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PLA in Today's World:
As most rational, practical people understand, PLA is a valid and important way of assessing a person's skills and abilities to perform tasks related to various jobs. In much the same way, a regional accreditation organization assesses a college's ability to train students to enter the work force. However, very few accrediting bodies adequately recognize their students' prior learning, in effect denying people the credit that is due them for what they know and what they've done in their lives. In order to better understand how regional accreditation bodies can improve their PLA, let's first clarify their role in the larger scheme of educational assessment.
There is no central governing authority over postsecondary education in the U.S. Although each state exercises some manner of control over education, all institutions of higher learning maintain their operations independently and autonomously. Thus, no one governing body is in charge of assessing a person's learning, nor is there one accepted standard to judge who knows what and how well they know it when they graduate from college. Many different standards apply. For example, does a graduate of the business school at Podunk College know as much as the graduate of Harvard Business College? You might automatically say "no," but, in fact, graduates from Podunk might, indeed, know more than a Harvard graduate, depending on how well they applied themselves. Furthermore, someone who went straight into business after high school, never attending college, may well know more about his or her field than the top graduate from Harvard.
The reluctance that regional accreditation groups show in embracing PLA is gradually diminishing. Regional accreditation groups, as a whole, are traditional and have been slow to recognize the value of PLA. However, each year, PLA is gaining more supporters from the traditionalists. Current policies of most regional accreditation boards dictate that no more than a small percentage of college credit can come from PLA, thus assuring that their students often take more classes than necessary were their life experience and skills accorded their just due in college credits. When accreditation boards acknowledge PLA they make the best interests of their students their top priority.
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