ADHE Chief: Consider Advancing Collegians Based On Skills, Not Credit Hours

“Competency-based education” – advancing college students based on their knowledge and skills rather than credit hours – could help Arkansas meet the goal of having 60% of Arkansans with a post-high school credential by 2025, the director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education said.

Dr. Brett Powell said in an interview Sept. 3 that the change could be incorporated at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

“The idea of competency-based education is to assess what a student’s learned and let that be the judge of whether they’re ready to move on to another course,” he said.

The idea has already been incorporated in some states and in Arkansas at the K-12 public school level. The Warren School District has obtained conversion charters in all of its schools that allow it to categorize students based on learning levels rather than grade levels. Students advance when they have mastered material, not based on how much time they have spent in class.

ADHE’s Coordinating Board is working on “Closing the Gap 2020: A Master Plan for Arkansas Higher Education,” meant to raise student achievement. It hopes to release the plan when it meets Oct. 30.

The board coordinates the work of the state’s 44 two-year and four-year public colleges and universities, which are largely independent. Powell said it is composed primarily of former board members of colleges and universities.

A draft plan was released Sept. 1 that calls for increasing the percentage of Arkansans with post-high school degree or certificate attainment to 60% from the current 43.4% by 2025. Other goals include raising the completion and graduation rates by 10%, increasing enrollment of adult students, raising attainment rates for underserved student groups, and more effectively allocating resources to make college more affordable.

Competency-based education won’t specifically be mentioned in the plan. Instead, it could be incorporated into a larger theme of “student success innovation.” Powell said the method works most effectively in online courses.

Powell said other other changes being considered include reducing the time that students spend in remediation, which is non-credit-producing coursework required of students who are not academically prepared for college work. Also, some colleges are no longer requiring students in non-math-related fields to enroll in college algebra, a class that has proven to be a stumbling block. That effort could be expanded to other schools. Mentorship could be expanded for students most at risk of not succeeding, such as those who are the first generation in their families to attend college.

Only 40% of Arkansas’ four-year college students graduate in six years, a failure rate that Powell said is too high.

“If we were starting a company from scratch, and that was the sales pitch, I don’t think we’d get investors,” he said. “We would be kicked off (the TV show) ‘Shark Tank’ pretty quickly.”