Students can get college credit for life experience

In theory, it makes perfect sense. What we should be interested in are outcomes. What do you know? What can you do? How competencies were acquired should be of less interest. I fully support efforts to develop valid assessments of the competencies we value, and giving credit for them when they're demonstrated. But all of that is easier said than done.

Add one more thing to the list of tasks that colleges can outsource.

This time, it's assessing "experiential learning"—that is, the skills students have gained in the workplace and other life trials—and determining how many credit hours should be awarded for that learning. Two fledgling organizations are game.

The idea of handing such decisions to outsiders might make some faculty members wince. But the services' creators say that their networks of portfolio evaluators will establish national norms that will make experiential-learning assessment more clear-cut, rigorous, and credible. And as the concept gains legitimacy, they say, it could help hundreds of thousands of people complete college.

And now, for the rest of the story...