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.

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.)

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.

Related: The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges — and the economy 

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. 

Related: As colleges lose enrollment, some turn to one market that’s growing: Hispanic students

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.

Related: To fill ‘education deserts,’ more states want community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees

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.”

Related: A new way to help some college students: Zero percent, no-fee loans

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. 

Pennsylvania is facing among the nation’s most severe declines in the number of 18-year-old high school graduates. 

“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. 

Related: States want adults to return to college. Many roadblocks stand in the way 

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. 

Seventy percent of institutions require that students apply for admission and be accepted before learning whether credits for prior learning will be awarded. Eighty-five percent limit how many credits for prior learning a student can receive.

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, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.

This story about credit for prior learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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