Experimental Sites Initiative Announced - Ed Dept - Title IV Financial Aid

At the end of July, 2014, the US Department of Education announced its intention to consider experimental sites that would offer Title IV financial aids to competency-based education programs.  The specific aim of the experimental sites (ex-sites, as the Ed Dept refers to them) is to provide "better, faster and more flexible paths to academic and career success."   The program will test several approaches for distributing aid:

• Enable students to earn federal student aid based on how much they learn, rather than the amount of time they spend in class by providing federal aid to students enrolled in self-paced competency-based education programs.
• Provide flexibility for an institution to provide a mix of direct assessment coursework and credit hour coursework in the same program.
• Allow the use of federal student aid to pay for prior learning assessments, which can allow students—including returning adults or veterans—to decrease their time to get a degree.
• Encourage college students to mentor high school students in the areas of college readiness, student aid, career counseling and financial literacy, through the use of federal work study funds.

In addition, the Ed Dept announced a grant for an Online Skills Academy.

A National College Degree

Paul LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University, and its College for America program, recently shared his vision for a National College Degree.  In this Inside Higher Education essay, he articulates that the NCD is based on a competency-based education model.  President LeBlanc outlines his ideas regarding curriculum, delivery, expense, funding, and evaluation.  He also presents strategies for engaging the current host of higher ed providers in delivering supports for the degree seekers, and proposes opportunities for other agencies to become involved in supporting students. 

The comments following the article also offer interesting perspectives on extending CBE to a national degree.