Promising Outcomes for Using Financial Aid on Prior Learning Assessment, Research Shows
By Allie Bidwell, Communications Staff
Testing students on skills and knowledge they have earned in the workplace or through alternative learning methods can help increase college access and completion for certain groups. And new research on institutions experimenting with using financial aid to cover the cost of prior learning assessment (PLA) shows some favorable results, such as lowering the overall cost of obtaining a college degree.
In a research brief published by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), authors Tucker Plumlee and Rebecca Klein-Collins document three institutions' experiences with using financial aid for PLA. The three institutions – Capella University, Northern Essex Community College, and Kaplan University – have been participating in the Department of Education's (ED) experimental initiative to learn how federal financial aid can be used to cover the cost of PLA.
Allowing financial aid to cover the cost of PLA, the brief said, "can lead to significant time and cost savings as well as improved persistence and completion outcomes among students."
The brief lists the four methods of PLA, including individualized assessments or portfolios, challenge exams (those developed by an institution's faculty), standardized exams, and evaluated non-college programs from independent organizations. ED's experiment, which began in 2015-16, covered the first three types. According to Klein-Collins, the cost for PLA, depending on the type of assessment, can range anywhere from around $80 to $250. In some cases, students who go down the portfolio assessment path may also have to pay for a portfolio development course, which can add several hundred more dollars to the overall cost.
In general, there are philosophical barriers to implementing PLA on a larger scale in general, without taking into account the possibility of using federal aid to cover the cost.
"There's the general objection that some schools don't want to give credits for learning that doesn't happen at their institution," Klein-Collins said.
But Plumlee and Klein-Collins noted that the cost of going through with a PLA has prevented some students from pursuing that process.
"Some students look at this and do the calculus and say, ‘I'll just use the financial aid and take the course outright,'" Klein-Collins said. "It will take longer, but they don't have the money, and it's not a guaranteed way to earn credit."
Under the ED experiment, participating institutions are able to apply financial aid to PLA in two ways: by including PLA costs in calculating a student's cost of attendance (COA) or by increasing a student's Pell Grant eligibility status by up to three credits.
Previous research from CAEL has shown that at institutions using PLA, students who participated earned an average of 17 credits, which resulted in cost savings between $1,600 and $6,000, depending on their institution's tuition rates. The three institutions discussed in the new brief saw similarly promising results, although the experiment is still ongoing.
At Capella, more than half of the 44 students who participated in PLA between July 2015 and October 2016 had their cost of attendance adjusted, earned an average of 16.3 credits, and saw an average cost savings of $4,319. PLA students also made faster progress toward their degrees, had higher GPAs, lower withdrawal rates, and higher graduation rates.
Northern Essex Community College factored all costs for available PLA methods into the COA for students. The college only fully implemented the experiment in the spring of 2016, and does not yet have comprehensive results on the effects. However, the school did see an increase in demand for PLA, with more than 100 participating in the spring of 2017, up from 37 in the fall of 2016.
At Kaplan University, which is no longer participating in the experiment, the $750 cost of a portfolio course and a $750 assessment fee were covered, and factored into a student's COA. Kaplan began applying financial aid to portfolio evaluation costs in February 2016, and by the following winter, about 450 students had gone through the process since the beginning of the experiment, which was an increase from previous years. Overall, the students on average earned 30 credits and could on average save $9,630.
"A 21st Century version of the HEA needs to account for the different ways that today's students engage with higher education, and its Title IV regulations should cover the student costs of not only instructional programs but also the assessment and recognition of college-level learning that can take place outside of the traditional classroom—in the workplace, on the internet, in the military, or through other life experiences," the brief said.
Publication Date: 8/1/2017
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