Competency-Based Degrees: Coming Soon to a Campus Near You

By Joel Shapiro. Has distance education significantly affected the business and teaching models of higher education? Certainly. Is it today’s biggest disrupter of the higher-education industry? Not quite. In fact, the greatest risk to traditional higher education as we know it may be posed by competency-based education models.
Competency-based programs allow students to gain academic credit by demonstrating academic competence through a combination of assessment and documentation of experience. The model is already used by institutions including Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire University, Excelsior College, and others, and is a recent addition to the University of Wisconsin system. More...