Here's how to destroy the value of a college degree

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"Students" can earn college credits by taking unproctored, open-book tests given by online platforms, reports Todd Wallack in the Washington Post. More than 100 U.S. colleges and universities let students use those credits to "complete a degree that normally takes at least four years in as little as a few months."

"Two of the most popular platforms, Sophia Learning and Study.com, let students take as many courses as they want at their own pace for less than $100 a month," he writes. It's great for people -- often those juggling jobs and family responsibilities -- who want a college credential at the lowest possible cost. But the value of those credentials will be very low.

There are no class meetings, in person or online, no lectures and no discussion groups, writes Wallack. If there was a rigorous, proctored test maybe that wouldn't matter. But, "in some cases, students can complete a course in less than a day by answering multiple-choice, open-book tests."

. . . a content creator filmed himself completing a Sophia Learning one-credit management class in around 30 minutes.

Classes that require papers that need to be graded take longer to complete, but not much longer. What would be a semester-long class at a traditional college can be completed in days or weeks.

"Study.com advertises that students who study several hours a day typically complete classes in two to seven days," writes Wallack. "Sophia says students take 24 days, on average, to complete a class, although some go much faster." One person interviewed by the Post finished 16 classes in 22 days.

Scott Sweeney, 47, of Ohio, took 14 Sophia classes over two months through early 2023 for about $14 per class, he told the Post. As an experienced digital marketing manager, he already knew most of the material. “Sophia essentially just validated what I already knew and turned it into college credit.”

Anything he didn't know, he could look up in the online textbook, because tests are open book.

Sweeney transferred 50 online credits to Western Governors University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in business administration in nine additional weeks. He went on to get a master’s degree in marketing that helped him land a new job.

Online platforms don’t offer degrees or federal student loans, so they're not regulated. Colleges that accept the credits -- many do not -- rely on recommendations from the American Council on Education (ACE), a trade group, writes Wallack. However, ACE doesn't analyze "how much students learned from the online courses or how they compare to traditional classes," so it's not clear why the recommendations have any weight.

Some universities let students to complete up to three-quarters of their coursework on the platforms, he writes. "That includes universities with popular online programs, such as Southern New Hampshire University, Thomas Edison State University of New Jersey, University of Massachusetts Global, University of Maryland Global Campus and University of Maine at Presque Isle." Western Governors University, which offers online degrees, has stopped accepting upper-division credits from online platforms.

California State University, one of the largest college systems in the country, awards credit on a case-by-case basis for up to one quarter of bachelor degree requirements, writes Wallack.

There's an argument for giving college credit for mastery of course material, whether someone learned the subject in a classroom or on the job or by reading books or by taking online classes or whatever. But submitting a paper that may have been generated by AI and/or taking a multiple-choice open-book exam is not proof of anything. It's like online credit recovery for high school students who didn't do classwork but want a diploma.

We are very close to destroying the value of a college degree.

Today's college students need work experience -- ideally a paid internship -- to launch a professional career, writes Patrick O'Donnell on The 74. The degree alone isn't enough.

“We’ve seen a transition into employers wanting a little bit more quantifiable evidence that students actually have skills,” said Scott Fleming of the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia. “The degree is important. But did you also get work integrating the learning, or an internship, project based learning, undergraduate research, something else as part of that education enterprise? That, to an employer, signals as well that you have developed those skills along the way.”