Last year, I had the privilege to provide technical assistance to the Bhutan Qualifications and Professionals Certification Authority (BQPCA), on behalf of UNESCO Bangkok (with support from the Republic of Korea Funds-in-Trust Higher Education Project). The goal was to support the development of a robust and flexible national credit transfer system for Bhutan. Reflecting on that project, I believe that several considerations that informed the findings and recommendation of that project apply to most tertiary education systems that aim to enable flexible learning pathways, recognise diverse forms of learning, and promote lifelong learning.
The Bhutan Qualifications and Professionals Certification Authority (BQPCA) is the competent body responsible for overseeing qualification accreditation, professional certification, and the Bhutan Qualifications Framework (BQF). The BQF, formally established in 2023, recognizes various types of learning, including formal, non-formal, and informal, while also promoting avenues for continuous education and lifelong learning and the need for credit transfer mechanisms.
After conducting a review of global practices and consulting with local stakeholders, a set of recommendations was developed for effectively implementing a flexible and reliable credit transfer system. Many of these recommendations or suggestions can be universally applied, and are summarized below.
RPL and credit transfer policies should:
allow for and facilitate the recognition of all modes of learning (formal, non-formal, informal);
be made publicly available and easily accessible,
provide clear information about the submission and assessment process including:
o how and when to submit a claim, associated costs and timescales for completing the assessment, and appeals mechanisms.
o the subject content that needs to be covered for granting admission or credit transfer towards a qualification.
o the maximum volume of credits to be recognised towards a whole qualification
o any time limit on prior learning for it to be considered current.
o the type of evidence required to assess prior learning, its quality and authenticity, whether it be formal, non-formal, or informal,
o any credit conversion schemes adopted for recognizing international credit for sending or receiving institutions.
o support and guidance available to applicants
be supported by adequately trained faculty and staff
be regularly monitored and reviewed as part of the internal quality assurance practices of providers.
In addition, to support credit transfer and mobility providers should consider:
being sufficiently flexible in determining the minimum credit size of component units of learning
establishing formal bilateral articulation agreements with other institutions;
developing credit transfer consortia with groups of institutions;
making progress toward the digitalisation of credits and qualifications to facilitate their portability, assessment and recognition.
Looking back at this project, it is possible to identify a number of fundamental challenges in implementing flexible learning pathways:
Institutional autonomy: education providers are independent and autonomous in making academic decisions such as recognising prior learning, formal or non-formal, towards specific courses of study. These decisions generally rest on academic judgment regarding the extent to which the prior learning for which recognition is sought is consistent or aligned with the overall curriculum of the course of study. In the absence of national curricula, providers and individual academics exercise their autonomy when recognising learning obtained in similar programmes at other institutions.
Disparity of esteem: education providers might not always consider courses of study offered by other providers as being of the same quality and standards as those provided by them, even when these other providers are in good standing with the relevant regulatory or quality assurance body. This disparity of esteem applies in particular across the research-intensive, teaching-oriented, and vocational training spectrum.
Competition vs. cooperation: providers, in particular those that operate in marketized environments, might see open credit transfer policies as a competitive threat, with an impact on funding. This might disincentivise providers from required cooperation.
Different credit allocation practices: different providers or different tertiary education sectors (e.g. vocational education, further education, higher education) might adopt different credit allocation practices.
Input vs. outputs oriented approaches to recognition: credit recognition practice that relies too much on learning input rather than looking at the holistic learning outcomes of the course of study toward which recognition is sought.
Regulatory concerns: providers might adopt strict RPL and credit transfer policies as a conservative measure to avoid the risk of non-compliance with external regulatory and quality assurance expectations.
These are some of the main overarching observations resulting from the project, which all in all seem to call for:
a sector-wide coordinated approach, supported by regulators and funding bodies;
an unified tertiary education system across the vocational and academic sectors;
an outcome-based and holistic approach to RPL and credit recognition.
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