Credit Hour (Still) Rules - Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

While WGU instead earned federal approval for students to receive financial aid for a competency-based education by using the existing credit-hour rule – theoretically blazing a trail that other colleges might follow -- none yet have. To higher education officials like Peter Smith, vice president for strategic initiatives at Kaplan Higher Education, those facts show that for all of policy makers’ stated enthusiasm about competency-based education and other forms of curricular innovation in higher education, roadblocks remain to any institution that wishes to try to break the link between the awarding of academic credit and the time a student spends in class (in person or online).