The Rise of Colleges without Classes or Professors

[Tedium]

I remember back in 2008, before I knew about this forum and before I actually knew how far the alternative credit rabbit hole went, I found a College Board CLEP poster in my first B&M advisor’s office Up until then, I thought to “CLEP” a course meant to score high enough on the ACT to not have to take introductory courses in math and English. Like a school challenge exam or something. I also knew about AP, but knew I missed the boat with that by not graduating high school. I found the list of courses you could CLEP out of and I was like a kid in a candy store. That school only accepted 30 CLEP credits, but that was plenty enough for me, and I was hooked. I took my first exam, US History 1, in early November. I then took two CLEPS in one day, five days later, US History 2 and Freshman College Comp.

I remember bringing that third passing score sheet, the second that day, to my advisor so she could add the course to my degree plan. She was a little hunched older woman and she looked up at me with wide eyes and asked me in a very quiet and serious tone, “Are you going to test out of your whole degree?” She wasn’t encouraging or proud of my scholastic achievement, she was concerned. Maybe even a little frightened for me that I was missing out on some fundamental facet of life. Like I was that kid at school on water balloon fun day that was proud he hadn’t gotten wet. In her eyes I was missing the point of college.

I read a lot of that same fear and concern in that article. It’s a lot of educators fearful of the changing times. They are worried they are being made redundant, useless, in this new modern landscape. The only crutch they have to lean on, the last and greatest reason one could ever want to educate themselves, is the personal touch of a professor led classroom. Well, that’s all well and good, but in my time in B&M institutions I have encountered more uncaring, unmotivated, and absentee professors than I have the life changing variety.

I’m not trying to demonize butt-in-seat classes, but there is a lot that goes along with them that is unecessary. That fact wouldn’t bother me so much if the whole crazy thing weren’t so damn expensive. If I’m going to be paying you thousands of dollars then I expect you to deliver your product in the most efficient manner possible. That’s just economics 101. I don’t want to stand on tradition when all I need is to check a box for employers.

There are still subjects that can benefit greatly from having classroom discussions and I don’t want those to go away. But these competency based programs are delivering subject that lend themselves well to the format: Business, CS, etc. I might feel more weird if they had English, Fine Arts, or Philosophy degrees available, but they don’t.

We say we want to raise the next generation of innovative change leaders, but how can that even happen if we are too hung up on tradition to change the ways that we are delivering their education to them?