Continuing Education Units (CEU's)
Q: I am currently involved in establishing a school operating over the net
specializing in short, non-credit, post-secondary, courses, primarily
vocational in nature. I have seen a number of seminars, short courses,
etc that have statements such as "6 Continuing Education Units (CEU's)
awarded upon successful completion of this course. The CEU seems to be a
fairly widespread term. Is there an organization that "accredits" or
certifies continuing ed courses and determines the number of CEU's
appropriate?
A:The Continuing Education Unit (CEU) represents a method of
measuring non-credit education that can be counted toward
fulfillment of professional or continuing education requirements.
One CEU is *universally* interpreted as ten *contact* hours of
learning. For example, when used in the context of professional
seminars, a six-clock-hour seminar would carry 0.6 CEU's.
Personal study time is *not* included in the calculation of
CEU's; credit is granted *only* for contact hours. Thus, a
statement such as "6 CEU's granted..." would indicate that the
course included 60 contact hours.
There used to be an organization called the Council for the
Continuing Education Unit that would, in fact, certify
organizations that offered professional and continuing education
courses, but the requirements were quite stringent and the
organization would have to have offered courses (and granted
CEU's) for quite some time before acceptance by the Council.
Another requirement was that the sponsoring (training)
organization keep a record of CEU's granted based on the
students' Social Security number. (This may have been changed
due to various privacy laws, in the same way that colleges no
longer use an SSN as a student I.D. number.) The Council changed
its name a few years back, and I'm afraid that I don't recall the
new name.
Nonetheless, *anyone* can grant CEU's - there is no requirement
for certification or membership in any organization to do so.
Some professional organizations (such as the American Counseling
Association) have made audio or video courses available for which
they grant CEU's. The usual procedure is to calculate the number
awarded based on the length of the tapes or the average time it
would take to read the study materials. (Contact hours are not
used since the courses are taken by extension.)
Professions such as law, medicine, psychology, and counseling
also have continuing professional education requirements. The
rules for each profession are normally established on a state-by-
state basis and, in addition to CEU's, credit can be expressed as
CME's (for continuing medical education), CLE's (continuing legal
education), etc. Measurement of professional credits may be
based on the CEU standard of one credit per