Easy degrees p1 - College Campus Life for Veterans - Military Times EDGE

When Coast Guard Senior Chief Information Systems Technician ITCS Anthony Borders started his online bachelor’s degree at Philadelphia’s Peirce College in January 2008, he did so with 90 of a required 120 graduation credits already under his belt. A full 15 of those credits came from military training received over the course of his 19-year Coast Guard career.

By contrast, when former Marine Corps Cpl. Jacobo Flores began attending George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., in spring 2007, he received no credits for military training from his four years on active duty.

Borders’ and Flores’ experiences highlight the vast differences in schools’ policies for the awarding of college credit for military training, education and experience — a practice receiving increased attention as the new Post-9/11 GI Bill set to take effect Aug. 1 is expected to drive higher numbers of veterans to college classrooms.

For service members heading back to school, the question is whether to choose a program that awards the most possible credits, or a preferred institution that may not.

How it works

The American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for all the nation’s higher education institutions, evaluates military training and experience and provided recommendations to colleges and universities for the awarding of equivalent academic credits for service members. More than 2,300 colleges and universities recognize these credits, which are documented through the Army/ACE Registry Transcript System (AARTS) and the Sailor/Marine/ACE Registry Transcript (SMART) system. The Air Force and Coast Guard maintain their own transcript service centers, through the Community College of the Air Force and the Coast Guard Institute, respectively.

Jim Selbe, assistant vice president of the ACE Center for Lifelong Learning, described the process for evaluating military training for college credit.

“It is a process that goes back to 1945,” Selbe said. “It represented the first time in American higher education that credit was awarded for [experiences and training] outside the classroom.”

Selbe emphasized that military evaluators are not ACE staff members or Defense Department employees. Rather, he said, they are independent college and university faculty members who are actively teaching. “We have a pool of approximately 3,000 academic faculty who are in a teaching position.”

In fiscal 2008, ACE review teams visited 35 military installations and reviewed 1,200 courses and 25 occupations. Selection of teams to evaluate courses, training and occupations is dependent on a close alignment of subject matter on the academic and military sides, Selbe said.

So, for example, if electronics technology courses were being evaluated, that evaluation would be performed not by, say, electronic engineering faculty, but by electronics technology faculty. “It’s very specific,” he said.

ACE uses the same rigorous review process for evaluating civilian workplace learning through the College Credit Recommendation Service.

But the ACE recommendations are just that — recommendations. Most schools have strict policies on the awarding of military credit, with caps on the total number of such credits awarded and rules governing whether they can be applied as elective or core program credits.

The number of accepted military credits also varies by student, depending on factors such as the service member’s chosen major and how well that major reflects his military service. An Army medic transferring to a nursing program, for example, might see credits transferred to his core program, while, say, a Navy cook majoring in history would not. Finally, some schools — even certain “military-friendly” Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (SOC) Consortium schools — choose not to accept military credits at all.

It all makes for confusion — and some controversy. On one hand, student service members and veterans sometimes have inflated expectations of the amount or type of military credits they will receive toward an academic degree, or that they will receive any such credit at all. On the other, critics of the practice of awarding military credits argue that it’s akin to receiving “something for nothing,” or that military training, education or experience is too complex and varied to be properly translated into college credit.

Credit confusion

While most service members are at least aware of the military credit benefit, experts agreed that misconceptions surrounding the practice are rampant.

“I think service members hear that they are going to get all these college credits. They just assume everyone out there is going to give them,” said Louis Martini, director of military education at Trenton, N.J.-based Thomas Edison State College — a SOC school that awards a maximum of 90 ACE-recommended military credits for bachelor’s degrees.

It’s an assumption Flores made when he decided to apply to George Mason University. Originally from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Flores said he returned home after leaving active duty in October 2006 and decided to apply to Mason because of its academic reputation. A civil and infrastructure engineering major, he found out only after being accepted that ACE-recommended military credits are considered for transfer only into the school’s Bachelor of Individualized Study program.

