How CA gives college credit for work experience

from Adam EchelmanCalMatters

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Leila Rivers was already a paratrooper in the US Army and worked at various technology companies on the West Coast. But when she enrolled at a Los Angeles community college at age 31, she was just another freshman — alongside students almost half her age.

Fortunately, West Los Angeles College has a program that recognizes students’ prior work experience. The college gave her seven credits, the equivalent of about two courses, after she provided a copy of her military transcript and proof of computer courses she took while working at Amazon. “Of course, with 13 years of experience, I should get more credit for what I do,” she said. “But I’m grateful.”

Since 2017, California community colleges have slowly expanded the number of ways students can receive school credit for their prior work experience, and Gov. Gavin Newsom made it a priorityin part by approving more than $34 million in related state funding in recent years. By 2030, the chancellor of California Colleges wants at least 250,000 students to have earned college credit for their work or other “prior learning” experience, and in January Newsom proposed putting in an additional $37 million to do so.

But many colleges use their own internal methods to track the credits they award, so there is no authoritative system showing how many in-state students have actually been served. The chancellor’s office is open public boardwhich says more than 40,000 California students have received at least one credit for work or pre-college education in the past few years. Samuel Lee, senior adviser to the chancellor of the community college who oversees the dashboard, said the real total is roughly twice that, though he could not provide exact numbers.

Among the students who count toward that 2030 goal are those who earn credit by taking Advanced Placement, or AP, exams, which have been around for decades. What’s new is the awarding of student credit for work experience, such as computer courses or military training. Because it’s so new, “it’s taking some time for colleges,” Lee said. “Some are nowhere and some are really down the road.”

Historically, veterans have benefited the most from these credits, but students with work experience in plumbing, first aid, foreign languages ​​and hundreds of other skills can also qualify, either by showing an industry certificate or by passing an exam. At Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, for example, students can receive college credit for wine courses if they can demonstrate sufficient knowledge of French, Italian or Spanish wines.

Just a few extra credits can save students more than $14,000, according to one California study. These students are more likely to completetoo.

Because she is a veteran, Rivers’ education and living expenses are supported by the federal government, including through the GI Bill. These benefits only last a few years, so every class she can miss saves her time — and ultimately money, that she can put toward her future education.

Do you want to advance in technology? Get a degree

Even without a college degree, Rivers was one doing well in technology, making over $70,000 a year, first at Amazon Web Services and later as a support engineer at a start-up.

California’s tech industry has been vocal about this dropping degree requirements for work, but research by the Burning Glass Institute shows that employers still prefer college graduateseven when a college degree is not a requirement.

“Computer science is really male-dominated, white-dominated,” Rivers said. “I’m a black woman, but it’s hard for me to get in the door. Even though I have 13 years of experience, they’re moving the bar.” When the startup she worked for was sold to another company in 2024, she enrolled at West Los Angeles College, hoping to eventually transfer to a four-year institution, earn a degree and find a management job in the tech industry.

But Rivers didn’t know any of her past work could translate into college credit until months after enrolling, when the college dean noticed her military and computer experience.

“I think it should just be built into the registration process instead of people having to learn about it,” she said. “It took me a whole semester to figure it out.”

Since last fall, West Los Angeles College has made it a requirement that all transfer-oriented students learn about opportunities to receive credit for prior work experience, either during meetings with a college counselor during the first semester or during orientation, said Allison Tom-Miura, dean of academic affairs and campus workforce development. “It’s a big capital issue,” she said. “How can we help students avoid repeating courses they don’t need?”

In 2018, the state legislature passed law this would eventually require every college to adopt a policy of awarding students credit for prior study or work experience, but colleges received little or no funding to implement it. They struggled to create systems for evaluating students’ work experience and to streamline the credit application process, according to interviews with community college leaders across the state.

Administratively, this process is still difficult today. Students must provide evidence of their work experience, which tutors then assess and translate into an equivalent college course. Most students receive credit by showing a military transcript, certificate, or by taking a test, but sometimes, in more subjective fields like photography, professors evaluate the student’s portfolio.

Lee State’s system lists the skills and certifications that community colleges already recognize so students can more easily apply for credit. But he said only about half of the state’s 116 community colleges are actively participating in the effort.

Getting all colleges on the same system

Often, Lee is on tour, visiting colleges across the state, sometimes meeting with a school six or seven times in an effort to promote his credit tracking system or otherwise improve the way they record student credit.

Last month, he took the stage at a conference in Sacramento to present the benefits of a shared tracking system alongside Palomar College Interim President Tina Recalde. Like many schools in the San Diego metro area, Palomar College has a large enrollment of veterans and was an early advocate for awarding extra credit to them. In their joint presentation, Recalde said her college has given credit to more than 3,600 students for work or other prior learning experience.

But that data doesn’t appear on Lee’s platform or any other public dashboard. Palomar College has its own system for processing extra credit, which it created before Lee’s platform existed, said Nichol Rowe, the college’s dean of career technical and advanced studies.

Soon, almost all schools will have to start logging information on the same platform. The Legislature approved a budget last year that guarantees $50,000 for each community college campus that’s what he wants. In return, colleges receiving the money agree to use certain aspects of Lee’s data system and screen all veterans and incoming students for potential extra credit.

College of the Sequoias in Visalia said it didn’t need the money and chose not to apply, according to its president, Brent Calvin.

Lee said every other college applied for funding by the deadline and that he would “be happy” to make an exception for the College of the Redwoods. “Our goal is not for them to meet the deadline,” he said. “Our goal is to provide funding and support to people.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.