In today’s rapidly evolving workforce landscape, higher education institutions face mounting pressure to demonstrate value, relevance and return on investment. Amid this challenge lies an underutilized strategy with remarkable potential: credit for prior learning.
We’ve long recognized CPL’s benefits for students. Learners who receive CPL credits are more likely to complete their degrees (49 percent vs. 27 percent for those without) and, on average, they earn 17.6 additional credits, finish nine to 14 months sooner and save between $1,500 and $10,200 in tuition costs (CAEL). But what’s often overlooked is CPL’s power to transform relationships between educational institutions and employers—creating a win-win-win for students, institutions and industry.
Beyond a Student Benefit
The traditional narrative around CPL emphasizes student advantages: increased enrollment, improved completion rates and reduced time to graduation. These metrics matter tremendously, but they tell only part of the story.
CPL can serve as a bridge between academia and industry, creating powerful new partnerships. When colleges and universities embrace robust CPL programs, they send a clear message to employers: We value the training and development you provide. Recognizing corporate training as creditworthy learning demonstrates respect for workplace knowledge and underscores higher education’s commitment to real-world relevance.
Employer and Workforce Gains
For employers, CPL validates that their internal training programs have academic merit. This recognition strengthens recruitment and retention efforts, as workers see clear pathways to advance their education without duplicating learning they’ve already mastered. Companies that invest in employee development also gain educational partners who understand industry needs and value the attributes that drive employee success.
The benefits extend further: Organizations with tuition remission or reimbursement programs can reduce costs while enhancing employee motivation and persistence.
Deeper Collaboration Between Higher Ed and Industry
As institutions evaluate workplace training for credit equivalency, they gain invaluable insights into industry practices and skill needs. This exchange allows colleges to refine curricula to better meet market demand, ensuring graduates possess the competencies employers seek—not just those defined within academic silos.
The hard but necessary conversations—between faculty and corporate training leaders—help ensure CPL evaluations are rigorous and relevant. Key questions include: Why include certain topics but not others? How do we know participants can demonstrate knowledge? Does the training align with broader disciplinary or leadership needs, or is it niche? These discussions strengthen both educational and workplace outcomes.
Reimagining CPL
The future of higher education lies in breaking down artificial barriers between academic and workplace learning. By embracing CPL as a cornerstone strategy—not only for student success but also for employer partnerships—institutions can position themselves at the nexus of education and employment.
This approach doesn’t diminish academic rigor; it expands our understanding of where and how meaningful learning occurs. Done well, CPL creates pathways that honor all learning, regardless of where it happens. And for learners, the message is clear: Your hard work counts.
Approximately 65 percent of the 1.2 million active-duty service members in the U.S. armed forces have less than an associate degree level of education, according to 2023 data; many of them hold some college credits but no degree. Federal aid programs make enrolling in college and earning a degree more accessible for military-affiliated students, but not every student is aware of academic interventions that can help them complete a credential sooner, including credit for prior learning.
A 2024 research article found that prospective students with military experience were most likely to prioritize academic programming when selecting a college, followed by financial assistance and affordability. CPL is one way colleges and universities seek to expedite student veterans’ ability to enroll in and graduate from college, recognizing the learning already accomplished while in the armed forces.
In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with three experts from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education—senior fellows Matt Bergman and Dallas Kratzer, and Tracy Teater, associate director of adult learner attainment—to discuss the state’s adult education attainment goals, challenges in CPL rollout and other models of success across the country.
An edited version of the podcast appears below.
Inside Higher Ed: Just to get us started, Matt, can you talk a little about the connection between credit for prior learning and adult learner success? What is that link and why is this an important starting point when it comes to engaging adult learners?
Matthew Bergman, senior fellow at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and an associate professor at the University of Louisville
Matt Bergman: Credit for prior learning has been around quite a long while, from the early 1930s to when we saw the transition of many military back into higher education. [We were] thinking about, how we could transition individuals that are work-ready but have some college-level and credit-worthy learning that would create more efficient pathways?
Credit for prior learning has been a huge benefit to so many of those folks with that experience. And this is just not experience alone; this is very thoroughly and rigorously assessed learning that we can translate and map directly to curriculum.
The University of Louisville was part of a 72-institution study by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning, or CAEL, and the CPL Boost came out with some really hard-hitting empirical evidence that not only do people get to graduation faster, but they graduate at a higher rate, and also those that actually engage in this work take more credit hours.
That might seem a bit counterintuitive, but what it boils down to is this idea that you increase retention and persistence by percentage points that create a net-positive revenue for institutions along the way. So the myth of taking away tuition from the university is gone. We’ve got empirical evidence that not only does it benefit students and they save money, but actually the institutions are making more money in the long term because they are creating paths that are efficient, meaningful and impactful for these adult learners, military and beyond.
Inside Higher Ed: Why are students with military experience a focus area when it comes to CPL?
Dallas Kratzer, senior fellow at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
Dallas Kratzer: The American Council on Education has done the evaluation of a lot of military workplace learning, which can include not only the courses they’ve taken in their military careers but also the learning that they’ve had on the job.
In the military, we have a lot of different types of things that we do, and ACE has evaluated many of those. In those evaluations, the great thing is, those types of jobs and skills line up to the civilian sector. About 85 percent of what we do in the military is done in the civilian sector. So, if we can get it right and benchmark off of what ACE has done, it makes it really easy for a higher ed institution to then step across the line to the civilian sector and say, “ACE evaluated it this way. This is how it looks in the civilian sector. We can take that same credit recommendation and make some linkage there.”
