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The reason for the project’s creation, said several officials who are working on it, is a growing need for shared guiding principles. Interest in online education is high, and many college leaders want competency-based education to avoid the hype, misconceptions and resulting backlash massive open online courses have received.

A separate Lumina grant will help pay for a website that will make public much of the network’s work and research. Southern New Hampshire University is responsible for creating the website.

That project is an "incubator" that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding through its Next Generation Learning Challenges grant, which is managed by Educause. To participate, colleges will need to submit a plan to begin creating a competency-based program by January 2015, according to a draft document about the grant.

Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, welcomed the deepening conversation over competency-based education. She said she hopes the network can provide some clarity on the emerging delivery model, which the association has viewed warily. The competency-based movement does have promise, she said. Ideally, Schneider said, competency-based programs share goals with the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), a Lumina-funded effort that attempts to define what degree holders should know and be able to do. Schneider helped author the profile.

The Lumina Foundation just awarded the university a $1.25 million grant to evaluate the program and document its creation so that it can be replicated at other schools.

For public universities, new ways of thinking about fundamental business models are becoming a necessity. “Our reliance on state funding is shrinking, and that’s true in every state that I'm aware of,” says Cross. “But it’s increasingly difficult for students to afford higher education costs at all levels. That is not a sustainable trend. It just is not. We need to seek alternatives.”

“The department recognizes that this is new territory and they don't have a regulatory framework for it,” said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University.

Colleges have faced plenty of red tape as they seek to give competency-based education a try. That is particularly true for “direct assessment” programs, the most aggressive version, which does not rely on the traditional credit hour standard.

Only two institutions -- College for America, a subsidiary of Southern New Hampshire, and Capella University -- have been successful in the lengthy process of getting the department and regional accrediting agencies to approve direct assessment programs. Other institutions have tried and either were rebuffed by the feds or are still waiting for the final word.

For example, the University of Wisconsin-Extension last year created ambitious direct assessment degree tracks. But the university has had to cover for the absence of federal aid for its “Flex Program” by spending more on grants for students. Officials with the system said Tuesday they were eager to participate in the experimental sites program.

The latest round of experimental sites grew out of a request for ideas the department issued last year. Many colleges sent in suggestions.

Mitchell drew rave reviews from several participants in the Washington, D.C., meeting of the Lumina Foundation-funded group, which is called the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN).

Jim Selbe is a special assistant to the chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, which is a pioneer in competency-based programs in the two-year sector.

Experimental site status would give the Kentucky system the ability to “be broader and have more flexibility,” said Selbe. “This is going to give us a chance to really go field test.”

For example, Selbe said, the system is considering new programs that would charge students a monthly fee for all they can learn. This subscription-style approach could also apply to four-month terms.

A move by the Kentucky system to try subscriptions is “impossible right now” under federal aid rules, said Selbe. But experimental sites could open the door to monthly aid disbursements, saving students time and money. “This will give us a boost to go forward.”

The four targeted areas include self-paced competency-based programs, such as direct assessment degree tracks. Colleges can also test “hybrid” programs, which combine elements of direct assessment and credit-hour-based coursework. That version is currently not allowed under federal rules.

The new experimental sites will also include prior-learning assessment

Finally, the program will test federal work-study programs under which college students mentor high school students in college readiness, student aid, career counseling and financial literacy

Experimental sites programs have rarely been so promising, said Amy Laitinen, deputy director of the New America Foundation's higher education program and a former official at the department and White House.

The registry will include all kinds of credentials – from educational degrees and certificates to industry certifications, occupational licenses, and micro-credentials.

will develop a Credential Directory app, which will allow registry users to access the websites of participating credential issuers, build customized directories of credentials based on their own criteria, and publish the results.

The goals are transparency and clarity, and to help align credentials with the needs of students, job seekers, workers and employers.

Does it really make sense to expect, even implicitly, that a person already engaged in work and family should step out of that life in order to participate in an institution-based learning community? Instead, shouldn’t we be asking how to provide educational experiences that foster collaborative learning, supporting growth and development, to people who are already fully engaged in their lives outside of an educational institution?

The question is not how to help an adult student engage in a university-designed learning community; it’s how institutions can help students incorporate quality educational experiences and opportunities into their existing lives.

Adult learners need multiple opportunities to earn degrees, including educational models that differ greatly from traditional college programs.[9] They need new models that are structured around the entire 12-month calendar, where one can start and stop without penalty, and quickly move forward when mastery over material is demonstrated. We need to make use of new technologies and the latest in the science of learning to allow students to integrate their education into existing lives and careers. In short, to educate the population that is currently not served well by our traditional institutions of higher education, we need new models and methods that allow education to fit the interests, motivations and lives of our adult learners, not ask them to fit their lives into an educational system geared to 18- to 24-year-old full-time students. This is the promise of CBE.

The best CBE programs will design competencies that articulate the skills and abilities needed by productive citizens, and evaluate mastery of those competencies through assessments that blend seamlessly into students work and family.