Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 25

Ben Castleman, who founded and runs the Nudge4 Solutions Lab out of the University of Virginia, has taken the concept a step further. In 2011, he realized he could use texting to
address the national phenomenon known as "summer melt,"
in which low-income students sign up for college after graduating from high school but don't show up in the fall. His idea was
that texting students to remind them to fill out pre-enrollment
paperwork would increase the likelihood that they started college on time. Sure enough, a recent study found that 72 percent
of low-income students who received reminders ended up matriculating, compared with 66 percent in the control group of
students who didn't.
But texting is not a cure-all. And sending too many can
backfire, as students start getting annoyed. So Alan Tripp, who
previously cofounded the education consulting firm InsideTrack,
created a new company called Motimatic to take digital intervention one step further. The company works with schools to
buy ad space on students' social media feeds and then installs
messages that can serve as either a reminder or encouragement.
In some cases, the ads merely reinforce the idea of being a student. For struggling students who are tempted to give up, it can
be just the extra push they need. A recent study found that students who interacted with Motimatic messaging in the fall of
2015 had a 5 percent higher retention rate than those who didn't.

Competency-Based Education
One of the hottest trends in higher ed reform is competencybased education. Under this model, students are able to complete courses once they can demonstrate mastery in the subject, not after they've fulfilled mandated seat-time requirements. If the course material is entirely new to the student,
she might finish it in anywhere from eight to eighteen weeks.
But if she is already familiar with the topic, she can immediately take the final. This allows students to move through the
system as soon as they're ready. That's especially useful for
adult students, who are not only typically trying to earn a degree while working full-time and raising kids-and for whom
time is thus a precious commodity-but who have also likely
learned skills on the job that overlap with some of what they're
being taught in class.
First pioneered at Western Governors University-a revolutionary nonprofit, online institution created in 1997 by nineteen governors, mostly from western states-the idea came
from one of its founders, former Colorado Governor Roy Romer,
who wanted to hold schools accountable for teaching students
competencies while streamlining the process. That has worked
in ways Romer might not have imagined. Roughly 91 percent of
WGU's students are adults, and tuition remains low (a little over
$6,500 a year). And, according to a 2018 Harris Poll Online survey, 87 percent of WGU graduates said they were employed in
their degree field.
Over the last ten years, the concept has been spreading. In
2009, then Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced a partnership with the school to create WGU Indiana, the first online

university to become part of a state system. Today, the average
time it takes to earn a bachelor's degree at WGU is two and a
half years. Now, other states-Texas, Nevada, Washington,
Missouri, and Tennessee-have developed similar partnerships
with Western Governors.
But there's major blockage in the spread of this innovation,
and it's located in D.C. Under law, students are generally only
eligible for federal financial aid if the classes they take are measured in standard credit hours, which competency-based classes
are not. (One of the benefits of creating state-based versions of
WGU, as Indiana did, is that it makes it more likely that students
can receive financial aid from the state.)
The good news is that there's a growing movement to get
Washington to bust open the credit-hour monopoly. Amy Laitinen of New America, Charla Long of the Competency-Based Education Network, and others have been pushing for lawmakers to change the conditions by which financial aid is disbursed.
In 2011, Laitinen was researching the issue when she stumbled
upon a provision in a 2006 law that called for the federal gov-

Purdue University has
launched a program
called "Back a Boiler," which
allows students to borrow
money from the school
and agree to pay it back
by giving the university a
percentage of their salary.
ernment to exercise "direct assessment" when determining a
school's financial aid eligibility. The Obama administration used
that loophole to issue an invitation to universities to experiment
with competency-based models without losing access to federal financial aid. But it did so cautiously, with a host of preconditions meant to avoid giving predatory for-profit colleges-of
which there are many-a further chance to peddle useless and
expensive degrees. Because of the added red tape, few colleges
took advantage of the opportunity.
The debate, however, continues. During the Department of
Education's rulemaking session last winter, there was a lengthy
discussion about credit-hour reform. It didn't result in any immediate changes to federal policy, but as Julie Peller, executive
director of Higher Learning Advocates, told me, it revealed a
growing awareness that the current system "measures time, not
learning"-and that isn't serving the needs of students. While
the exact reform that is needed remains a conundrum-there
does need to be some way to ensure that federal loans aren't going toward exploitative institutions-a consensus is building
that the current system has got to change.
Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly - September/October 2019

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