As a matter of fact, O*NET has a military jobs crosswalk to civilian jobs. So linking all of that together, and the program that Matt worked on at the University of Louisville, he and I both worked with it, they use it really heavily to make that crosswalk, or that linkage between those two.
Inside Higher Ed: Part of this is from the institution side—making it clear how military experience fulfills civilian responsibilities or those job functionalities. But there’s also making that linkage for the student; if you are somebody with military experience, maybe you haven’t considered the ways that that can translate into the transition outside the civilian world.
Kratzer: You are so on the mark with that comment, because so many folks in the military just see that they’re doing their job. I did 35 years in the Air Force and worked extensively with the Army in the later years, and [military personnel] often think that what they’ve learned on the job or the things that they are doing in their career fields are just that—a job. They don’t see the experiential learning that comes along with that and how that can be translated into college credit.
I’ve had times where I’ve worked with individuals, and I’m like, “So have you gone to college?” Yes, some of them have. “Have you completed a degree?” “No, but I’ve got some college.” And then about a third of them don’t even think about it, and they would say, “No, I don’t have any college [credit] at all.” I’m like, “Actually, you do. There’s this thing called a joint service transcript, and your workplace learning, your military courses have been evaluated, and you have this pot of credits that you need to take to your higher ed institution and say, ‘How does this translate into me completing my degree?’”
Inside Higher Ed: Kentucky has a large plan at the state level to support adults and nontraditional students; how does CPL fit into this vision of student success?
Tracy Teater, associate director of adult learner attainment
Tracy Teater: The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education is committed to supporting and improving learner pathways, both to access and then successfully complete postsecondary goals across the age continuum, whether that is a traditional or a post-traditional student. We recognize that supporting our adult learners—whether they be adults with high school equivalency diplomas, adults enrolling for the first time or adults re-enrolling to finish their degree—leads to increased economic mobility for them and their families, increased workforce for Kentucky, of course, and an increased college-going rate for the next generation.
Because our adult learners are often parents, I can’t stress that point enough: By investing in our adult learners and our adult learner returners, we are investing in those generations to come.
Credit for prior learning is a key part of Kentucky’s larger vision for student success. It removes barriers and accelerates pathways for those adults to earn meaningful credentials. That supports Kentucky’s 60 by 30 goal, our North Star, if you will.
To ensure 60 percent of working-age adults hold that postsecondary credential by 2030, it requires that we recognize the learning and experiences that our adults often bring with them from military service, from work, from industry certifications and from their life experiences. This saves tuition dollars for our families and increases return on investment, as Matt shared earlier on, for both the campus and the state. I think also important and sometimes overlooked in this conversation is the fact that it sends a powerful message to the learner that you belong on campus and you’re respected and valued for the college credit–worthy experiences you bring. And so this sense of belonging, I think, impacts persistence towards learning goals. And so CPL for Kentucky is not a stand-alone effort. It’s woven into the broader student success agenda as a way to re-engage adults, and it’s been really exciting to be a part of the work, because Kentucky has a demonstrated commitment to adult learners.
The goals of the Kentucky Student Success Collaborative are we want to set the conditions for a culture of collaboration, and we want to build capacities of our campus partners to innovate and then ultimately accelerate progress.
Kratzer: I’d like to make a comment or tag on to what Tracy just said about one part of that, and that is the tuition dollars and how we can reduce the cost of going to college or returning to college through credit for prior learning. But more importantly, to the military community, the thing that we need to keep in mind is if they have already earned the training and the learning, and we don’t recognize that in higher ed, we’re not being a good steward of the taxpayers’ dollars, because we’re having them go back and take training that they’ve already accomplished. So this is such an important aspect to that military credit recommendation.
Inside Higher Ed: We’ve laid out a lot of the reasons why CPL is so beneficial to the state, to the institution, to the student, to their families, to their future families. But if CPL were easy to do, everyone would be doing it, and they’d be doing it well. So I wonder if we can talk about some of those hurdles when it comes to implementing and executing CPL effectively, and what sort of resources and time it takes to do this work and to do it well.
Bergman: There are a number of barriers, because it is labor-intense. In some ways now, as a result of the American Council on Education, we have military acknowledgment and recommendations for these credits that make it very tangible, almost as though it is transfer credit for most institutions. But the portfolio process that goes beyond that is a bit more labor-intense and faculty-driven. So that is a bit of a barrier.
But what we are seeing as a result of the people on this call here—Dallas, Tracy and so many others that are doing research in this field—we have seen barriers declining. The skepticism of this whole process is starting to wane in a way that is creating pathways for us to reach other institutions in Kentucky, but also nationally. And that’s good. A lot of thanks goes to some of the seminal authors in this work, like Nan Travers and Becky Klein-Collins. These individuals have produced scholarship that has really rooted empirical proof that this is most valuable. It creates efficiency. It helps with tax dollars, and when you boil down all of the pieces and parts, it becomes very process-oriented and very standard in approach.
Now, that has been a long road getting to this moment. So when you talk about barriers, they have been there for so many years that they are starting to diminish, and we are so grateful for that—not only in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but beyond, because institutions and specifically faculty, which were the biggest barrier in acknowledgment of CPL, are starting to come onboard. Not only because of the demographic cliff, but also because of some of the skepticism that we have in higher education and the shortages that we have in enrollment now. [Faculty] are more likely open to this concept because we are taking this work, we are showing the process, we are showing a portfolio and we are being very transparent about how we calculate and assess learning and translate that to academic credit. In the moment that we do that, we show the robust process. We have new advocates for this work.
