For online, competency-based programs, the old metrics are those focused on inputs. These new programs often lack breadth, generally do not do academic research, and they don’t have grassy green quads and traditional libraries. Assessing them based on these criteria along with specifying their faculty members’ academic credentials and course requirements doesn’t make much sense, nor do one-size-fits-all regulations that govern—in the particular case of the inspector general’s audit—how students interact with faculty online, especially given that more interaction in online courses isn’t always better for students. Regulations limiting the geography in which approved programs can serve students are counter-productive as well for a medium that knows no geographic boundaries.
Because competency-based programs are emerging under the governance of existing—and, from their perspective, arcane—regulations around higher education in an effort to gain access to Title IV dollars in the absence of Congressional action, these challenges will continue for some time.
Although innovators will ultimately figure this out and the regulations will likely then cave to the new reality, as has happened in countless other highly regulated sectors where disruption has occurred, there are risks in the years ahead of banking on this approach. First, many students could benefit today from robust competency-based programs—not five years from now. And second, in a desperate attempt to fit into today’s regulatory structure with less friction in order to be eligible for federal dollars, programs could twist and contort themselves and, in the process, lose the unique value propositions that competency-based learning offers—much as has happened in K–12 education as the full-time virtual schools have twisted themselves to fit into antiquated seat-time rules.
At a high level, the solutions to these problems both have challenges today. 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 order and thus would likely try to stifle innovation.
As a result, progress for competency-based education in higher education will likely come from a combination of all these efforts—but it won’t be straightforward.
[This post was first published on CompetencyWorks.]
Michael B. Horn is a co-founder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. He currently works as a Principal Consultant at Entangled Solutions.
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