Work Experience For College Credit

WORK EXPERIENCE FOR COLLEGE CREDIT

Pennsylvania governor pushes institutions to give adult students more academic credit for knowledge earned in jobs.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/14/pennsylvania

 

This is a bad idea. If people start using their life experiences to satisfy college credit, then legitimate colleges will start to resemble that of diploma mills. If you test out of college courses using tests, than that’s another thing, because you are demonstrating that you have the knowledge that you would have obtained from the course. But using life experiences? That’s absurd. Anyone with good BS skills will have the ability to BS their way through a third to a half of a college degree. What kind of effect will that have on legitimate college degrees?

 

age restrictions

perhaps , colleges who use life experiences used as college course credits should have age restrictions of their students...


people in their 30s or later 30s can get some sort of college credit for their knowledge and demonstration of a course -subject areas......with some type of testing ....

 

Gee, would I get Landscape Maintenance credit for proving, by assessment, that I've learned, in my life experience, how to mow a lawn?

 

Don't colleges already allow credit for life experience for military candidates? Of course, the experiences are evaluated for credit by ACE, but so are many, many other corporate training programs. I guess that my point is that this is already happening, without interference from the Governor of Pennsylvania, and without the loopholes that BS artists could exploit.

 

ACE already does this sort of evaluation for military and corporate courses. I have military courses listed on my ACE transcripts that list what the course is equivalent to in terms of a college course, how many credits it is worth, and whether it is at the undergraduate or graduate level. I also have courses listed that don’t count for anything. I guess they couldn’t determine the college equivalent for infantry training.

So what is the point of what the governor of Pennsylvania is proposing? People can already test out of courses and receive credit for external courses. Using life experience for college credit sounds like an open invitation for the equivalent of a diploma mill degree.

 

Oughta be worth a PE Activity credit.

 

Oh, gyawd!

 

The very, very important thing here will be distinguishing between life experience credit (unverified degree mill stuff) and prior learning assessment (legitimate, verified credits).

 

I did get PE credit for the basic training part, but the job specific infantry training doesn’t appear to have a college equivalent. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with college students these days…not enough courses on infantry tactics.

 

No, ACE is an evaluation of military schools and training...not life experience as such.

 

That's interesting, because my SMART transcript from my time as a Navy Hospital Corpsman lists college credit for my advancement in rank separately from my schooling. In fact, I got 10 lower level credits for being advance from HM3 to HM2 (E-4 to E-5) and that required no extra schooling. I did receive credit for "A" school and bootcamp, but after that all of the credit was based on my advancement without schooling.

 

Didn't even equate to some specific ROTC class?

 

There appears to be more behind this story. According to his biograpy, the governor is an Army veteran, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. 1965) and Villanova Law School (J.D. 1968). Previous posters have made note of credits relating to military service. It is interesting to note that the Governor comes from a military background.

According to its website, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) is "a national non-profit organization which creates and manages effective learning strategies for working adults through partnerships with employers, higher education, government and labor." The organization is clearly focused on "policy leaders" as stated here.

The Governor's program is called "Job Ready Pennsylvania" which is almost too close to "WorkforceChicago 2.0," also found on the CAEL website. Clearly, this organization has an agenda; is higher education ready for this?

Cindy

 

Re: age restrictions

If some verifiable life experience was convertible into some sort of prior learning assessment credit, why limit it to those persons age thitysomething and above?

 

I'm wondering about the 30+ idea as well. Why not 40+ or 50+ or 20+.

If someone has demonstrable equivalent skills based on his/her life experiences then there are already options in place to verify this and to get appropriate credit.

There is the unibiquitous CLEP/DANTES/ECE standardized testing route. Then there is the ACE evaluation of military and corporate experiences.

There is also (not well advertised), at most institutions, the availability of institutional/departmental examination for equivalent credit. I've used this method many times and found it to be sufficient to determine my level of skill/knowledge when standardized testing was not available. In some cases it results in course requirement waivers and in others it results in actual credit.

In many colleges, the departmental examination is available for any course in the curriculum.