When we think about military personnel directly, we plug those individuals into some of those more traditional classes and disciplines, and those faculty are immediately like, “Bring every military learner into my class. They are so mission-driven. They are so committed to this goal of getting to the degree that I want every military learner in my classroom.”
When institutions become military-friendly, that’s when you see the pipeline. Because military folks are insular in their process of communicating about the programs that work well, that are very “military engaged,” to use the phrase from Dallas, but you have to be military engaged and ready for these learners if you’re going to serve them well. And more and more institutions are doing that, showing that commitment.
Kratzer: Just to add to what Matt’s talking about, this whole thing really boils down to awareness. And back in 2015, ACE and a couple of other organizations got together and produced this document called “Credit for Prior Learning: Charting Institutional Practice For Sustainability,” and they identified four major challenges: organizational structure, organizational awareness, student awareness and student engagement. When we see what the challenges are and then address those challenges, it’s really awareness. People just need to become more aware of the population and how what we do in the military can be translated to other sectors and other affinity groups and very easily done.
We’re in a spot right now in higher education. And Tracy alluded to this with the demographic cliff, that we see that adult learners have become a recognized population, and in that adult learner population are different subsets that we can engage with. I think the military one is the best one to start with, because so much of the work has been done and it’s just capitalizing on that. Additionally, the military community is a different set of learners. Military training is about learning, and in the military today, it is very technical thought processes, processing information, very much focused on that academic rigor. So that’s why they make some of the best students today, and anything that we can do to help attract them to our institutions will be incredibly beneficial for all of us.
Inside Higher Ed: We’ve mentioned CAEL and ACE and some other well-known organizations who are supporting this work, but are there other states that you’re learning from or other organizations that you think are doing this work well?
Bergman: One in particular is North Carolina, and through the Belk [Endowment], my buddy Mike Krause is making magic happen down there through InsideTrack and their connection to reconnecting learners that have some college and no degree, but also tying in CPL and then military-connected learners. They are going full force with the type of resources to really re-engage those learners and create a very clear path.
Oftentimes when trying to reconnect with people, they need to see how this might fit into a compartment of their lives. Because we know, as we serve these learners, they have No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 priorities and then education might come into the conversation [later]. So it’s really important for when we engage these types of learners, when we think about military learners, we have to understand that [education] is not likely priority No. 1.
I use this analogy of “Would you give up some streaming services or social media scrolling to the tune of four to five hours a week for a bachelor’s degree in two years?” And oftentimes people are going to say, “What do you mean? Of course I would.” And I say, “OK, let me break this down and work backwards,” and you look at the number of credits one can earn that they get from CPL, but also what they’ve accumulated thus far, and you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
States like North Carolina, Tennessee have done an absolutely wonderful job. California has gone all in on CPL as well, to really try and reconnect learners and show them that the light at the end of the tunnel is quite bright.
We learn from one another—these people are just colleagues in the weeds, really grinding, trying to find ways to really replicate and make it respective to our own institutions and just chop and drop these policies so that we really can scale and impact more and more learners. Now we have battled for years and years and years, and you can hear my passion in this, but we have fought the very traditional mechanisms of institutions, and we are starting to break down so many of those barriers, partially because of the demographic cliff, partially because of some of the skepticism. But as Dallas said, adult learners, military learners are on the forefront. We are at the table for traditional higher ed, and that is a huge change in such a benefit for these learners, because there are new funding models, there are scholarships, grants and then CPL, creating efficiency that we just didn’t have 15 years ago.
Kratz: A couple of organizations that I think are doing some interesting work here … the Council of College and Military Educators. They do an amazing job at bringing the senior leadership of the Department of Education, Department of Labor, Veterans Affairs, all these folks together to talk about education related to the military community.
One that I see as a rising star is NASPA Vets. They have a military-connected students conference every year. I was very excited to see what they’re doing, because it’s helping student affairs administrators to better understand the military population, and part of this is this whole awareness and how we can serve that community.
Of course, Student Veterans of America, it’s a great organization to have on your campus. The work they’re doing in getting the word out to service members is so important … “Hey, come and be in higher education, because we have space for you. This is part of your culture and you can be part of it through this student organization.”
Some states to add on to what Matt was saying about Tennessee and California: Ohio started this thing called Collegiate Purple Star, and I think we need to do that across the country. The reason for that is everybody’s military-friendly right now, but with both Ohio and Indiana’s Collegiate Purple Star, it’s about not only being military-friendly, but military-ready, meaning that you’ve gone the extra mile and you’ve created the pathways to degree completion for service members based on their experiential learning that they’ve had during their military careers.
Inside Higher Ed: How are you all tracking effectiveness and the impact of the work that you’re doing? What does it mean to apply data to CPL for military-affiliated students? What are some of those metrics that you’re tracking?
Teater: I would back up one step to say that data alignment has been a gap that we have learned firsthand about during this pilot. One of the things that we know is that across the broader CPL opportunities, our campus partners are tracking that in different ways, which means that it is a definite gap of how we can track impact as a state without having aligned ways to do that. I wouldn’t call it a challenge; I think I’d call it an opportunity. But it’s something that we definitely want to end this with state recommendations so that we can do a really, really good job of tracking all types of CPL across the state. That’s one gap we’ve seen that I think we will be able to end this with a definite solution to and again, looking at some of our neighboring states and how they’ve been able to address that.
