WHAT IS THE CARNEGIE UNIT?

The Carnegie Unit has been the main currency in education since it was introduced in 1906. From K-12 through graduate school, the Carnegie Unit shapes institutions; determines which courses are offered; decides who gets financial aid; and on and on.

Since its inception in 1906, the Carnegie Unit, or “credit hour,” has been the foundational measure in education, quantifying student engagement in terms of time spent learning a subject. Traditionally, a student would earn one “unit” of high school credit after 120 hours of study—meeting four or five times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, across 36 to 40 weeks per year. This system, designed to reflect “four years of academic or high school preparation,” has long determined what qualifies as learning, influencing assessments and the structure of both secondary and postsecondary education.

However, the reliance on “seat time” as a primary indicator of learning outcomes is becoming increasingly inadequate for the 21st-century economy. The skills, knowledge, and dispositions required today cannot be fully captured by mere time spent at a desk or engaged with a digital platform. In response, the Carnegie Foundation and partners are advocating for a paradigm shift. Through the Skills for the Future Initiative, we propose a new educational currency based on meaningful skills and competencies, assessed and communicated throughout a learner’s educational journey, fundamentally rethinking teaching and learning.

Decades apart yet strikingly similar, these transcripts from 1895 and 2020 reveal a century of unchanged format in measuring student success.