Carnegie Foundation Study Recommends Sticking With Credit Hour - Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The credit hour is an inadequate unit for measuring student learning. Yet no better replacement for higher education’s gold standard has emerged, and getting rid of it right now would be risky. That’s the central theme of a high-profile report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Amy Laitinen, the deputy director for higher education at New America, a liberal thinktank, wrote an influential 2012 report that said the credit hour is to blame for several of higher education’s root problems. She wrote that it contributes to colleges rejecting transfer credits, for example, which wastes students’ time and money. Laitinen, who was on the study’s advisory committee, said the report does a good job of describing challenges around reliance on the credit hour. But she would have liked to see Carnegie use its clout to call for different learning standards. “It’s an excellent diagnosis of the problem without any prescription for change,” she said. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/29/carnegie-foundation-says-credit-hour-although-flawed-too-important-discard