Bergman: It’s important to note that the state work that we’re engaged in, the CPL Council on Postsecondary Education initiative, we are collecting data around metrics directly in growth of CPL, total numbers of credits earned, those programs that are offering them—so additional programs beyond just single adult-friendly programs at institutions—and then actually the number of humans that are connected in the work, so hiring individuals that are responsible for CPL and tracking data through the institutional research office.
We are seeing great growth there, but this is also a direct by-product of what we are seeing in the field, in research and scholarship. I did my dissertation roughly 15 years ago, and it was a really challenging enterprise to find empirical work and scholarship that would really drive my dissertation forward, looking at adult military persistence. What I see today, as I am looking at journals almost daily, is new articles, new empirical pieces and new national work and research that is popping up almost monthly now that is focused on these populations. It is such a boon to our work, because individuals are doing this work, not only for their dissertations, but in their research and scholarship field.
There were not a lot of folks doing this work many years ago, but now we have a new crop of young people jumping in as advocates and allies of military and adult learners, and it truly is making a direct impact, because we have data to lean on and say, “Here is empirical proof of how this directly impacts this individual program or this particular state or this region,” and using that to guide a lot of our push and our nudging that we do, both in Kentucky and beyond, to make institutions think differently about how they formalize policy to really attract these folks and know that they can get them to and through more efficiently.
Kratzer: ACE and CAEL just partnered together to do the national landscape of credit for prior learning, talking about how states are making those recommendations. And I think there’s a lot of work to be done yet to help states, particularly at the legislative position, to understand how to help systems better collect the information. Because from the state, we hear them say, “Yes, you must accept military credit recommendations.” And the schools go, “OK, we accepted, but we don’t apply it well.” We need to be better at counting how we apply it so that we can provide back better information to say, “It does. It is valued in our state. It’s not just brought in as elective credit, but it’s brought in as degree credit that will accelerate degree completion,” and we’re not tracking that as well as I think we could.
Inside Higher Ed: I think you bring up a really valuable point there about the different types of credit. Just because it’s accepted doesn’t necessarily mean it’s helpful to the student in their specific career goal. But I think making sure that all credit is recognized and supported as part of a degree pathway is definitely the next step that we need to see.
Bergman: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we have nearly 150 institutions involved in the prior learning assessment network. So for listeners that are checking in on this particular podcast, you can say, “Hey, I’m going to connect with Dallas,” or “I’m going to reach out to Matt and join this prior learning assessment network and hear from these institutions that are doing this work on the ground.” Each month, it costs zero money—we have a featured individual from an institution talking about, whether it be marketing or military credit recommendation or policy implementation or the admissions process in CPL; we are looking at all angles of CPL through the prior learning assessment network from people on the ground.
Inside Higher Ed: That’s amazing. I love especially when we can talk about different institution sizes and types, because what works for one institution might not be easy to do at another.
Bergman: And the best part of that is it’s free. We are not charging individuals. We are just a community of committed professionals that have been working for so many years trying to make an impact, and now we see our crop of individuals growing and growing every single month.
Inside Higher Ed: I want to hear more about what’s next for the state as you all consider adult learners and that lofty goal of 60 percent attainment.
Teater: Matt laid it out beautifully from a national perspective; from a Kentucky perspective, we hope to do the exact same thing.
We are exploring ways to align data collection efforts so we can accurately gauge impact across the state, impact for the institutions and then impact, of course, for the adult learner. We also hope to explore ways to align and standardize credit mobility across our two-year and four-year campuses, so that credit earned at one institution can be recognized at another, so that our two-year graduates can seamlessly transfer to our four-year campuses, and then this will lead to state standards and policies to further support CPL efforts. We’re looking to some of our neighboring states on best practices there.
Then finally, we are, in the fall, launching our Kentucky Adult Attainment Network, from which we will convene a state working group and community of practice to continue to build champions for the work, but also share resources, best practices and be able to offer up policy recommendations that will enact to further address this key part of our adult learner action plan.
Inside Higher Ed: Do you have any advice or insight for others looking to support military-affiliated learners?
Kratzer: I think the big thing that my peers need to know and to understand about the military community is that there’s a significant amount of learning that they gain from their military experience. However, the service member doesn’t always appreciate it the way that we as academics can understand it. They just say, “Hey, I was just doing my job.”
Well, that job has worth and value beyond what you did when you were in the service. There’s so much more we can do. The leadership training that they get—business and industry are just dying for that kind of professional development, so let’s recognize it. Let’s help them to see how they can transition to the civilian sector and bring those great learning skills into the workplace and into higher education.
Bergman: CPL for military and beyond is being done very effectively. If your institution is not doing it perfect or is not even involved, it is being done and there are so many people that are ready to provide open-source information, policy practice, forms, strategies, techniques and nuanced information to your institution directly for free, so that you can engage in this work without having to start from scratch. So to boil it down, you don’t have to start from scratch. So many institutions are doing so well in this work, and if you want to engage, just reach out and we will plug you into the prior learning assessment network or any type of forums at the University of Louisville or share data or information that we use in the state of Kentucky’s CPL initiative. We are ready to share these things because it matters and it’s impactful.
Teater: The awareness is critical, and that’s awareness across states, across institutions and within institutions. One of the things that we have seen is sometimes just a gap in awareness on what’s possible, what’s available and then how best to pull the technical levers to make those things happen for students. So I would say every single conversation that we come out of, we learn something new, and hopefully others learn something new as well. And I just think that that awareness can’t be underestimated.
Title: College Enrollment Patterns Are Changing. New Data Show Applicant and Admit Pools Are Too.
