UofB UNIVERSAL

Academics Make Case to End Credit Hour

The University of Berkley having been the single most vocal, proactive and oft criticized even persecuted proponent of educational change pioneered the modern approach to non-traditional "university-without-walls" type of education. Since 1988 we have been denounced and ostracized for our "differences" in educational philosophy... yet we have stood our ground please read this verbatim testimonial email from a recent alumnus:

"Great News! Since completing my MBA at UofB earler this year I have secured a Financial Manager position and I'm pulling in a great 6 figure income. I fully support the educational philosophy at UofB and thought you would like to investigate the story at the link below. It's about time that the educational community realizes what UofB has been promoting all along..." Marcia McHall, Oct. 30 2003
Here is that link and an excerpt of the article: Academics Make Case to End Credit Hour

By STEVE GIEGERICH, AP Education Writer

Developed about a century ago, the credit hour has become a building block of American academic life.

It is used to calculate faculty salaries, to determine the level of public money funneled to institutions and to establish a timetable for graduating with a degree.

But some academic experts now say the credit hour is a relic in a high-tech world with ever-more nontraditional students and learning methods.

Learn how the University of Berkley has been at the forefront of this movement for over 14 years...

"Having time- and space-bound measures that equate learning with a certain place and a certain time is clearly outmoded. And yet it is the DNA embedded in both the academic and funding system," said Jane Wellman, coeditor with Thomas Ehrlich of "How the Student Credit Hour Shapes Higher Education," a recently released collection of essays on the credit hour.

That system, she says, is increasingly at odds with modern teaching methods: More students are developing their own programs of study. An increasing number take courses online and away from the traditional classroom. And, unlike a time when students generally enrolled and graduated from the same institution, nearly two-thirds of all undergraduate degrees today are awarded to transfer students.

Experts say such factors have created a need for more flexibility in measuring students' work.

"Let's assess what the students have actually learned," said Clara Lovett, the president of the Washington-based American Association for Higher Education.

"It shouldn't matter where or how they learned it, nor should it matter that some students are going to master certain kinds of knowledge more rapidly than other students."

High schools started using the credit hour during the first decade of the 20th century. Then as now, the quality of high schools varied significantly, and the credit hour evolved as a way to determine whether students were ready for college by measuring how much time they spent in a class per week.

Within 10 years, colleges started embracing the concept. That set in motion a shift from standard curriculums — in which schools dictated each student's course of study — to the current system that allows students to accumulate enough credit hours to graduate through a combination of required and elective courses.

Once adopted, the credit hour became a driving force in higher education.

It presented students with a specific time frame in which they were expected to complete course work, usually one semester. And it supplied college administrations with a business model for scheduling, payroll and budgeting. Salary calculations were based on how many credit hours an instructor taught, for example.

But Wellman and Ehrlich, a senior scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argue in their book that using time to measure 21st century learning is ineffective.

The authors agree with Lovett that measurements that determine what a student has learned — and not how long a student took to learn it — are more effective.

"You don't have to have a time-based system," said Wellman, a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

Some experts say "competency-based" education programs are the best alternative to the credit hour structure.

Such programs, growing in popularity along with online education, replace the traditional semester with a structure that encourages students to work at their own pace on self-generated curriculums.

"It has given me the ability to take charge of my own education and to have the flexibility to study what I wanted without having to adhere to standard requirements or forms of learning," said J.P. Hitesman, a second-year student at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

Like other competency-based programs, Hampshire College uses faculty "assessments" to review course work, instead of the standard grading system.

The president of the New College of Florida — a public institution where students fulfill a self-designed "academic contract" each year — acknowledged that the system demands independence and discipline from students. It isn't for everyone, he said.

"Some kids need more structure," Gordon Michalson said in a phone interview from his office in Sarasota.

Lovett said the academic community also has resisted wholesale changes because that would require a major overhaul of the U.S. college structure.

"If you start moving one piece, you have to worry about the rest of the system," Lovett said. "And that's why educators have been reluctant to find a substitute."