Every fall, a certain type of student appears on the Southern Virginia University campus in Buena Vista. They are older than the freshmen around them, frequently quieter, and occasionally have the subtle impression that they have already experienced a chapter of adulthood before picking up a textbook. missionaries who have returned. young veterans. Late-twenties mothers balancing a chemistry syllabus and a stroller. For years, they received the same treatment as everyone else at the university. That’s going to change.
Knight’s CREST, which stands for Credit for Recognized Experience, Service, or Training, is a program that SVU announced this week that allows students to receive academic credit for the years they spent engaging in activities other than attending lectures. Religious service, military service, volunteer work, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and even full-time caregiving and parenting. The figures are noteworthy. Religious service can earn up to 24 credits, divided between language proficiency and the actual service. Military experience is worth up to 42 credits. up to 12 using the more comprehensive Knight’s CREST assessment. That can mean arriving on campus more than a year ahead of schedule for a missionary who has returned from service in, say, Brazil or the Philippines.
In an interview with the Deseret News, SVU President Aaron Hale stated unequivocally that most colleges treat returned missionaries like eighteen-year-olds just out of high school, despite the fact that they have spent two years leading teams, working sixty-hour weeks, navigating foreign cultures, and learning to teach. There is a component to that. Anyone who has spent time with a missionary who has returned can attest to the subtle difference in their tone, meeting style, and time management. It’s debatable if a registrar’s spreadsheet can actually capture that, but the effort seems long overdue.
The mechanics are serious. After submitting an application and requesting an evaluation, students create a written, visual, and occasionally multimedia portfolio that documents what SVU refers to as Knight Launch-ready Competencies. It is reviewed by a faculty committee. The cost is $75. The NACE Career Readiness framework, which is utilized by accredited programs and employers nationwide, is a major source of inspiration for the portfolio approach. self-improvement, teamwork, professionalism, communication, critical thinking, and leadership. Although the vocabulary is well-known, it is still uncommon in higher education to apply it to a stay-at-home parent or a humanitarian aid worker.
SVU is not the only institution making an effort. Similar steps have been taken by the University of Utah. Three-year bachelor’s degrees have been proposed by Utah Valley University and Weber State. For at least ten years, smaller schools across the nation have been discreetly experimenting with prior-learning credit, frequently receiving conflicting feedback from faculty senates and accreditors. The explicit inclusion of caregiving, a category that has historically been absent from transcripts and is nearly exclusively carried out by women, feels different in this instance.
It’s difficult to ignore the timing. The state of American higher education is uncomfortable. Many regional colleges have low enrollment. The cost of tuition keeps going up. Families are calculating their debt and questioning whether four years is actually the best amount. Hale described it as “a moment of real reckoning,” and although a little dramatic, that description is accurate. Small private organizations are searching for ways to remain relevant without sacrificing what makes them unique, particularly those that are religiously affiliated.
Uncertainties exist. When a transcript shows twelve credits for, say, primary parenting, how will employers and graduate schools interpret it? Will accreditors at SACSCOC, which is in charge of SVU, find the portfolio review credible? According to the university, one student has already found out that he will graduate a year ahead of schedule and enroll in law school. That’s a tidy tale. The majority of stories are not very tidy.
Even so, there’s a feeling that something modest but genuine is being tested as you watch a small campus in the Shenandoah Valley attempt this, a campus that most Americans have never heard of. It’s unclear if it scales or just quietly works for the few hundred students who give it a try.