Authors: Jason Cohn, Bryan J. Cook, Victoria Nelson
Source: Urban Institute
Since 2020 the world of higher education has changed drastically. Higher education has seen the effects of COVID-19, the end of race-conscious admissions, significant delays in student awards from the new FAFSA, and changing federal and state policy towards DEI.
The Urban Institute, in collaboration with the Association of Undergraduate Education at Research Universities, University of Southern California’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice, and in partnership with 18 institutions of higher education aimed to fill data gaps seen in potential shifts in racial demographic profiles of students who applied for, were admitted to, and enrolled in four-year IHEs between 2018-2024.
The data analysis found that trends in applicant, admit, and enrollee profiles varied greatly by race and ethnicity. Despite differences in data trends, all IHEs found an increase in the number of students who chose not to disclose their race or ethnicity in 2024.
The analysis found substantial changes to Black applicant, admit, and enrollee data. Among Black students at selective institutions (defined by an acceptance rate of below 50 percent) there were differences between 2023 and 2024 of the share of applicants (8.3 percent to 8.7 percent) and admits (6.6 percent to 5.9 percent). This is contrasted further due to the differences between the share of Black applicants and admits between 2021 to 2023, which stayed relatively consistent.
The analysis took note of a change in trends for White students as well. White students represented the only student group that consistently made up a larger share of admits than applicants (six to nine percentage points larger); despite the fact that White students demonstrated a consistent decrease in applicant, admit, and enrollee groups since 2018.
The analysis concludes that ultimately more data is needed at every point in the college admissions process. Enrollment data gives limited insight into the very end of the process and if more data is gathered throughout a student’s journey to college, then we can better grasp how all different types of students are interacting with higher education.
PITTSBURGH — Stephen Wells was trained in the Air Force to work on F-16 fighter jets, including critical radar, navigation and weapons systems whose proper functioning meant life or death for pilots.
Yet when he left the service and tried to apply that expertise toward an education at Pittsburgh’s Community College of Allegheny County, or CCAC, he was given just three credits toward a required class in physical education.
Wells moved forward anyway, going on to get his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees. Now he’s CCAC’s provost and involved in a citywide project to help other people transform their military and work experience into academic credit.
What’s happening in Pittsburgh is part of growing national momentum behind letting students — especially the increasing number who started but never completed a degree — cash in their life skills toward finally getting one, saving them time and money.
Colleges and universities have long purported to provide what’s known in higher education as credit for prior learning. But they have made the process so complex, slow and expensive that only about 1 in 10 students actually completes it.
Many students don’t even try, especially low-income learners who could benefit the most, according to a study by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, or CAEL.
“It drives me nuts” that this promise has historically proven so elusive, Wells said, in his college’s new Center for Education, Innovation & Training.
Stephen Wells, provost at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. An Air Force veteran, Wells got only a handful of academic credits for his military experience. Now he’s part of an effort to expand that opportunity for other students. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
That appears to be changing. Nearly half of institutions surveyed last year by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, or AACRAO, said they have added more ways for students to receive these credits — electricians, for example, who can apply some of their training toward academic courses in electrical engineering, and daycare workers who can use their experience to earn degrees in teaching.
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The reason universities and colleges are doing this is simple: Nearly 38 million working-age Americans have spent some time in college but never finished, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Getting at least some of them to come back has become essential to these higher education institutions at a time when changing demographics mean that the number of 18-year-old high school graduates is falling.
“When higher education institutions are fat and happy, nobody looks for these things. Only when those traditional pipelines dry up do we start looking for other potential populations,” said Jeffrey Harmon, vice provost for strategic initiatives and institutional effectiveness at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey, which has long given adult learners credit for the skills they bring.
Being able to get credit for prior learning is a huge potential recruiting tool. Eighty-four percent of adults who are leaning toward going back to college say it would have “a strong influence” on their decision, according to research by CAEL, the Strada Education Foundation and Hanover Research. (Strada is among the funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.)
The Center for Education, Innovation & Training at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is part of a citywide effort to give academic credit for older students’ life experiences. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
When Melissa DiMatteo, 38, decided to get an associate degree at CCAC to go further in her job, she got six credits for her previous training in Microsoft Office and her work experience as everything from a receptionist to a supervisor. That spared her from having to take two required courses in computer information and technology and — since she’s going to school part time and taking one course per semester — saved her a year.
“Taking those classes would have been a complete waste of my time,” DiMatteo said. “These are things that I do every day. I supervise other people and train them on how to do this work.”
On average, students who get credit for prior learning save between $1,500 and $10,200 apiece and nearly seven months off the time it takes to earn a bachelor’s degree, the nonprofit advocacy group Higher Learning Advocates calculates. The likelihood that they will graduate is 17 percent higher, the organization finds.
Justin Hand dropped out of college because of the cost, and became a largely self-taught information technology manager before he decided to go back and get an associate and then a bachelor’s degree so he could move up in his career.
He got 15 credits — a full semester’s worth — through a program at the University of Memphis for which he wrote essays to prove he had already mastered software development, database management, computer networking and other skills.
“These were all the things I do on a daily basis,” said Hand, of Memphis, who is 50 and married, with a teenage son. “And I didn’t want to have to prolong college any more than I needed to.”
Meanwhile, employers and policymakers are pushing colleges to speed up the output of graduates with skills required in the workforce, including by giving more students credit for their prior learning. And online behemoths Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University, with which brick-and-mortar colleges compete, are way ahead of them in conferring credit for past experience.
“They’ve mastered this and used it as a marketing tool,” said Kristen Vanselow, assistant vice president of innovative education and partnerships at Florida Gulf Coast University, which has expanded its awarding of credit for prior learning. “More traditional higher education institutions have been slower to adapt.”
