a better path for authorizing competency-based programs.
Serving More Students
If such degree tracks were to be used more widely, they may serve nontraditional students better than current models, NPR reports.
"Our target is students who have what we call a 'full-time life,'"Aaron Brower, director of the University of Wisconsin's competency-based Flexible Option, tells NPR.
The average age of students in the program is 37, and they tend to have work experience or education in their field of study. Students can earn degrees or certificates in five areas so far. In a competency-based program, students may be able to put their experience to use in their classes, according to NPR.
To prove competency, students must pass exams and write papers, but they aren't required to use information from any textbook or other particular source. As long as their work is sound, knowledge they've gained outside of school can be used to complete assignments. These programs will thus need to be open about their requirements and careful to design assessments that can really measure learning.
Broader Understanding
This increased pressure to define competency accurately may benefit more than the experimental programs, Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation, tells NPR. A lack of clarity about what degrees actually signify may be hurting students, he says, who sometimes go deep into debt to finance their education.
The foundation is working on what it calls a Degree Qualifications Profile, which attempts to set out exactly what knowledge an associate's degree represents versus a bachelor's or master's degree. More than 400 schools have already used a draft of the document to inform decisions about their own degrees.
The process for earning a degree was standardized long ago and hasn't changed much since. Although there are significantly more options for how a person can get an education now - from night classes and accelerated degree tracks to online universities - the basic structure of gaining a specific number of credits over a certain period of time has remained the same.
Some schools are now challenging the traditional degree track, testing programs that award degrees based on demonstrated knowledge rather than time spent working. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education announced plans to make some schools eligible for federal student aid without meeting all the usual guidelines if they host an approved competency-based program.
Experiments in Education
At the time of the announcement in July 2014, only two schools had permission to try such a program, Inside Higher Ed reports. Once the department announced that it would be adding to its list of schools designated as "experimental sites" able to test the initiative without losing federal funding, there were more than 350 institutions either offering a competency-based program or planning to start one.
The competency-based trial isn't the first experiment to be run by the department. However, it may be the most exciting yet, Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America Foundation, told Inside Higher Ed. While tight restrictions usually limit experimental sites to individual colleges, the competency-based initiative could give broader authorization for schools to try the new method, Laitinen said.
Paving the Way
Leaving schools with room to try new approaches and test their effectiveness as they go could provide valuable information on how to make a competency-based program work, according to Laitinen. It may also provide support for legislation that could make more universities eligible for such a program.
In July, a bill that would empower the Secretary of Education to make waivers available to up to 30 institutions - allowing them to introduce competency-based programs without losing federal funding - passed in the House of Representatives. The bill is still awaiting Senate approval. Another bill, the Higher Education Act, is due to be updated in the next few years and may provide a better path for authorizing competency-based programs.
Serving More Students
If such degree tracks were to be used more widely, they may serve nontraditional students better than current models, NPR reports.
"Our target is students who have what we call a 'full-time life,'"Aaron Brower, director of the University of Wisconsin's competency-based Flexible Option, tells NPR.
The average age of students in the program is 37, and they tend to have work experience or education in their field of study. Students can earn degrees or certificates in five areas so far. In a competency-based program, students may be able to put their experience to use in their classes, according to NPR.
To prove competency, students must pass exams and write papers, but they aren't required to use information from any textbook or other particular source. As long as their work is sound, knowledge they've gained outside of school can be used to complete assignments. These programs will thus need to be open about their requirements and careful to design assessments that can really measure learning.
Broader Understanding
This increased pressure to define competency accurately may benefit more than the experimental programs, Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation, tells NPR. A lack of clarity about what degrees actually signify may be hurting students, he says, who sometimes go deep into debt to finance their education.
The foundation is working on what it calls a Degree Qualifications Profile, which attempts to set out exactly what knowledge an associate's degree represents versus a bachelor's or master's degree. More than 400 schools have already used a draft of the document to inform decisions about their own degrees.
