C-RAC in the News: Insights from the LEARN Commission on Credit Transfer

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and Sova launched the Learning Evaluation and Recognition for the Next Generation (LEARN) Commission in July 2024, bringing together a diverse group of forward-thinking campus leaders, issue area experts and institutional accreditors to help evolve policy and practice for recognizing undergraduate learning in the 21st century. This Commission includes Dr. Heather F. Perfetti, President of Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and Chair of the Council of Regional Accreditors (C-RAC), and Jamienne S. Studley, President of WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC).

On November 21, 2024, Juana Sánchez, lead staff for the LEARN Commission, authored an article, “What We’re LEARNing: Early indications from a new national effort to recognize undergraduate learning,” in Inside Higher Ed. The piece shares three primary insights and recommendations from the Commission regarding institution-to-institution traditional-credit transfer and credit for prior learning recognition and mobility:

• We must refocus around and stay relentlessly focused on learning outcomes;

• We must move toward systematic approaches, for the benefit of both learners and institutions; and

• We cannot expect institutions to go it alone—building next-generation learning-mobility practices will require supportive policies and investments and moving toward national coherence.

  
  

The article also includes the following reflections from Dr. Perfetti on the potential to incorporate new technologies in higher education while preserving quality:

“The faculty have already done the rigorous work of evaluating hundreds of courses and creating equivalency rules. The question now is whether we can responsibly leverage technology to apply that information to make accurate and consistent determinations about transfer credit when new learners come before us and how we ensure that we take a data-informed approach to drive more efficient decisions that are grounded in established student learning outcomes and student success.”