The phrase “competency-based education” is quite a mouthful, but it was all the rage a few years ago among college leaders looking to expand access to their programs. The idea can sound radical, since it often involves doing away with course structures as we know them, to focus on having students prove they can master a series of skills or concepts one at a time.
It’s safe to say that competency-based education hasn’t caught on as widely as its promoters hoped, and these days you rarely hear much about it. In part that’s because some serious questions have been raised about the model.
