Dive Brief:
- Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell announced in a blog post Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Education's CBE Experiment Reference Guide, expected earlier this summer, is ready for distribution.
- The guide will direct institutions participating in the department’s Experimental Sites Initiative with innovative competency-based education programs.
- Mitchell also announced the CBE experiment will be expanded by the end of the year to offer more institutions new options for financial aid disbursement.
Dive Insight:
The Department of Education’s experimental sites program is an initiative of the Federal Student Aid office. The idea is to allow greater flexibility to a cohort of schools and test the outcomes. The CBE experimental sites project will provide considerable amounts of data to evaluate CBE programs’ completion rates, affordability, and degree characteristics. Upwards of 600 institutions are considering CBE programs now, and amid concerns about quality, an upcoming conference will bring these developers together to strategize.