This Is How You Serve Those Who Serve

The College of Southern Maryland's Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) program is a model worth studying and replicating. CSM evaluates learning gained outside the traditional classroom, including military service, and converts it to academic credit when it aligns with course outcomes. For veterans and currently serving students, that means finishing an associate degree in a single year instead of two, and saving thousands of dollars.

This isn't a novel concept, but it's important to celebrate when implemented successfully by progressive colleges and universities. What CSM is doing differently is operationalizing CPL for military technical training and PME by deploying a defined program, staffing it, promoting it to incoming military-connected students, and awarding meaningful credit at scale. This distinction matters, because it's replicable. There's nothing about CSM's approach that requires expensive infrastructure, AI bots or a massive infusion of capital. What is does require is curricula crosswalks between ACE recommendations and existing courses, dedicated staff to run the evaluations, and institutional directives to award the credit.

This is exactly what mid-tier, tuition-dependent private universities should be doing because they have the most to gain by replicating CSM's model at scale. So many of these universities market themselves as "military friendly" or claim to be a top choice for veteran and active-duty students, which is simply an egregious play for GI Bill and tuition-assistance dollars. Their stale and insulting marketing has nothing to do with being more accessible to this population of non-traditional students. Recruiting and admissions claims ring hollow if a returning service member has to start their degree from scratch. A real CPL pathway is a competitive advantage because it shortens time-to-degree, lowers cost, and gives an institution something concrete to point to instead of a stock photo of someone in uniform on the admissions page. Build that program and you can justly defend any claim to be a best or better place for those who serve.

I applaud CSM for doing the hard work of proving the model's efficacy. There's no reason what they're doing can't evolve into standard practice at any university where veterans are being recruited.