CEU: Founding Principles, Experiences to Date and Future Prospects.

The continuing education unit (CEU) is a means of establishing some quantification of the myriad of offerings labeled "continuing education,""adult education,""lifelong learning," etc., supplied by a variety of institutions and agencies and participated in by an ever-increasing number and variety of persons. On its most fundamental level, the CEU is defined as the equivalent of 10 hours of learner participation in the classroom recitation mode of instruction. The CEU applies to the entire gamut of noncredit educational enterprise regardless of audience, content, level, breadth (scope), depth (intensitiy), educational objective, or recognition purpose served. The incidence of award of CEU among institutions of higher education has increased by one million units per year over the four-year period ending June 30, 1980, with 6.5 million CEUs awarded in the 1979-80 year. However, 9.5 million of the 12.3 million registrations in noncredit programs conducted by institutions of higher education in that year were without benefit of CEU. In the future, it is hoped that more providers of continuing education, as well as more participants in such learning programs, will work to establish the recognition of the CEU for their courses. Such a move would aid in the universality and the transferability of recognition for knowledge acquired in continuing education courses. (KC)