COLUMBIA Mo.
Twelve years of military service left Donald Spradling highly trained in satellite imagery, nuclear engineering and foreign intelligence analysis. None of that made a difference to the University of Missouri.
When the fall semester begins next week, the 33-year-old father of five will be taking largely introductory courses with the rest of the school's freshmen.
“I'm going to be studying things I already learned all over again,” the Navy veteran said.
Nearly half a million veterans are expected on college campuses this year as part of the new GI Bill. The surge is leading to a call for schools to re-examine their policies of declining to grant college credit for military training and service.
An estimated one in five colleges and universities do not give academic credit for military education, according to a recent survey of 723 schools by the American Council on Education (ACE) that is believed to be the first systematic measure. Even more of the schools, 36 percent, said they don't award credit for military occupational training.
For Spradling and others, that can mean spending more on
“In most cases, it's simply an academic decision that they're not going to award any credit for learning acquired outside a traditional classroom,” said James Selbe, a former Marine and the ACE’s assistant vice president for lifelong learning.
Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton said the school considers most military preparation “experiential learning." He noted that individual academic departments can choose to award credit on their own.
“It may be very practical skills acquisition, but that may not be what university education sets out to do,” he said. “We're looking to build on a framework, a foundation of knowledge.”
At Boston College, a private school, the standard has always been to accept credit only from institutions of higher education, said school spokesman Jack Dunn.
