Make It Count: Recognizing Prior Learning for Workforce Development

Community college students often hold knowledge from various professional and academic experiences. A challenge for these students, and for their institutions and employers, is how to formally bridge these competencies to support students' efforts to reach their academic and career goals. This issue brief looks at the practice of awarding credit for prior learning, known as prior learning assessments (PLA), as part of community colleges' workforce development strategies. It is part of a series of Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) reports focusing on best practices and innovative strategies for workforce development. This brief builds on the previously published reports "Partnerships for a Future-Ready Workforce" (2018) (ED605153) and "The College-Work Balancing Act" (2019) (ED605123). This issue brief serves as a primer on past and current developments in PLA, including how the strategy can help students bridge workforce and academic competencies, and how it can be incorporated into strategies for workforce development. In the first section of this brief, the authors introduce past and current developments in PLAs. In the second section, they describe the various cohorts of students who benefit most from PLA, including veterans and non-traditional students. In addition, this paper includes two examples of institutions that implement PLA in interesting and valuable ways. First, Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College created a degree specific to students who enter with PLA credits and streamlined statewide policy to increase efficiency. Second, the Dallas County Community College District partnered with StraighterLine, a non-traditional education provider, to create pathways with guaranteed transfer in business and criminal justice.