What’s New in Competency-Based Higher Education?

Draft Quality Standards

A group of colleges that offer competency-based programs released a draft set of voluntary quality standards to inform the design or scaling of high-quality programs. Education Department officials say this could help prevent the rise of programs that don’t meet the bar for quality. Here’s the draft standards from CBEN.

Field Growth

• A new report forecasts that more than half a million students will be enrolled in CBE programs by 2020.
• Interest in competency education is growing in higher education, according to the Education Writers Association.
• Research and Markets released the following report: Competency-based Platforms Market for Higher Education in the US 2016-2020, which forecasts the competency-based market to grow in the U.S. by 22.02% during this period.

New CBE Higher Education Programs

• Capella University now offers a Master of Education in Teaching and Learning, a new degree program to prepare educators for the 21^st century classroom.
• Northwestern State University is beginning a competency education program for computer information systems.
• The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is considering revamping towards competency-based education—aimed as asking students to reinvent journalism based on the field’s rapid change.

New Partnerships

• Michael Horn explores the partnership between CareerBuilder and Capella Learning Solutions to bridge the talent gap.
• Ohio community colleges partner with Western Governors University, allowing Ohio’s community college graduates to seamlessly transfer to WGU and receive discounted tuition towards a bachelor’s degree.
• The Tennessee Department of Education partnered with BloomBoard to pilot a competency-based professional learning program for teachers supported by micro-credentials.

News

• A project named Fast Track to Success created a Competency-Based Education Consortium which identified best practices and lessons learned for institutions looking to implement CBE. They created a Facebook page to share the best practices.
• The U.S. Department of Education visited Southern New Hampshire University as part of its “Opportunity Across America” back-to-school bus tour, learning about innovative programs that aim to increase access, affordability and quality.
• Without tech infusion, there is little room to expand foundations for competency-based education, innovations in distance learning, or assessment to ensure that different kinds of students are primed for success.

Resources

• The RPK Group released Competency-Based Education: A Study of Four New Models and Their Implications for Bending the Higher Education Curve.
• The Connecting Credentials initiative released its latest report titled Connecting Credentials: From National Dialogue to Collective Action, which outlines the goals of creating a 21^st century credentialing ecosystem where all learning matters.
• Handbook of Research on Competency-Based Education in University Settings is a new book providing academic research on CBE in higher education institutions.

Competency-Based Education Webinar Series

CBE Info announced the continuation of the CBE for Community Colleges webinar series this academic year. The webinars are free to attend.

There is a growing interest in competency-based education (CBE) for higher education as one of the approaches to accelerate students’ progress-to-degree while assuring the quality and validity. The CBEinfo.org webinars will help those that wish to understand how CBE can work and how they can get started on the development of CBE programs at their own institutions.

For more information including speakers, times, and registration, visit here.

Upcoming Webinars Include:

• CBE Financial Aid, 11/16/2016
• CBE Course Demos, 11/30/2016
• CBE Assessment Delivery and Proctoring, 1/18/2017
• CBE Orientation Courses, 2/15/2017
• CBE Completion Strategies, 3/1/2017
• CBE Transcripting, 4/19/2017

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