Dive Brief:

• Kaplan University will now offer competency reports as companions to student transcripts for the 45,000 students across its schools and online programs.
• Inside Higher Ed reports the introduction has been years in the making, beginning with the incorporation of general education competencies into its courses and then the development of assessments to measure students’ mastery of them.
• Some have predicted the expansion of competency-based programs by large for-profits may move the simmering controversy over the model to a boil, in part because of the for-profit sectors’ own baggage, according to the article.

Dive Insight:

Competency-based education aims to give students academic credit toward their degrees for skills and knowledge they gained outside of the classroom. Students have more control over the pace of their education in competency-based programs, as they can simply test out of sections of courses they already know. Kaplan’s competency reports focus on skills needed for job-readiness. The goal is to have something more descriptive than a transcript for graduates to show employers. The worry, however, lies in whether competency-based programs will topple the role of traditional higher education.