It’s also gotten easier to evaluate how skills that someone learns in life equate to academic courses or programs. This has traditionally required students to submit portfolios, take tests or write essays, as Hand did, and faculty to subjectively and individually assess them.
Now some institutions, states, systems and independent companies are standardizing this work or using artificial intelligence to do it. The growth of certifications from professional organizations such as Amazon Web Services and the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, has helped, too.
“You literally punch [an industry certification] into our database and it tells you what credit you can get,” said Philip Giarraffa, executive director of articulation and academic pathways at Miami Dade College. “When I started here, that could take anywhere from two weeks to three months.”
Data provided by Miami Dade shows it has septupled the number of credits for prior learning awarded since 2020, from 1,197 then to 7,805 last year.
“These are students that most likely would have looked elsewhere, whether to the [online] University of Phoenix or University of Maryland Global [Campus]” or other big competitors, Giarraffa said.
Fifteen percent of undergraduates enrolled in higher education full time and 40 percent enrolled part time are 25 or older, federal data show — including people who delayed college to serve in the military, volunteer or do other work that could translate into academic credit.
“Nobody wants to sit in a class where they already have all this knowledge,” Giarraffa said.
At Thomas Edison, police academy graduates qualify for up to 30 credits toward associate degrees. Carpenters who have completed apprenticeships can get as many as 74 credits in subjects including math, management and safety training. Bachelor’s degrees are often a prerequisite for promotion for people in professions such as these, or who hope to start their own companies.
The University of Memphis works with FedEx, headquartered nearby, to give employees with supervisory training academic credit they can use toward a degree in organizational leadership, helping them move up in the company.
The University of North Carolina System last year launched its Military Equivalency System, which lets active-duty and former military service members find out almost instantly, before applying for admission, if their training could be used for academic credit. That had previously required contacting admissions offices, registrars or department chairs.
Among the reasons for this reform was that so many of these prospective students — and the federal education benefits they get — were ending up at out-of-state universities, the UNC System’s strategic plan notes.
“We’re trying to change that,” said Kathie Sidner, the system’s director of workforce and partnerships. It’s not only for the sake of enrollment and revenue, Sidner said. “From a workforce standpoint, these individuals have tremendous skill sets and we want to retain them as opposed to them moving somewhere else.”
California’s community colleges are also expanding their credit for prior learning programs as part of a plan to increase the proportion of the population with educations beyond high school.
“How many people do you know who say, ‘College isn’t for me?’ ” asked Sam Lee, senior advisor to the system’s chancellor for credit for prior learning. “It makes a huge difference when you say to them that what they’ve been doing is equivalent to college coursework already.”
In Pittsburgh, the Regional Upskilling Alliance — of which CCAC is a part — is connecting job centers, community groups, businesses and educational institutions to create comprehensive education and employment records so more workers can get credit for skills they already have.
That can provide a big push, “especially if you’re talking about parents who think, ‘I’ll never be able to go to school,’ ” said Sabrina Saunders Mosby, president and CEO of the nonprofit Vibrant Pittsburgh, a coalition of business and civic leaders involved in the effort.
“Our members are companies that need talent,” Mosby said.
There’s one group that has historically pushed back against awarding credit for prior learning: university and college faculty concerned it might affect enrollment in their courses or unconvinced that training provided elsewhere is of comparable quality. Institutions have worried about the loss of revenue from awarding credits for which students would otherwise have had to pay.
That also appears to be changing, as universities leverage credit for prior learning to recruit more students and keep them enrolled for longer, resulting in more revenue — not less.
“That monetary factor was something of a myth,” said Beth Doyle, chief of strategy at CAEL.
Faculty have increasingly come around, too. That’s sometimes because they like having experienced students in their classrooms, Florida Gulf Coast’s Vanselow said.
Still, while many recognize it as a recruiting incentive, most public universities and colleges have had to be ordered to confer more credits for prior learning by legislatures or governing boards. Private, nonprofit colleges remain stubbornly less likely to give it.
More than two-thirds charge a fee for evaluating whether other kinds of learning can be transformed into academic credit, an expense that isn’t covered by financial aid. Roughly one in 12 charge the same as it would cost to take the course for which the credits are awarded.
Debra Roach, vice president for workforce development at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is working on giving academic credit to students for their military, work and other life experience. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
There are other confounding roadblocks and seemingly self-defeating policies. CCAC runs a noncredit program to train paramedics, for example, but won’t give people who complete it credits toward its for-credit nursing degree. Many leave and go across town to a private university that will. The college is working on fixing this, said Debra Roach, its vice president of workforce development.
It’s important to see this from the students’ point of view, said Tracy Robinson, executive director of the University of Memphis Center for Regional Economic Enrichment.
“Credit for prior learning is a way for us to say, ‘We want you back. We value what you’ve been doing since you’ve been gone,’ ” Robinson said. “And that is a total game changer.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected]orjpm.82 on Signal.
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Adult learners often come to higher education with a variety of skills and experiences that aren’t directly reflected in their academic transcripts. Credit for prior learning (CPL) is one way colleges and universities can recognize education outside of the classroom and expedite a student’s degree completion.
An April 14 webinar hosted by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning highlighted effective strategies for implementing credit for prior learning at four historically Black institutions: Elizabeth City State University, Atlanta Metropolitan State College, Morgan State University and Delaware State University.
Campus leaders shared the value of CPL policies, described how they’ve collaborated with various stakeholders at their institutions and provided logistical details for making CPL accessible for students and manageable for faculty.
