On most mornings, students travel past the chapel on the Southern Virginia University campus in Buena Vista, Virginia, a small, peaceful town nestled into the Shenandoah Valley, on their way to class. Returned missionaries make up a portion of them. There are veterans among them. Some are parents who, before ever entering a lecture hall, worked for years at invisible, draining jobs. When it came to obtaining a degree, none of that mattered for a very long time. That is starting to change.
The Knight’s CREST program—Credit for Recognized Experience, Service, or Training—will begin in the 2026–2027 academic year, SVU announced in late May. For military service, religious missions, humanitarian work, and even full-time caregiving or primary parenting, the program enables qualified students to receive academic credit. The amounts are substantial: up to 42 credits for military training and experience, and up to 24 credits for religious service, divided into 12 credits for language learning and 12 credits for actual service. To put things in perspective, a typical semester at many four-year institutions consists of about fifteen credits. The math is impressive.
Speaking to the Deseret News, SVU President Aaron Hale avoided using formal language. He described how missionaries were enrolled alongside 18-year-olds who had just graduated from high school after returning home from two years of 60-hour workweeks that involved managing logistics, leading teams, and navigating foreign cultures. “Most colleges treat them like freshmen,” he stated. Once he puts it that way, it’s difficult not to find that subtly ridiculous. These individuals have organized communities, grieved with strangers, and taught in second languages. It has never been easy to defend the notion that none of that equates to academic competency.
The two tracks of the program are Work-Based Learning and Service Learning. For both, students must create a portfolio that is assessed by a group of faculty experts. In a time when universities frequently find ways to charge for everything, the $75 fee is a noteworthy gesture. Students record their experiences in relation to eight competencies, such as digital literacy, leadership, teamwork, and critical thinking. Under the Service Learning track, each competency may result in one to three credits, totaling a maximum of twelve. That ceiling is significantly extended by the military track.
One SVU student who was already enrolled found that the program would allow him to graduate one year early. Now, a year ahead of schedule, he is going to law school. That person’s trajectory has actually changed. As the program develops, that story might recur dozens of times.
The work being done by SVU is not isolated. Similar steps have been taken by the University of Utah, which now offers its own service credits. Three-year bachelor’s programs are being investigated by Utah Valley University and Weber State. America’s higher education system is clearly struggling due to time and money constraints, and universities that don’t value the contributions students already make to the campus are finding it more difficult to justify a four-year cost. Hale put it this way: “Costs, debt, time to degree are all weighing on families.” That analysis isn’t revolutionary. It’s simply truthful.
The fact that caregivers are included here is noteworthy. The NACE Career Readiness Competency framework, which is the same set of professional standards used by all accredited institutions, will be used by full-time parents seeking credit to record their experiences. It’s a subdued admission that the abilities needed to raise kids or take care of a sick relative don’t just disappear when someone sits down to pursue a degree. It’s unclear if other universities will follow suit. It’s still unclear if larger, more bureaucratic institutions will adopt this kind of recognition, or if it will remain, for the time being, at smaller schools that are eager to advance more quickly.
SVU is small, with less than 1,000 students and a student-to-faculty ratio of 17 to 1. It is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The program’s spirit is shaped by this alignment without restricting its logic. The skills it honors—leadership, communication, and self-improvement—are the same ones that employers have long sought in graduates. The university seems to be doing something both pragmatic and morally sound at the same time, which isn’t always simple.
The question of whether a person’s credentials truly reflect their knowledge has not been promptly addressed by higher education. SVU appears to be taking that question seriously as it stands in a valley in western Virginia.
