JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: how one state awards college credit for military experience.
It's a way of both giving value for skills already developed in the field and ensuring
that military students are enticed to get a degree.
Hari Sreenivasan has the story for our ongoing series Rethinking College.
It's part of our weekly look at education, Making the Grade.
SPC.
KIERRA HOWARD, U.S. Army: Headquarters 8, this is Headquarters 9 requesting a radio
check.
Over.
HARI SREENIVASAN: After four years as a communication specialist in the Army, Kierra Howard has
decided she wants to go to college.
SPC.
KIERRA HOWARD: I'm in the Army, but I also wanted, like, a formal education, too.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Howard believes a degree can help advance her military career.
SPC.
KIERRA HOWARD: I decided to take baby steps, and get my associate's, and then move onto
bachelor's.
HARI SREENIVASAN: When she looked around to find a college last spring, she got lucky.
Based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Howard enrolled at nearby Pikes Peak Community
College.
The campus is surrounded by military bases.
Academic advisers here look for ways to translate military service to academic credits.
PAUL DECECCO, Director, Military and Veteran Programs: Pikes Peak Community College: We
bring them in and we talk about all the resources here.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Paul DeCecco is the director of Military and Veterans Programs at Pikes
Peak.
So, how do you evaluate how to get credit for those life experiences that they have
had?
PAUL DECECCO: The military issues a joint services transcript.
And on there, it lists out the education courses that a service member attended, and also what
we call their military occupational specialty, what they did in the military.
So, if we're able to give them credit for their military experiences or their military
education, we try and do that.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Pikes Peak awarded Kierra Howard 20 credits, moving her way ahead in
her pursuit of a degree.
You basically got enough credits to transfer that it shortened a year of your education
here?
SPC.
KIERRA HOWARD: Yes.
HARI SREENIVASAN: This year, Colorado legislators embraced Pikes Peak's model by passing legislation
to help all Colorado military and veteran students.
Colorado's new law says any state-funded institution has to be able to evaluate the knowledge or
skills that a student might have picked up in the military.
And if that student can earn credit for it, those credits have to be transferable to every
state institution.
David Ortiz is a veteran advocate who helped craft the legislation.
DAVID ORTIZ, Program Director, VFW Post 1: This is the right thing to do for service
members and veterans.
It makes them feel as if their training and service to this country not only mattered
on the bigger sense, but in the particular level, that they're now getting civilian credit
for what they have already demonstrated.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And Ortiz says it is a policy that works.
DAVID ORTIZ: Well, there's plenty of research that backs up that veterans that are awarded
meaningful credit towards a degree are 33 percent more likely to take their degree to
graduation, to fruition, and then be set up for success for a job in the civilian world.
HARI SREENIVASAN: A former Army pilot, Ortiz was medically retired after his helicopter
crashed in Afghanistan.
He says a service member's experiences are creditworthy.
DAVID ORTIZ: You go from being responsible for multimillion-dollar equipment, being responsible
for a dozen men and women, accomplishing a mission, high-intensity, with quick timelines
coming up, where lives are on the line, and, obviously, the maturity and life experience
that comes with it, but there's also professional experience that's already been gained.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But the transition from intense military experience can sometimes
keep veterans from returning to the classroom, especially if they feel they are starting
from scratch.
PAUL DECECCO: They're walking in with the feeling of, I have had all of these experiences,
both good and bad, I have had these life experiences, and now I got to sit in English 121, English
composition, or basic English class with a bunch of folks who just got out of high school.
So, it becomes a challenge.
HARI SREENIVASAN: David Ortiz says awarding credits helps address that imbalance.
DAVID ORTIZ: Those that have served for five, 10, 20 years, some working in intelligence,
some working in communications, don't start at the same footing as your 18-year-old graduating
high school.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Ty Upshaw retired from the Army after 21 years.
He says the 15 credits he received for his military experience was a great motivator.
TY UPSHAW, Retired From U.S. Army: That was a great boost morale.
It made me feel like everything I had done was a success.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Upshaw is pursuing a bachelor's degree in business at the University of Colorado
in Colorado Springs.
He was able to transfer skills learned from his position in the Army's Human Resources
Department to necessary courses for business school.
TY UPSHAW: I was deployed to Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan.
As a human resource specialist, I received college credit for group communication, computer
information science course, organizational communication, public speaking.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But will awarding course credit for military experience water down
the integrity of a college degree?
Is military experience really comparable to college experience?
OWEN HILL (R), Colorado State Senator: Look, we're not here to give gifts.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Colorado State Senator Owen Hill, one of the bill's sponsors, says colleges
will need to do rigorous assessments.
OWEN HILL: It shouldn't just be carte blanche.
There needs to be a logical, well-documented, clear match.
We want to make sure that we are giving credit for real work that has been done.
If you give someone credit for it, and they don't really know it, and they're not qualified
to move on with that, then we're also setting them up for failures.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Paul DeCecco says the law has opened up a needed conversation between
the state's two-year and four-year colleges.
PAUL DECECCO: What the law did, is it brought everyone to the table, so we could talk as
equal partners, whereas, before, I don't know that there was motivation from the other major
universities within Colorado to do that.
Why do I want a community college telling me what I should or shouldn't accept?
The law also told every university and college within Colorado that they must have this process.
HARI SREENIVASAN: For his part, Ty Upshaw has plans for how he will use his degree in
business.
TY UPSHAW: I'm going back to school because I want to open a jazz club.
I will be able to fine-tune my business plan for a target market for people we want to
attract into our jazz club.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Kierra Howard says she plans to stay in the Army.
SPC.
KIERRA HOWARD: College helps with getting promoted in the Army.
So I really just want to take the credits and the courses to just be better at my job.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Colorado joins 23 other states who have passed similar laws to give
academic credit for military service.
In Colorado Springs, I'm Hari Sreenivasan for the "PBS NewsHour."