Understanding the need: The administrators spoke of the importance of offering credit for prior learning to working adults seeking a credential.
“What we realized is that if you really want to continue to grow your enrollment, high school graduates cannot be the only population you serve,” said Farrah Ward, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.
One of the signature programs at her institution is a bachelor’s degree in aviation science. A significant number of students who enroll in the program already hold a private pilot’s license, but in the past they had to take repetitive courses to fulfill degree requirements. By offering CPL, the university is now able to recognize aviation students’ licenses and reduce redundancies in their course load.
Gaining buy-in: Before launching CPL, leaders at Elizabeth City State held an event for faculty and staff to talk about how to better serve adult learners in all departments and areas of the student experience.
The university also leveraged the expertise of various campus departments, including faculty, admissions professionals, military and veterans’ affairs staff, and student affairs leaders, Ward said.
Partnering with faculty members is key to a successful CPL process, Ward said, and can mean rolling out CPL in small measures to ensure frameworks are supported by professors and aligned with the respective learning outcomes for the discipline.
Atlanta Metropolitan State College has a CPL committee, which includes four faculty members to maintain the faculty voice in decision-making, said Kokila Ravi, director of online and specialized programs.
State policyalso drives the implementation of CPL. North Carolina uses a performance-based funding model, and Elizabeth City State is evaluated on how it increases the adult learner population on campus, tying CPL directly to institutional health and funding.
Similarly, Maryland state law requires higher education institutions to offer some form of competency-based learning or credit for prior learning, said Nicole Westrick, assistant vice president and dean of Morgan State University’s College of Interdisciplinary and Continuing Studies.
Creating early awareness: Alerting studentsof CPL opportunities is key, panelists said. “Most times [the admissions team] is the first point of contact, and when they are having those conversations with potential students, we let them know that CPL is an option,” said Rolanda Harris, director of adult and continuing education at Delaware State University.
Elizabeth City State is piloting an adult learner orientation tailored toward students ages 25 and over this fall, Ward said, during which staff will specifically talk about CPL.
Morgan State hosts intensive advising appointments with incoming students, in which advisers discuss CPL and the university’s transfer evaluation system.
Easing access: College leaders also shared innovations their campuses have implemented to reduce barriers to access for learners interested in taking advantage of CPL.
Morgan State offers students the option to enroll in a two-credit elective course to help them create a portfolio. “They participate in a peer review, practice their writing, preparing the portfolio, and when they’re finished, there’s a staff review of the portfolio to make sure that they’ve done a good job of aligning that prior learning experience with the learning outcomes from courses at Morgan State,” Westrick said.
Morgan State also creates digital rubrics for faculty members reviewing the portfolio, “so that it eases the cognitive load for our faculty in finding what they’re looking for; it always follows the same format,” Westrick said.
Some of the colleges offer a wide range of applications for CPL, requiring the students to earn a certain number of credits from the institution for their degree while allowing CPL to take the place of general education and major courses.
Funding CPL: Morgan State received a $5,000 grant from the American Council on Education to standardize and scale CPL on campus. Atlanta Metropolitan State received a $25,000 grant from the Adult Learning Consortium and the University System of Georgia to kick-start the process.
Some panelists said they charge a fee for portfolio assessment, for which the average student pays between $150 and $250. A few campus leaders said they provide a stipend to faculty for reviewing portfolios, while others offer the service pro bono.
Being mission-minded: For institutions considering implementing CPL, Ward said it’s important to start somewhere, even if it seems daunting. In the same vein, remaining flexible and understanding that CPL policies may have to pivot is important, said Harris. “I would just say, ‘Stay open.’”
Westrick said starting with the institutional mission in mind is critical, because that helps ground the process in understanding who will benefit from the policy and how it can make meaningful changes in their educational goals.
Utilizing faculty champions to advertise the offering and encourage students to take advantage of CPL is another lesson to learn, Ravi said. “We are still struggling to get the word out and get students to know about it. That’s why we are relying heavily on our faculty to promote the process.”
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NASHVILLE – Entering college with prior learning credits can be a huge boon to students, cutting down on the time and money required to complete their degrees. But the pathways to earning these credits may favor traditional college students from well-resourced high schools.
Since 2020, leaders from Salt Lake Community College have worked to improve prior learning credit options for prospective and current students, they told attendees Monday at the American Association of Community Colleges‘ annual conference in Nashville. The college put a special emphasis on pathways for adult learners — those aged 25 and older — as the average student on its eight campuses is 25 years old.
Over the past five years, the resulting cross-campus collaboration has yielded Salt Lake Community College some promising results, including more students receiving credit for their work experience and lowered financial barriers for prior learning assessment exams.
Then
In 2019, the Utah Legislature passed a law requiring the state’s higher ed board to create a plan aimed at boosting public colleges’ issuance of credit for prior learning, work-based skills and competency-based assessments.
Salt Lake Community College — which enrolls just under 37,000 credit-bearing students across eight campuses — began an evaluation of its process for awarding prior learning credits the following year.
Rachel Lewis, Salt Lake Community College’s associate provost of academic systems, said the existing process turned out to be hardly a process at all.
“It used to be, if you knew the one advisor who knew the process and could talk to this person in the registrar’s office, we could get your prior learning,” she said. “Good for the students who found it — not good for all the others.”
The college’s leaders also uncovered a gap in what kind of credits were awarded.
In 2019-20, about 80% of the prior learning credits that Salt Lake Community College awarded were through pathways typically used by high school students, said Andrea Tipton, the institution’s director of credit for prior learning.
