NASHVILLE – Coming into faculty with prior studying credit is usually a enormous boon to college students, chopping down on the money and time required to finish their levels. However the pathways to incomes these credit could favor conventional faculty college students from well-resourced excessive colleges.
Since 2020, leaders from Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty have labored to enhance prior studying credit score choices for potential and present college students, they advised attendees Monday on the American Affiliation of Neighborhood Schools‘ annual convention in Nashville. The school put a particular emphasis on pathways for grownup learners — these aged 25 and older — as the common scholar on its eight campuses is 25 years outdated.
Over the previous 5 years, the ensuing cross-campus collaboration has yielded Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty some promising outcomes, together with extra college students receiving credit score for his or her work expertise and lowered monetary limitations for prior studying evaluation exams.
Then
In 2019, the Utah Legislature handed a legislation requiring the state’s larger ed board to create a plan aimed toward boosting public schools’ issuance of credit score for prior studying, work-based abilities and competency-based assessments.
Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty — which enrolls just below 37,000 credit-bearing college students throughout eight campuses — started an analysis of its course of for awarding prior studying credit the next 12 months.
Rachel Lewis, Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty’s affiliate provost of educational methods, stated the present course of turned out to be hardly a course of in any respect.
“It was, if you happen to knew the one advisor who knew the method and will discuss to this individual within the registrar’s workplace, we might get your prior studying,” she stated. “Good for the scholars who discovered it — not good for all of the others.”
The school’s leaders additionally uncovered a spot in what sort of credit have been awarded.
In 2019-20, about 80% of the prior studying credit that Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty awarded have been by way of pathways usually utilized by highschool college students, stated Andrea Tipton, the establishment’s director of credit score for prior studying.
As an illustration, 807 of the 1,291 college students who obtained prior studying credit earned them by way of Superior Placement assessments supplied by the Faculty Board.
Compared, solely 13 college students that 12 months obtained credit score for his or her skilled certifications or licenses, and only one scholar earned credit score for his or her earlier work expertise and portfolio.
Now
To handle this disconnect, Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty standardized its prior studying credit score course of. That included a brand new rent.
“We made an important choice to create a place on the faculty devoted to prior studying — one individual on the faculty who might be the purpose of contact to serve in that position,” Lewis stated, nodding to Tipton, who was employed for the brand new position.
Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty now emphasizes credit for prior studying as an choice by way of improved communications to college students. The establishment additionally works to tell college students that it’s free to have their credit evaluated and added to their transcripts.
As soon as a previous studying credit score is added to a scholar’s transcript, it’s transferable as in the event that they earned it at Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty, in line with faculty coverage.
“When that scholar goes to the College of Utah, it is now thought-about switch credit score,” Lewis stated. “They do not reevaluate it. They do not take a look at it.”
Roughly three-fourths of Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty graduates, 72%, go on to switch to a four-year establishment.
The school can be highlighting CLEP assessments, an examination choice supplied by the Faculty Board open to learners ages 13 and older.
The assessments can present a viable different to AP assessments. However the registration payment — upwards of $95 in 2025 — proved to be a barrier for a lot of college students, Tipton stated.
This 12 months, Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty started directing college students to the Trendy States Schooling Alliance, a nonprofit that may cowl take a look at prices for college kids who full its free prep programs.
First-year outcomes are nonetheless pending, Tipton stated. However the faculty is processing extra CLEP exams than earlier than, suggesting extra college students are taking benefit now that the monetary barrier to testing has been addressed, she stated.
In 2023-24, the school awarded 248 credit to 33 college students for his or her skilled licenses and certifications. This represented almost triple the prior studying credit college students earned this fashion only some years earlier than.
It granted one other 100 credit to 18 college students for his or her work portfolios and expertise. The quantity continues to be low, however the soar from only one or two college students a 12 months is statistically important, Tipton stated. And it is a inhabitants the school needs to develop.
One prior studying pathway extra generally utilized by nontraditional college students has seen a extra difficult transformation — navy credit.
Again in 2019-20, Salt Lake Neighborhood Faculty appeared to do fairly nicely on this regard, with 137 college students receiving a whopping 2,184 prior studying credit for navy expertise that 12 months.
“Nevertheless it was lots of electives,” Tipton stated. “It wasn’t simply relevant to their diploma or transferable in a significant approach.”
Since then, navy prior studying credit have declined considerably, all the way down to 34 college students receiving 46 credit in 2023-24.
That drop resulted from the school shifting from “awarding simply regardless of the credit score you may get” to prioritizing navy credit that go towards a scholar’s desired diploma, Tipton stated. She is now working with tutorial departments to proceed establishing higher course equivalencies for navy expertise.