The awarding of college credit per course has many implications for students and for academic institutions.  Among them is the quality of the education a student receives for the tuition they pay and the time that it takes to receive a degree.  This has become an important national debate about what a college degree represents in terms of student learning; whether poor students receive federal grants to make their education possible; and the profit motive—even possibly the very survival of private colleges.

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The debate arose when the Department of Education (DOE) investigated the practice of awarding excessive course credit at two colleges:  American InterContinental (AIU) and Kaplan.  The issue was both the amount of credit approved per course and the length of time it took to complete the course.  American InterContinental's credit system came under public scrutiny in December 2010.  The DOE’s inspector general challenged both the credibility of AIU's new accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCACS), and AIU for approving what the DOE indicated was excessive credit hours for a business course.  Even NCACS had termed AIU's policy of awarding nine credits to a five-week business course "egregious," but approved the credits nevertheless. 

AIU’s response to the investigation—an end run—converting some of its online nine-credit courses to two 4.5-credit courses allowing students to take the two courses and still receive the nine credits in five weeks.  Jeff Leshay, spokesman for AmericanIntercontinental's parent company, Career Education Corporation (CEC), said AIU's 4.5-credit courses "are rigorous and achieve the intended student outcomes," he said, adding that the pedagogy inherent in the online-delivery format justifies the higher credit level. The classroom version of the courses, and most other courses at AIU and at CECs other college, Colorado Technical University, are 10-week courses that carry 4.5 credits.  The problem is that Mr. Leshay did not explain how the online environment can deliver similar content and learning experience when compared to the same face-to-face course AIU offers on campus that run twice as long.  To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the medium now the message?

So what are students learning when a course has excessive credit and a shortened term?  Is it important that learning not be sacrificed for convenience, to squeeze every available dime out of federal Pell grants, or create substantial profit for private colleges?  Or is it anybody’s business at all if a student is only seeking a credential—the degree?

Why are college credits awarded so unevenly from program to program and school to school?  Today, for-profit colleges typically arrange their schedules to attract working adults and others seeking convenience.  These arrangements, however, are a huge financial win for the college.  For example, under a conventional academic calendar, an associate degree, typically thought of as a two-year degree, is now redesigned to take three academic years.  Why?  There is a positive side,  it  allows a student to have a more manageable workload, and perhaps more importantly, it allows a student to tap into the bigger federally subsidized loans allowed to full-time students only after they reach their third academic year. Typically, students pursuing bachelor's degrees gain access to the higher loan amounts before they're even halfway through their degrees. This approach also makes it easier for the neediest students to receive additional Pell Grant money.

Its not that anyone is questioning the legality, in fact, some advocates for working students believe that it serves a student population who otherwise may not be able to afford to attend.  As a result, however, for-profit colleges end up with a disproportionate share of federal student aid.  For-profit colleges enroll fewer than 10 percent of all undergraduates but account for more than 20 percent of Pell Grant funds and of federally subsidized student loans.

What is the motivation for private colleges to inflate credit hours and shorten the length of a course at the same time?  By increasing the credit value of courses colleges increase their profit margins.  The costs for faculty and other expenses to provide the higher-credit courses won’t increase as much as the increased revenue based on the total number of credits per course that the student must now pay for.  It's "a financial home run" for the companies, said Bradley Safalow, chief executive of PAA Research, an independent stock-research firm.  But is it a home run for students, and by proxy taxpayers, who are getting substantially less, for substantially more money?  Mr. Safalow, in another report, cites an anonymous comment from a former high-ranking academic executive who termed course-credit inflation as "a race to the bottom." (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2010) 

There are, of course, other options that shorten the time that it takes to complete a degree without deleting content.  A student can attend college all year round, for example, completing up to four courses each summer and thereby shortening the degree completion time by up to a year.  This approach doesn't cut in half the time it takes to complete each course (which has to eliminate important content) as it does at AIU and Kaplan, but it achieves the same result.

Responding to credit inflation, the DOE has issued new rules effective July 1, 2011 that each 3 credit hour course must represent one hour of class time and two hours of non-classroom assignments.  They also defined credit and duration for a ten or twelve week course for institutions on a quarter semester calendar as one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time defining “equivalent amount of work” as other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, or other academic work leading to the awarding of credit hours. The new regulations also specify that a semester or trimester hour must include at least 37.5 clock hours of instruction. A quarter semester hour must include at least 25 clock hours of instruction.  Whether these new DOE regulations are the solution or not, the DOE believes that credit hour inflation does not serve the best interest of student learning or the best use of taxpayer dollars. (Final Rule for Program Integrity, The Federal Register, October 29, 2010)

So what's more important to you:  1)  A quality education where you learn all that you can; 2)  Trade away quality learning for convenience; or 3)  Have both--a quality education and a degree?  If quality matters, then you have to think carefully about how a college is awarding course credits for a degree.

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