Life Experience
APUS is pleased to offer our students a variety of options when it comes to granting college credit for equivalent life education, experience and/or learning. To meet the varying needs of our ever-growing student population while ensuring the educational rigor of the APUS degree programs, the following equivalency measurements and associated programs have been established.
Review of Formal Training:
Conducted for an institution with:
- ACE award of transferable credit for the training or experience.
- Training conducted which has clearly stated learning objectives and assessment of those objectives; once evaluated by APUS, this training is incorporated into standard APUS transfer credit policy.
Experiential Learning Assessment:
Training and experience evaluated by APUS at the institution level. This includes both "sponsored" and "unsponsored" experiential learning. Students may submit portfolios for "unsponsored" experiential learning.
- Sponsored Experiential Learning includes co-operative education, hands-on training, service learning, internships, and supervised learning.
- Unsponsored Experiential Learning includes prior learning that is completely self-directed.
For additional information on the APUS Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) program, click here.
Competency Based Learning Assessment:
Training and experience evaluated by APUS at the institutional level. Such programs require a rigorous form of assessment of the competencies, such as a formal test or a performance evaluation that details satisfactory performance of the competencies, which can be correlated to APUS learning outcomes and objectives.
Credit Award Guidelines
To ensure the quality of our degree programs and student learning, guidelines have been established surrounding the maximum amount of credit to be awarded through the above forms of equivalency assessment. These guidelines are established based on percentage of degree completion:
- No more than 45% of the total credits required for an APUS Undergraduate degree can be achieved through non-ACE awarded Formal Training, Experiential and/or Competency Based Learning Assessments.
- i.e.: For a traditional 61 Semester Hour associate degree program, no more than 27 transfer credits will be awarded.
- i.e.: For a traditional 121 Semester Hour bachelor's degree program, no more than 54 transfer credits will be awarded.
- i.e.: For a traditional 61 Semester Hour associate degree program, no more than 27 transfer credits will be awarded.
- No more than 25% of the total credits required for an APUS Undergraduate degree can be achieved through both "sponsored" and "unsponsored" forms of Experiential Learning Assessment. Additionally, duplicate credit cannot be awarded for credits already earned or achieved through other formats of transfer credit.
- i.e.: For a traditional 61 Semester Hour associate degree program, no more than 15 transfer credits will be awarded based solely on Experiential Learning.
- i.e.: For a traditional 121 Semester Hour bachelor's degree program, no more than 30 transfer credits will be awarded based solely on Experiential Learning.
- i.e.: For a traditional 61 Semester Hour associate degree program, no more than 15 transfer credits will be awarded based solely on Experiential Learning.