1975 Nontraditional Ed Guide, With a Health Focus

In 1975 the Indian Health Service published a 206-page guide to nontraditional higher education, Health Careers through Independent Study for American Indians and Alaska Natives: Upward Mobility through Non-Traditional Education.

The full book has been scanned into a pdf file attached to the book's listing on eric.ed.gov (ERIC Number ED187492). Unfortunately for those using technologies like screen readers, the optical character recognition isn't too reliable, but viewers can read the pages.

Some of the book goes to on-campus programs for adult nontraditional students. There's a long list of health professions programs at community colleges, for each school and program giving the year classes began. Many only started in the 60s and 70s. We could say the community college system was inherently nontraditional in 1975.

Sections on "Special Adult Degree Programs" and "The Open University" are more directly this board's jam. This "Open University" isn't the British university, it's a style of university without walls programs at some American universities. There's a section for the University of the State of New York External Degree Program, now Excelsior College. CLEPs offered then I'd love to see rewritten and reintroduced today: Hematology, Immunohematology, and Tests and Measurements. This reminds me that at some point there was a CLEP on "Afro-American History" – also would love to see updated! Health-related correspondence courses include hospital accounting from Indiana University, and alcohol education from the University of Utah.

There's a section on programmed instruction courses, "often referred to by such terms as auto-teaching, programmed learning and organized self-instruction." This was an approach to self-study based on B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning, popular among publishers and educators in the 50s and 60s but fading in the market in the 70s.

The National Home Study Council, now the DEAC, gets a section. So does the United States Armed Forces Institute, but it closed in 1974, so there was a press time issue. It looks like the USAFI was succeeded in part by Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support, DANTES, which opened the same year.

There's a long and chatty section on "How to Take a Test." "DO NOT SPEND TIME JUST BEFORE THE TEST TRYING TO DISCOVER HOW MUCH YOU DO NOT KNOW. It is too late at this point to do much about it. You have either covered the material or you have not."

The bibliography includes Thirty-three Ways to Meet the Spiraling Cost of a College Education, published in 1969. Time is a flat circle, spiraling.