You may have seen headlines touting the growth and transformative potential of competency-based education. People working to make higher ed more accessible are very excited about the possibilities of this format to help more students earn degrees and to close the skills gap.

Nevertheless, competency-based education, remains an obscure concept to people outside of the few dozen universities that are pioneering it. So I want to use this article to lay out some of the basics for people hearing the conversation grow louder and who want to know what it’s all about.

No, scratch that. By the end of this article, I want you to be able to participate in the conversation. And that shift in focus, from what I deliver to what you are able to do with it, is the start of our lesson.

The basics of competency-based education

  • Think of CBE as a shift in focus from what a student is taught to what they are able to do. Designing a program begins by asking what students should be competent at when they finish the program. For example, a computer science department, instead of starting with what languages and concepts to teach, might determine that a graduate should be able to write a secure web application (among many other things.)

  • Think of CBE as built around assessment. Exams or projects are designed for students to prove they have mastered the competencies. In the case of writing a secure web application, the classes will teach the concepts and languages leading to that ability, and ultimately a student will have to demonstrate they can do it. There won’t be a test at the end of this article, but if there was, it would test what you are able to do with this information.

  • Think of the competencies as units or modules. Lesson are designed around each competency, and a student progresses from one to the next. The ability to write a secure web application might be a competency needed toward the end of a program with many other milestone competencies leading up to it. Or, in a graduate-level program, it might be the competency needed to progress past the first few lessons.

  • Think of CBE as a form of time shifting like what has happened with television viewing. Instead of millions of people watching a broadcast at the same time every week, we now watch episodes on our own schedules. Sometimes we are one day behind the broadcast, sometimes a show waits on the DVR for months, and sometimes we binge watch an entire season. You move on to the next episode when you are ready. Similarly, in competency-based education, each student progresses not according to when lessons are delivered but according to when a competency is mastered.

  • Think of a competency as something a student may have even before they enter a program. CBE awards credits based on what students can demonstrate they are able to do, so they sometimes don’t have to sit through the related lessons, and they start out that much further toward degree completion.

  • Think of CBE as a change in how progress is measured. Now students make progress toward a degree by earning “credit hours” primarily by applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair for a certain amount of time (usually at times not convenient for working adults). CBE refocuses attention on learning rather than on seat time.

  • Think of CBE in terms of the working adult population and others without access to higher ed. Too many conversations about college presume a student body of middle-class Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 who are enrolled full time. But that “traditional student” is a shrinking share of who actually attends college. And it’s a miniscule share of who wants or needs to earn a degree. CBE is most relevant to the “non-traditional” student body who can’t access college on traditional terms.

Advantages of competency-based education

At this point, the potential advantages of CBE are probably starting to become apparent.

  • Because it is self-paced, it may be more effective and more practical for many students.

  • Working adults with real experience can start with a significant portion of the degree progress already complete.

  • It’s cheaper. College for America’s online competency-based degree, for example, is $2,500/year

  • There is a clearer connection between lessons and real skills, which is attractive both to students and to employers. A CBE degree may more clearly signal career readiness than traditional degrees do.

  • Competencies are potentially more recognizable across institutions. In the current system, credit hours are idiosyncratic, so students have trouble transferring credits, which is particularly hard for working adults. More portability of credits could help with the more than 30 million people in the U.S. who have earned some college credits without graduating. 7 million of those have more than two years worth of credits. Competency-based assessments could put those 7 million people at the threshold of an associate degree and halfway down a clearly defined path toward a bachelor’s degree.

Two factors turbocharging competency-based education

CBE has actually been around for quite awhile, and everything said above is technically true of “traditional” campus-based CBE, but now two new factors are emerging that have the potential to scale the concept quickly.

First, online education is becoming more viable. When that is paired with competency-based education, many commentators think you have a game changer. The Christensen Institute, for example, says online CBE is a disruptive innovationthat will challenge traditional degree programs “because it marks the critical convergence of multiple vectors: the right learning model, the right technologies, the right customers and the right business model.”

And that’s with the business model not even competing on equal ground. So far, students in most competency-based programs haven’t been eligible for financial aid, because that aid is based on credit hours. Therefore, students in CBE programs have had to pay the rack rate, which is still competitive enough with traditional programs subsidized by financial aid that CBE programs are thriving.

What will dramatically turbocharge CBE is if it becomes eligible for federal financial aid. The Department of Education has indicated they are open to this, and they are experimenting along those lines. Last month, they authorized the University of Wisconsin to award federal financial aid for its UW-Flex program, and more are on the way.

Where is competency-based education actually happening?

Western Governors University, StraigherLine and Excelsior College pioneered online CBE programs about ten years ago. Meanwhile, the programs have been growing steadily in traditional university systems, often in their continuing ed or online ed branches.

Perhaps most exciting is that several projects are underway, supported by major foundation funding, to bring together dozens of existing and aspiring programs. For example:

  • The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning has a multi-year project to provide training and technical assistance to a cohort of institutions just getting started in CBE.

  • Next Generation Learning Challenges from Educause is making grants to “breakthrough” CBE programs.

  • Lumina Foundation has brought together a consortium of institutions experienced in CBE to share challenges and solutions.

  • The Association of American Colleges & Universities is working on General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs), a project to promote competency-based pathways to liberal arts degrees.

Where can I learn more?

I certainly don’t mean to make competency-based education sound easy to design or without objections. In a future article, I’ll look at some of the potential obstacles and the arguments against CBE.

In the meantime, lots of valuable information is emerging for people interested in what the emergence of CBE means for their schools, their students or their business community. Here are two great documents I recommend where you can dig deeper.