Finding the right fit: the search and selection process for direct assessment program enrollees

Abstract

1.1 | Background Waking up hours before the house begins to stir, a thirty-something project manager attacks the day's first task, completing an assessment toward a competency that will stack with other mastered competencies to earn this student his first bachelor's degree. His motivation and determination get him up before the rooster crows and keep him pushing forward even when life gets busy. Coupling the new majority of learners being 22 or older (NCES, 2013) with the dawning of new alternative programs such as direct assessment competency-based programs (Fain, 2014, 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2014) this study serves two purposes— to test a model for researching college choice of competency-based education (CBE) students and investigate how learners, like participant one mentioned above, who ultimately enroll in a direct