“What can you do once you get accepted?” he asked, adding, “Almost everyone has the assumption that your credits will transfer” under the Corps’ SOC degree program.

While Flores said he has absolutely no regrets about choosing to attend Mason, the sophomore — who has an associate degree from Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C., for which he received a full one-half of his required credits from military training — acknowledges it’s sometimes tough to think that he already could be finished with his bachelor’s degree if he had selected a school that accepted military credits.

James Sweizer, president of the Council of College and Military Educators and vice president of military programs at American Military University, said responsibility for finding out whether a school accepts military credit lies squarely on a student’s shoulders.

“They’re a consumer,” he said. “They need to go out and research the university they want to attend.”

CCME Immediate Past President Kathleen Connolly agreed.

“Go to your service’s education center, and become smart about some of the questions to ask,” Connolly said.

What you get

Sweizer said there’s also a great misunderstanding among some military students who think that just because ACE recommends credits, a school has to accept them.

“I think where the confusion lies is that some of them have so much credit,” he said, adding that it’s not uncommon for some longtime service members to accumulate 100 hours of military credit. “You’d be surprised at the people who think, ‘I have 100 hours. I only need 20 more to finish a degree.’”

The reality is not so simple. Because much military credit is so technically specific, it often is difficult to transfer into a degree program and thus ends up as elective credits.

“Once that elective area is filled up, there is nowhere else to adequately apply that credit,” said Sweizer, who estimates that 70 percent of the military training credit AMU transfers is in the elective area.

At Peirce, where Borders is a student, the most open electives offered in any program are nine, Dean of Enrollment Nadine Maher said.

“Students might have more military credit, but it’s not going to go toward their degree,” she said. “They still need those other core credits to earn their degree.”

“Most colleges award between 15 and 20 credits for military education,” said Connolly, who is also an education services officer at Fort Lewis, Wash. “That is pretty generous.”

The debate

On the other side of the fence are the arguments that some schools are too generous in awarding military credit, or that, in the interest of maintaining academic integrity, they should not award such credit at all.

Sweizer and Connolly contend that ACE’s military evaluation process is a rigorous one with a longtime reputation for thoroughness and dedication to academic integrity. Colleges can maintain credibility with regard to the awarding of military credit by allowing only those credits recommended by ACE.

“I think ACE pretty much establishes the benchmark for credibility,” Sweizer said.

Further, Connolly said, schools have their own reputations to consider. “They’re not going to jeopardize their accreditation or their body of students or reputation to award bogus credits,” she said.

As for the fear that a school might award too much military credit, Martini points out that many colleges require that a certain number of academic credits be earned from them. At Peirce College, for example, students must complete a minimum of 15 credits in their concentration through courses offered at the school. And at Mason, students must complete a minimum of 30 credit hours at the school in order to earn a bachelor’s.

Still, experts concede, there are some problems with the awarding of military credit. Former Marine Capt. Michael Johnson is a 17-year veteran of the Corps who now serves as Mason’s military and veterans liaison, a new position at the school. While Johnson is not opposed to the practice of awarding ACE-recommended military credits and said Mason currently is reviewing its own policy on the practice, he does see room for inconsistency and misuse under the current method.

Pointing to a 2006 Marine Corps Times story that uncovered widespread cheating on Marine Corps Institute exams, Johnson said that military training does not always have the highest level of academic integrity. And yet some MCI courses are worth up to three semester hours of credit, according to ACE recommendations. “What if (a Marine) didn’t really take the test — he just copied the answers?” Johnson said.

What’s more, Johnson asserts that ACE recommendations for credit are not always consistent from service to service for the same course. If a soldier completes airborne training, for example, he may be eligible for up to three hours of physical education credit. But if a sailor, airman or Marine completed the same training, he would not be eligible for any credit. “I think that is confusing to institutions,” Johnson said.

Finally, Connolly advises students to be cautious of schools that offer credit for things not listed on their official military transcripts, or that are not recognized in ACE’s military guide. “You should be leery of anything that sounds too good to be true,” she said.