For instance, 807 of the 1,291 students who received prior learning credits earned them through Advanced Placement tests offered by the College Board.
In comparison, only 13 students that year received credit for their professional certifications or licenses, and just one student earned credit for their previous work experience and portfolio.
Now
To address this disconnect, Salt Lake Community College standardized its prior learning credit process. That included a new hire.
“We made a crucial decision to create a position at the college dedicated to prior learning — one person at the college who could be the point of contact to serve in that role,” Lewis said, nodding to Tipton, who was hired for the new role.
Salt Lake Community College now emphasizes credits for prior learning as an option through improved communications to students. The institution also works to inform students that it’s free to have their credits evaluated and added to their transcripts.
Once a prior learning credit is added to a student’s transcript, it is transferable as if they earned it at Salt Lake Community College, according to college policy.
“When that student goes to the University of Utah, it’s now considered transfer credit,” Lewis said. “They don’t reevaluate it. They don’t look at it.”
Roughly three-fourths of Salt Lake Community College graduates, 72%, go on to transfer to a four-year institution.
The college is also highlighting CLEP tests, an exam option offered by the College Board open to learners ages 13 and older.
The tests can provide a viable alternative to AP tests. But the registration fee — upwards of $95 in 2025 — proved to be a barrier for many students, Tipton said.
This year, Salt Lake Community College began directing students to the Modern States Education Alliance, anonprofit that will cover test costs for students who complete its free prep courses.
First-year results are still pending, Tipton said. But the college is processing more CLEP exams than before, suggesting more students are taking advantage now that the financial barrier to testing has been addressed, she said.
In 2023-24, the college awarded 248 credits to 33 students for their professional licenses and certifications. This represented nearly triple the prior learning credits students earned this way only a few years before.
It granted another 100 credits to 18 students for their work portfolios and experience. The number is still low, but the jump from just one or two students a year is statistically significant,Tipton said. And it’s a population the college wants to grow.
One prior learning pathway more commonly used by nontraditional students has seen a more complicated transformation — military credits.
Back in 2019-20, Salt Lake Community College appeared to do quite well in this regard, with 137 students receiving a whopping 2,184 prior learning credits for military experience that year.
“But it was a lot of electives,” Tipton said. “It wasn’t easily applicable to their degree or transferable in a meaningful way.”
Since then, military prior learning credits have declined significantly, down to 34 students receiving 46 credits in 2023-24.
That drop resulted from the college shifting from “awarding just whatever the credit you can get” to prioritizing military credits that go toward a student’s desired degree, Tipton said. She is now working with academic departments to continue establishing better course equivalencies for military experience.
Two efforts to extend collective bargaining rights to college athletes have been withdrawn in recent weeks in anticipation of the Trump administration taking control of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
On December 31, 2024, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team withdrew their petition to unionize. Members of the team overwhelmingly voted in March 2024 to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The vote came one month after an NLRB regional director ruled that the players were employees of the college and were thus eligible to unionize.
Additionally, on January 10, 2025, the National College Players Association (NCPA) withdrew its case against the University of Southern California, the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA. In the original complaint, the NCPA claimed the three plaintiffs violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by misclassifying the student-athletes as non-employees. They also argued all three plaintiffs were joint employers of the student-athletes.
Both of these efforts were pursued after NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memorandum arguing that student-athletes are employees under the NLRA and are therefore afforded all statutory protections as prescribed under the law. The incoming administration will likely rescind the memorandum, halting or at least hindering unionization efforts among student-athletes.
The decision to withdraw both petitions is likely meant to avoid an unfavorable outcome and precedent from a soon-to-be Republican-controlled NLRB. The SEIU explained in a statement following their withdrawal request that they sought “to preserve the precedent set by this exceptional group of young people on the men’s varsity basketball team.”
CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of any updates related to student-athlete employment classification and unionization.
On February 8, CUPA-HR and 14 higher education organizations sent a letter to the Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD)’s Acting Administrator Jessica Looman requesting that the agency engage in stakeholder meetings with the higher education community during the initial stages of the rulemaking process for the anticipated overtime rule.
In December 2021, the DOL announced in its Fall Regulatory Agenda that it plans to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) this April to update the salary level to qualify for the executive, administrative and professional employee exemptions (collectively known as “white collar” or “EAP” exemptions) to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s overtime pay requirements. In 2015, the Obama administration’s DOL proposed an increase to the threshold of over 100 percent from $23,660 to $50,440 per year. After the comment period ended, the DOL issued a final rule in 2016 that would have increased the level to $47,476. The rule was stayed and then overturned by a federal court in 2017; however the Trump administration DOL reevaluated the rule in light of the litigation and issued a new rule in 2019 that increased the salary threshold starting January 1, 2020, to $35,568 per year.
While the DOL has not publicly stated the salary threshold increase it is considering for the April NPRM, members of Congress and advocates have recommended that the Biden administration DOL increase the threshold by over 100 percent to at least to $82,732 by 2026.
Given the likelihood that the DOL is feeling significant pressure from certain stakeholders to pursue a robust increase, CUPA-HR drafted the letter highlighting higher education’s significant involvement with DOL’s prior rulemakings in 2016 and 2019 and the particular concerns institutions harbored with the 100 percent increase to the salary threshold in 2016. It further explains that due to the pandemic-related workforce changes across colleges and universities, the DOL must hold stakeholder meetings with our community before issuing the anticipated overtime NPRM — as was done in 2004, 2014 to 2015, and 2019.
CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of any actions taken by the DOL as it moves forward with the overtime rule.
