APEL and the development of higher education

Accreditation of prior experiential learning and the development of higher education, Emmanuel Triby, European Journal of Vocational Training, 2009, n° 1, pp. 114-128.
This article analyses the specificity of and conditions for the emergence of the French system of accreditation in higher education as regards lifelong learning. It allows a better understanding of the changes taking place in higher education in Europe. Full text available.
The accreditation system introduced in France in 2002 has practically no equivalent in Europe or the world. Many accreditation systems outside France grant conditional access to courses leading to a qualification, especially for graduate training, but only the French system offers the possibility of acquiring a qualification, full or partial, without prior instruction. Against the background of the changes in higher education – particularly its inclusion in a different form of linkage to the needs of economic development – it is interesting to assess what is riding on the introduction of this new right and to try to grasp its current and future implications.
To understand the role that the accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) could play in the development of higher education, it is important first to establish the nature of this certification system – which for the moment is very typically French – and how it fits in with the possibilities opened up by lifelong learning. Then we need to examine the problems facing higher education today in relation to the questions asked of it by prior learning. It will then be possible to set out the problems that this system could solve, both in France and abroad, provided that certain resistance can be overcome...
The future of APEL in higher education
The knowledge-to-be-acquired approach. This knowledge is usually acquired as a result of training, the existence of which is proven by examinations. This approach incorporates the idea, which is widely accepted in higher education, that such knowledge is all the more substantial because of social and academic selection on entry to a training level. This belief sets little store by the impact of the evaluation system itself, which translates knowledge into units of measurement and selection, and still less by the actual learning activity. This activity lies at the heart of the construction of an APEL dossier, which cannot confine itself to simply weighing up the knowledge acquired.
The implicit hierarchy of knowledge. The higher education system in most Western countries is based on a more or less implicit hierarchy of knowledge that resolutely places academic knowledge at the level of higher education, above a whole range of forms of knowledge derived from practice – from professional knowledge, which is often highly sophisticated, to low-level and routine practical knowledge. APEL does not turn this hierarchy on its head, but demands, firstly, that experiential learning be considered to have the same standing as academic knowledge, provided it has been subjected to critical appraisal, and, secondly, that academic knowledge be considered appropriate only if links can be found to actual skills and knowledge required in employment.
The importance of qualifications for individual careers. When the value of the work is still determined to a great extent by collective and legal measures, it is hard to challenge the criteria of qualifications and experience in the labour market. As soon as there is any tendency to call those criteria into question, particularly by introducing a skills-based approach, the methods of accessing qualifications, and the individual characteristics of the qualifications, assume greater importance...
Those conditions prove that APEL cannot be conceived of as a simply as a system of access to qualifications. It tends to call into question what lies at the foundation of higher education practices, particularly in France: not so much structures and references as beliefs and intentions. These are no longer sufficient when higher education becomes mass education and has to form part of lifelong learning.