Craig Kilgo, 29, has a job as a project manager for the Department of Defense and a 6-month-old son. What he doesn’t yet have is an undergraduate degree.
The obstacles: time and money. His solution? Sign up for a new breed of online bachelor’s program that doesn’t require regular class time and lets him move rapidly through material he already knows.
Kilgo, who lives in Virginia, started out as a student at Cornell University after high school but found an Ivy League degree too costly. Now he’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in information science and technology in the “competency-based” Flexible Option offered by the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
A traditional college program requires the student to “sit in the classroom and go through the material in lock step with everybody else,” says Aaron Brower, interim chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Extension, who is overseeing the Flexible Option. A regular online program allows you to go at your own pace, “but you still have to do A, B and C in sequence,” he says.
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In a competency-based program such as UW’s, “you can skip A and B and go right to C, providing you can pass the assessments that show you have mastered the content of A and B,” says Brower.
And the assessments are not a matter of passing or failing. Instead, “You pass, or you haven’t yet passed,” he says. Students are assigned an academic success coach who, if they don’t succeed the first time, can provide extra guidance and supplemental materials.
President Barack Obama has encouraged innovation in competency-based education, arguing for the need to award credits based not on “seat time” but on mastering information.
“If you’re learning the material faster, you can finish faster,” he said in a speech last year.
Kilgo’s experience on the job allowed him to breeze through a required Basics of Web Design course in just three weeks, for example, instead of the typical 16 weeks. The program is “perfect for me,” he says. “I can leverage everything I’ve learned in my career while earning a degree from an accredited university.”
And at less cost. At UW, students can take one course for $900 or choose the “all you can learn” option: as many courses as you care to squeeze in over a three-month “subscription” period for $2,250. Kilgo came into the program with about 63 credits from several schools under his belt. He completed five UW courses in each of his first two subscription periods and hopes to finish after two more three-month periods. Total cost: $9,000.
[Find tools and resources to help pay for online education.]
Besides the information science and technology bachelor’s, UW offers Flexible Option degrees in diagnostic imaging and nursing, a certificate in professional and technical communication, and an associate degree in arts and sciences. Other competency-based online degree programs include those at Western Governors University, which offers business, teaching, information technology and health, and at Northern Arizona University, where students can pursue small business administration, computer information technology and liberal arts.
On campus, Purdue University in Indiana is launching a competency-oriented grand experiment this fall known as the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, a collaboration between the colleges of technology, liberal arts, education and science.
“Students will be immersed in project-based environments,” says Jeffrey Evans, a professor and Purdue Polytechnic faculty fellow. They will work on mastering a skill set or course material at their own pace, guided by a team of faculty mentors. Competencies will be demonstrated as they are acquired, rather than in a final exam, and will be documented by digital badges or certificates.
“These can be stored and viewed by anyone given access, such as a potential employer,” notes Evans, who says the belief at Purdue is that this model has the potential to be a game-changer in higher education.
[See what other perks competency-based education offers students.]
Industry seems to be enthusiastic about the idea. At Southern New Hampshire University, for example, employers such as McDonald’s, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield and the city of Memphis have collaborated in creating the College for America, a program in which employees can learn marketable skills or earn a bachelor’s degree in communications or health care management at their own pace for $2,500 per year. Some employers will reimburse the tuition.
In the UW program, nurses who have families, are busy in the community and are working full-time can “seamlessly move forward in their careers while bringing new ideas to their workplace,” says Mary Beth Kingston, executive vice president and chief nursing officer of Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care. “It’s win-win.”
Demand for the UW Flexible Option has certainly been impressive, says Brower. While the university is getting it fully up to speed, nearly 300 students are participating in the program. But almost 10,000 people have so far shown interest.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2015” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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