Traditionally, college students, whether at the community college level or at four-year universities, have been expected to earn a prescribed number of credit hours by attending 16-week courses over multiple semesters. Students’ post-graduation “competency” is indicated by the fact that they “did their time” and finished the required coursework, and, of course, by the letter grades they receive.
With the competency-based model, however, the focal point is not the time spent in the classroom, but rather tangible evidence of learning. Students progress by demonstrating that they have mastered a particular skill or collection of skills, in some cases by applying their acquired skills and knowledge to new situations.
For example, Delaware County Community College in Pennsylvania expects its graduates to achieve numerous competencies. Eleven of these are broad “college competencies” — general skills such as being “proficient in mathematics, reading, writing, and speech communication” or being “able to use decision making processes to solve problems.” Other competencies are specific to the discipline or to individual courses.
Similarly, Capella University offers self-paced undergraduate and graduate programs in which students don’t earn letter grades. Rather, they earn either “distinguished,” “proficient,” “basic,” or “nonperformance” distinctions after completing modules based on actual problems and scenarios they’ll encounter in their respective fields.
On Nov. 14, Sharon Morrissey, senior vice president and chief academic officer for the North Carolina community college system, and Michael Horn, an official at Central Piedmont Community College, gave a presentation on the “competency-based education model” at a State Board of Community Colleges luncheon.
At the state board luncheon, Morrissey and Horn told the remarkable story of Zach Sherman. The 21-year-old is the first graduate of College for America, a completely competency-based college founded by Southern New Hampshire University. He raced through the program, completing an associate degree in general studies in just over three months.
Some of the board members appeared shocked by the story because of uncertainty about the depth of Sherman’s learning.
Nevertheless, North Carolina’s community college officials seem to be intrigued by the competency-based approach. But its disruptive potential is fully acknowledged. N.C. community college system president Scott Ralls told me via email that the competency-based approach would complement many existing technical and vocational programs. But he also wrote that the model “implies potential significant changes in funding structures, accreditation, etc., and will take much discussion and planning across our colleges and with state leaders.”
The model is not entirely new, Morrissey later said in an interview. It would continue some of the community college’s previous work, like the Code Green Super Curriculum Improvement Project. That project, developed in 2010, reorganized a variety of technical programs so that students can progress in a step-by-step manner toward practical degrees or certificates.
Competency-based education is likely to offer more than progress toward specific expertise, however. If properly designed, it could give students more choices. It could also enable brighter and motivated students to bypass the doldrums that can accompany traditional 16-week semesters, while less motivated students could work at their preferred pace without developing gaps in their knowledge. And instead of sending employers resumes loaded with generalities and fluffy hyperbole, students would be able to show specific skills derived from each class or “module.”
As Morrissey and Horn explained to the board members, competency-based education goes against the grain of higher education’s longstanding “seat time” focus. It is a radical way to assess student performance. It is potentially disruptive of the status quo.
Morrissey and Horn informed the board members about the model in an effort to spark a conversation about its possible implementation. As Morrissey emphasized in an interview with the Pope Center, “We’re just at the conversation stage, trying to gather research and look at what’s happening in other states.”
Jesse Saffron is a writer at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.