Gathering Credits

First daughter is attempting to graduate a semester early.  That means she is gathering up all of the college credits she earned (or maybe earned) in high school -- AP and dual-enrollment (CU Succeed) and figuring out what she could take online this coming summer and transfer back into Eckerd.  It's a ridiculously complex process for a single semester of college.  And I do understand why we never bothered back at the beginning of college when we all assumed she would want the full 4 years. Last week I also talked to a nephew who ways he has around 160 credit hours and yet no degree. Possibly he has the same problems gathering up credits from a variety of sources and feeding them into a program.

I am impressed by students who come to StraighterLine and take both tests and classes and then manage to transfer them to a college or university where they count towards a degree.  I can not imagine the average student taking enough random MOOCs and any other sources of credit and putting them together in something close enough to a degree that some college somewhere would stamp "completed" and a BA on it. It's a great thought, but someone has to do the organization and someone has to be able to sit down with these students and figure out where the holes in their education really are.  In a world like this do completion programs shrink to 1 semester? Smaller?