Taking advantage of military training and prior coursework offers military students an opportunity to cut college costs and speed up their time to graduation. By Nora McGann, MAE Correspondent Faced with high college costs and shaky student loan rates, consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the price tag of each class and look to save money wherever possible. Fewer people, especially adult learners, are looking for the “college experience” and instead place a higher value on lowering the cost of attendance and increasing the return on investment. The idea of receiving college credit for courses previously completed or experience acquired outside of the classroom—through work or independent study—is gaining traction with students, and nontraditional students, veterans or active duty in particular, are increasingly taking advantage of the opportunity. From academic testing programs like College-Level Examination Program (CLEP), DSST, or school-specific exams to having their military transcript evaluated for credit, military students have a number of avenues to pursue credit. Facilitating the process of establishing a reliable and standardized resource for documenting the recommended credits for military training is the evolution of the military transcript. It’s been a long road, but the new Joint Service Transcript is both a powerful tool for servicemembers and a trusted resource for colleges.
Going Purple “Until recently, one of the greatest challenge universities and colleges faced when awarding credit for American Council on Education (ACE) credit documented on military transcripts was the lack of a single www.MAE-kmi.com
formatted transcript among the respective services,” explained Carol Berry, Ed.D., director of Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES). In essence, ACE is the body responsible—through a DANTES contract—for evaluating military training and establishing credit recommendations. A team of college-level faculty members evaluate military training completed in service schools, correspondence courses and specific occupations, then recommend corresponding credits students should receive. Thus, when considering awarding credit for military training, schools had to evaluate a variety of military transcripts: Army/American Council on Education Registry Transcript (AARTS), Sailor/Marine ACE Registry Transcript (SMART), as well as those from the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF), and the Coast Guard Institute. While this sounds potentially confusing, these records actually replaced something more so: the DD295, Application for the Evaluation of Learning Experiences during Military Service, which took more time both for the military to prepare and for schools to evaluate. “These documents were a vast improvement over the DD295, but because they were formatted a little differently and contained slightly different information, institutions found they still required a developed set of skills to evaluate the contents as it related to their respective institution,” Berry continued. The Joint Service Transcript (JST), which now includes the Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Coast Guard (the Air Force continues to use the CCAF transcript), is based on the
SMART platform for a number of reasons. The AARTS program was already ending, and the SMART was scalable, had ACE approval, as well as “rigorous validation protocols,” as Berry put it. The Coast Guard and Army coordinated agreements with the Naval Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center to become incorporated into the SMART platform. “The new unified transcript gives servicemembers potentially a single source document that captures their training and occupations history, as well as additional elements of degrees earned, apprenticeships completed via the United Service Members Apprenticeship Program, certification/licensure and tuition assistance courses [past or current]. Each service component can pick and choose which additional elements they wish to appear on their JST,” Berry emphasized.
Testing Out In addition to receiving credits for military training as delineated on their military transcript, military students may also sit for a number of exams, including DSST, CLEP and individual college exams, that test prior knowledge and award college credit. For each exam, students can earn between three and 12 semester hours of credit, which are accepted by more than 2,900 academic institutions nationwide; schools do vary on the amount of such credits they will accept. “Last year, over 93,000 CLEP and DSST exams were administered to military personnel. And when tuition assistance was suspended temporarily this MAE 8.10 | 71