There are currently more than 36 million adults with some college education but no degree. As we emerge from the pandemic, colleges and universities will need to focus on strategies to recruit, retain, and graduate a larger number of students. One such effective strategy is the awarding of credit for the skills and competencies that students already have from their work and life experiences — also known as prior learning assessment (PLA) or credit for prior learning (CPL).

Although adult-serving institutions have been offering PLA/CPL for decades, not everyone in higher education supports the concept. Further, higher education research rarely references — much less focuses on — PLA/CPL.

Recently, CAEL and WICHE joined forces to study the impact of PLA/CPL on adult student outcomes (see the study findings in The PLA Boost), and the combined research teams invited Dr. Jason Taylor of the University of Utah to help with some advanced statistical modeling for the project.

CAEL’s Becky Klein-Collins and the University of Louisville’s Dr. Matt Bergman recently asked Taylor to share his thoughts on the experience of studying PLA/CPL as someone who did not know a lot of PLA/CPL before working on that project. The Q&A from this exchange suggests that PLA/CPL deserves a closer look and more mainstream recognition by postsecondary leadership and researchers.

Becky Klein-Collins: Jason, CAEL and WICHE asked you to be a part of the analytical team on the PLA Boost project. Tell us a little bit about what you knew about PLA at that time. Was this something that you were familiar with or had studied previously?

Dr. Jason Taylor: As a community college researcher and scholar, I was familiar with PLA as a somewhat niche policy that community colleges and other open-access colleges use to support adult students. I also had read CAEL’s prior report on PLA, which showed that PLA worked for students. However, I knew very little about the types of PLA, how institutions approached and implemented PLA, the scope of PLA implementation among colleges and universities, and really the broader value of PLA to students. PLA was only peripherally on my radar and I certainly had not studied it. I’d even say I was a little bit skeptical of PLA because of how little I knew and some misperceptions of its purpose, structure, and impact.

Dr. Matthew Bergman: Jason,Your part of the project was to help use advanced statistical models to analyze the data. Can you explain what model you used and what it helped tell us about PLA?

Taylor: My task on the project was to think about how we could, to the extent possible, isolate the effect of PLA on student outcomes and examine heterogeneity in outcomes using retrospective data collected from institutions that participated in the study. Because students were not randomly assigned to PLA, we couldn’t isolate a true causal effect of PLA. However, there are statistical models to generate a more precise estimate of the effect of PLA on student outcomes than what we would get if we only examined descriptive outcomes. I used propensity score matching (PSM), a method in the family of quasi-experimental designs. Although it’s not a perfect method and we cannot make causal claims without meeting strict assumptions, PSM allows us to more accurately compare the educational attainment outcomes of PLA students to similar students who did not complete PLA.

Bergman: What did the PSM analysis tell you about the relationship between PLA and adult student outcomes, and was there anything that you found surprising in those findings?

Taylor: The PSM results were very compelling because they showed that PLA has a really strong effect on college completion, not just for all students, but for many marginalized student groups. Overall, the PSM models showed that after controlling for other factors, PLA can boost college completion between 17% and 30%, depending on the PLA method. The effects were even larger for low-income students, Hispanic students, community college students, and students at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), although the effects were slightly smaller for Black students.

Klein-Collins: Did the findings, and the experience of working on this project, change your thinking in any way about what higher ed research should be focused on? 

Taylor: A lot of higher education research tends to focus on traditional models of education and learning: face-to-face instruction in brick and mortar settings. Obviously COVID and the move to online learning has significantly shifted how colleges and universities provide education, which in turn has shifted how we study higher education and our research priorities. But even before COVID, this project helped clarify to me how higher education researchers need to expand our repertoire of research on different ways of learning and different learning modalities. Why? Because clearly non-traditional programs and models such as PLA can have dramatically different educational outcomes for students, particularly for students of color and low-income students. What we choose to study or not study matters because our data and evidence are used to advocate for or against different policies. I’m hopeful that The PLA Boost report will spark additional interest and research on PLA (and other innovative learning strategies) among higher education researchers.

Bergman: What would you say to those who may have skepticism about PLA’s value and role in higher education? 

Taylor: I would encourage skeptics to consider PLA at a philosophical level and at a practical level. From a philosophical perspective, it’s really important to understand how PLA aligns with the purpose of higher education. If you believe one purpose of higher education is to help develop and grow individuals, like I do, PLA does this by affirming and acknowledging the learning students bring with them, and helping translate that learning into the existing higher education currency–which is courses and credits. We don’t help students grow and develop by forcing them to re-learn the knowledge and skills they already have, which is the existing model at most institutions.

At a practical level, I would really encourage skeptics to do two things. First, I’d recommend listening to and learning from the leaders who administer PLA programs and the students who benefit from them. I’ve learned a lot from a few webinars and meetings where I could better understand the underlying administrative mechanisms to assure PLA quality and the impact that PLA has had on real students, such as more advanced learning opportunities and saving time and money. So engagement is really important. Second, I’d really encourage folks to read The PLA Boost and look at the data. As I said, the data are compelling so an evidence-based practice would certainly support the use of PLA. And from a really practical perspective, as the report shows, PLA saves students money.

It might also be useful to think about PLA in a similar way that we think about transfer and mobility. I also study transfer and lead some transfer and articulation efforts on my own campus, and one of the primary problems with transfer is that our policies and practices result in students losing credit during the transfer process. And I think there’s a relevant comparison between PLA and transfer. Institutions that do not provide robust PLA policies are really causing students to lose credits, which likely means higher tuition bills, greater debt, and longer time-to-degree. So it’s very important for skeptics to think about the practical consequences for students, particularly students of color and low-income students. And, as the data from The PLA Boost shows, PLA doesn’t strain institutional revenues because students who receive PLA credits ultimately take more credits in the long-run.