Andrea Miranda didn’t think traditional four-year college was in her future when she graduated from high school in Massachusetts in 2010. It was expensive, especially compared with free college in Mexico, where she lived until she was 13.
After an intensive six-month job training program where she got excited about a career in business, Miranda landed an internship at a bank in Boston and then a job in client services. She wanted a college degree related to her career goals in business, and a flexible program that she could pause when work got too busy because she knew she had to keep working.
Through Duet, a coaching nonprofit that mentors college students, Miranda enrolled in the online business administration bachelor’s program at Southern New Hampshire University. The bank where she worked offered tuition reimbursement, and her experience working in finance would speed up her progress.
Even better, the SNHU program was competency-based, so her work experience helped her move more quickly toward her degree, she says. “I learned so much from the way projects were set up. It really prepared me to set up my own business.”
Miranda isn’t alone. Competency-based education, or CBE, is becoming more common in higher education and is present at more than 1,000 university programs, according to a 2020 survey report from the American Institute for Research. Also known as mastery-based or skills-based education, CBE is used in K-12 instruction in nearly every state. In higher education, the approach is used to reach adult learners who may have started college before but not finished.
[Read: Costs to Weigh Before Going Back to College as an Adult.]
Many educators view CBE as a more learner-centered approach, since students progress as they demonstrate skill mastery. Students unable to access more traditional college experiences may find CBE programs more suited to their needs, advocates say.
“We see massive needs in the workforce that aren’t being addressed,” says Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University. “CBE shifts the spotlight from what you know, to what you can do.”
“Because it was competency-based, if I already knew a subject I could show I knew it through a project, and then move on,” Miranda says. “If I already knew how to create a budget with the rubric I had to meet and everything that involved, I submitted my project. If the teacher sees that I met the requirements, then I pass. ”
Miranda says competency-based learning was the best academic training for what she wanted to do. She now runs her own dog boarding business in Boston and works for an after-school program that teaches high school students entrepreneurial skills.
A Focus on Skills, Not Credit Hours
The time for CBE has come because traditional universities aren’t issuing degrees at a pace that keeps up with labor market demands, LeBlanc says, and the students who need degrees the most — first-generation and lower-income students — are the least likely to have access to a traditional four-year program.
LeBlanc cites a 2012 report issued by the New America Foundation, “Cracking the Credit Hour” as a milestone in the development of CBE. Report author Amy Laitinen, senior director of higher education policy at the New America Foundation, argues that the time-based system for conferring degrees doesn’t adequately serve a growing population of adults with some college credit but no degrees. It isn’t always possible to transfer credits from other institutions and job experience doesn’t count toward graduation.
To meet the need for skilled workers and to serve adults who want to complete their post-secondary education, colleges should offer competency-based programs that focus on mastery rather than time spent in school, Laitinen wrote in the report.
[Read: A Guide to Different Types of College Degrees.]
LeBlanc notes that he and other higher ed leaders anticipated a complication for early CBE programs: federal financial aid, which is typically offered on a traditional credit hour basis. However, Title IV allows financial aid for students in CBE programs as long as they meet requirements for direct assessment, which is the process of instructors evaluating student mastery of skills.
CBE programs at SNHU are based on a 60-competency requirement rather than the traditional 120-credit requirement for a bachelor’s degree. There is no time requirement for when students master each competency, and there are no grades.
“If you had worked in your family’s small company and could do college math competencies in a week, great,” LeBlanc says. “On the other hand, if you struggled to do competent workplace writing and you needed a year, why would we stop your instruction at 14 weeks and give you a D?”
One of the first accredited colleges to use CBE as its foundational teaching method is Utah-based Western Governors University. Founded in 1997 by the governors of 19 states, WGU offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, IT, health and nursing — all online. It says it has the largest number of students enrolled in CBE courses, nearly 140,000 in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Like many other CBE programs, WGU attracts active members of the military. More than 19,000 military-affiliated students were enrolled in the 2022-2023 academic year.
“We are democratizing access to education more than anything else,” says WGU president Scott Pulsipher.
One core difference between CBE and traditional college instruction is that CBE courses are designed to be relevant to necessary career skills, Pulsipher adds. “This forces us to design learning outcomes to be mapped to the needs of the workforce. So when we assess and say a student has mastered a competency, it’s a better signal to employers that you’re actually competent.”
CBE Is Typically Less Expensive
South College, a for-profit college with campuses in Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, began offering competency-based graduate degrees in 2021. The school has programs in business, education, IT management and ministry.
Like other colleges with CBE programs, South offers a subscription model on a per-semester basis. For $6,000, a student can enroll and complete as many courses as they can during a semester.
For some students, the heart of the college experience might be the peers they meet in class and on campus. For students at South College, where the curriculum is entirely online, social interaction isn’t the point.
“I think our students chose us because we’re not in that traditional format,” says Michael Patrick, vice president of academic improvement. “Our students choose the program because they can do it at their own pace. We are creating opportunities for people who didn’t think they could go to college.”
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What Competency-Based Education Means for Colleges originally appeared on usnews.com
