There are still challenges ahead for competency-based
education (CBE), but none may be bigger than the one from the Department of
Education’s Office of the Inspector General. Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton
Christensen Institute, said he believes the critical audit from the Office is preventing more CBE programs from being developed in higher
education.
The audit criticized the way the Higher Learning
Commission considered proposals for new CBE credentials. The inspector general
panned the way the commission approved programs based on “regular and
substantive” interaction between faculty and students.
“I, along with many others, have pointed out numerous
times that this particular regulation makes little sense in today’s world of
emerging online, competency-based programs—and we should instead be moving
toward outcomes-based judgments around institutions,” Horn wrote in a column for CompetencyWorks. “But the friction is also entirely predictable as
competency-based education simply does not fit into the traditional value
network and associated regulatory structures of higher education.”
Evaluating CBE programs using the same metrics employed
to assess on-campus programs just doesn’t work, according to Horn, particularly
when it comes to online interaction between students and faculty. The issues
will eventually be worked out, but students who could benefit from CBE now will
have moved on.
“At
a high level, the solutions to these problems both have challenges today,” Horn
wrote. “One is to stay out of the government funding streams, as some online,
competency-based programs have tried but struggled to do, or to try to launch a
more systematic effort at reform through a reauthorization of the Higher
Education Act—an effort that will not be an easy climb with the various
lobbying factions that will support the existing orders and thus would likely
try to stifle innovation.”
