Average tuition for a public university is more than $35,000 for four years, while students leave college with an average $29,400 in loans. Who wouldn’t get behind an effort to offer bachelor’s degrees that won’t shackle young people to debt for decades after they graduate?
For the last few years, state lawmakers and higher education leaders alike have been desperately trying to figure out a way to make that dream a reality, with varying degrees of success. Governors in Texas and Florida got more than two dozen state colleges to offer degrees for $10,000 or less in 2013, but both initiatives, which critics panned as a political gimmick, failed to catch on in other states.An innovative new program offered by a branch of Southern New Hampshire University may breathe new life into the $10,000 degree movement, however.The College for America, an online offshoot of SNHU, will launch the first-ever nationally available $2,500-per-year Bachelor’s degree this fall. It’s a milestone for the CFA, which previously launched a pilot Associate’s degree program in 2013. What sets this program apart from others is that its curriculum is competency-based, meaning it doesn't follow the traditional credit-based model most college students are used to.
Each competency represents a section of the course and there are 240 different competencies in all. For each competency completed, students take a series of pass/fail assessment tests as they go, rather than sitting for exams and earning credit hours based on their grades. For example, a communications major would have to pass a competency test in “how to leverage social media” and “how to conduct research,” among other skills.
“We’re really building a degree that’s designed to be as applicable as possible to the workplace,” says Colin Van Ostern, a spokesman for the college. “It’s a respected degree like you’d receive at any other school.”
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