ACE credit recommendation

A recommendation is not credit

This is the whole of the term and it is routinely lost in summary. ACE does not award credit and cannot award credit. It publishes an evaluation stating what credit a learning experience could reasonably be worth. Whether that becomes credit on a student’s record is decided by the institution the student attends, under that institution’s own transfer, residency, equivalency and prior-learning-assessment policies.

Nobody (not ACE, not the provider whose course was evaluated, not an admissions officer at a different school) can tell a student in advance that a recommendation will be accepted.

What ACE actually does

ACE is the American Council on Education, a membership organisation of US colleges and universities. Its Learning Evaluations program reviews education and training delivered outside degree-granting institutions: workplace training, military coursework, certifications, examinations, apprenticeships and language programs among them.

ACE convenes independent teams of subject-matter experts drawn from the faculties of accredited colleges and universities to evaluate the material. Where the review finds college-level learning with adequate assessment behind it, the resulting recommendation specifies the number of semester credit hours, the academic level (lower-division, upper-division or graduate) and the subject area in which credit could apply.

Those recommendations are published in the ACE National Guide, which is where a registrar or transfer evaluator looks up an exhibit and reads what was recommended.

How it is evaluated at an institution

Treat a credit recommendation the way you treat any other external credit request. The student presents documentation to the registrar; the registrar evaluates it against your own policies; your policies determine the outcome. The process varies from institution to institution, and the student’s registrar is the only office that can answer the question for that student.

Two things to hold on to when advising a student:

• There is no public list of institutions that accept a given recommendation, so any claim about likelihood of acceptance is unsupportable.
• Acceptance is per-institution and per-program. A recommendation accepted toward a general elective at one school may not apply to a specific major requirement at another, or at the same one.

ACE and NCCRS are two separate services

Both evaluate learning delivered outside degree-granting institutions and both publish credit recommendations rather than credit. They are independent organisations with different sponsors and separate review processes and directories. See NCCRS.

Where this applies to the NSLS

Three courses in the NSLS curriculum carry credit recommendations from ACE and NCCRS: FOL 102 at the Foundations of Leadership level, ADV 202 at Advanced Leadership, and EXEC 302 at Executive Leadership. Each carries up to three college credit recommendations. The NSLS states that the process of transferring credit recommendations varies by institution, and directs students to their registrar. The certificate track at each level carries no credit recommendation and does not depend on one.

For the version written for registrars and academic affairs, see accreditation and credit recommendations.