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As the College Guide reported in July, the Department of Education was on the verge of finally defining college credits, which are used to determine federal financial aid, as “measuring the amount of work consisting of one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and at least two hours of student work outside the classroom over a set period of time.” Easier said than done.
Apparently many higher education associations are objecting to the new regulations. In a letter signed by representatives of 72 organizations, the American Council on Education writes that,
With this language, the Department of Education has federalized a basic academic concept and, at the same time, developed a complex, ambiguous and unworkable definition.
The concern is not that accreditors are expected to examine institutional policies with respect to credit hours. They have and will continue to do so. Rather, the issue is that with little evidence of a problem and no evidence that Congress wants the federal government to intervene in this area, the department intends to use accreditors to extend federal authority over academic decision-making on local campuses.
Furthermore, the ACE points out that that definition is sort of crappy. It really just measures how long students sit in classrooms and may well dissuade colleges from engaging in innovative, and potentially more effective, teaching.
While the letter’s points are all valid, ACE fails to establish what really the harm would be (to students, institutions, or taxpayers) if the Department implements its federal definition for credit hours.
Well, except for this part:
This… will impose enormous burdens on institutions as they attempt to interpret and apply the definition to all courses and on accreditors as they attempt to review these interpretations and their application within many diverse institutions. These tasks will require new levels of highly detailed and laborintensive compilation and evaluation. They will divert time and money from productive academic investment to detailed compliance reporting. Moreover, this effort will inevitably draw attention away from broader considerations of academic content and effectiveness.
The ACE and other signatories “request that the Secretary of Education rescind the regulation containing the credit hour definition.” This is unlikely to occur.
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Richard Claycombe on July 09, 2011 10:30 AM:
I took interest in this issue when the Dept of Ed said that colleges had to define their credits. You note that there is substantial concern among colleges. There may be concerns about administration costs, but the real reason probably has to do with contact time per credit. My school reduced contact time about fifteen years ago with the pretense that more work would be done outside of class. The NSSE has shown that most students don't come close to the Carnegie standard, much less doing more than that. Arum and Roska have a whole book about these issues. I found the initiative to scan the class schedules of the US News top 125 schools and found that the majority of these schools don't come close to requiring a 50 minute hour of contact time per credit. They give 4 credits where they should give 3. My school is in between, we have 60 minute class hours, so we're only 20 minutes light per week. I hope that the Ed Dept demands will move higher education back toward the day when more time was spent teaching and studying.