More Cracks in the Credit Hour

The foundation that created the credit hour in 1906 now wants to rethink it, with a shift that might help competency-based higher education. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on Tuesday announced that it would use a $460,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to study the Carnegie Unit, which forms the basis of a time-based measurement of student learning. The credithour calls for one credit per hour of faculty instruction and two hours of homework, on a weekly basis, over a 15-week semester.