Life experience credit refers to those degrees and diplomas that are earned mainly on the basis of life experience in a particular field. Life experience credit includes all sorts of degrees and diplomas. For example there are associate life experience credit, life experience college credit, which refers to graduate degrees and life experience postgraduate degrees and diplomas. But the range of life experience credit programmes is not very extensive and by no means is it equal to the range of traditional or online education programmes. The number of institutions awarding life experience credit is increasing day by day. Usually life experience credit also requires study courses before attaining degrees or diplomas. But there are some institutions which do not necessitate any academic work to award degrees. These institutions value only life experience of the candidates in relevant fields and set their degrees’ criterion on the basis of the length and depth of the candidate’s experience.


As far as the concept of life experience credit is concerned, it is quite contrary to the idea of the traditional education. In a general view it does not seem workable as means to obtain degrees of any kind. Perhaps for this reason, life experience credit has not gained much credibility among masses. There are also problems of accreditation with the life experience credit all over the world. For most of the people, life experience credit fails to establish any rationale for degrees. There are questions about the validity of such degrees where no academic work is done. Some unrecognized institutions sell degrees and diplomas in the name of life experience credit. The credentials bought in the name of life experience credit have obviously no educational value. Their use in the market in obtaining job or seeking any sort of promotion is equal to forgery and can have serious consequences.

The institutions offering life experience credit have many arguments in favour of their way of awarding degrees. They claim that the worth of experience has no match with the academic programmes of the traditional education that is restricted to the study of books alone. They say students in traditional education cannot compete with capability of an experienced person. Therefore the worth of such experience should not be undermined on the basis of degrees alone. Rather the experienced people have the right to get their skill recognized by the educational institutes. And this very reason has given birth to the concept of life experience credit. They also contend that in traditional educational system one has to go through many study courses which sometimes create boredom for the learners. Most of the study courses have no compatibility with temperament of the learners. Moreover they also claim that traditional education requires great patience on the part of the students for the completion of their degrees. In spite of all these arguments, the accreditation of degrees decides the validity and credibility of all educational degrees. Hence it is necessary that one should be very careful in obtaining life experience degrees and diplomas and must check the validity of any such testimonials prior to initiate any such project.