Michael Heathfield mentioned a few weeks ago at our Assessment Committee meeting that the Federal Department of Education had come out with some new regulations related to a new definition of “Credit Hour.” I went looking and found this description, which, it seems, won’t affect us (or require any changes) to our current definition.
(At the meeting, we had a discussion about what our definition was–turns out, according to ICCB’s Administrative Rules (see page 41), that a credit hour is equal to 45 hours of learning, and it is assumed that two hours of learning outside of class is required for every hour of learning inside of class (i.e., 15 hours of contact time is equal to 45 hours of learning, which is equal to one credit hour).) The new regulations require that educational institutions that receive Federal Financial Aid have a clock to credit hour definition and that the definition require a minimum of 37.5 clock hours per credit hour and that the definition be approved by somebody, so we’re good on all of that.
More interesting is this little tug of war going on in New York about the general education curriculum and proposed changes aimed at easing the transferability of credits (in order to facilitate completion). The consistent moves toward simplification and standardization are troubling, aren’t they? May the gods forbid that anything be slightly complicated…
The Harold Lounge 