In "Moving Ahead with Competency" by Paul Fein, he says the following about the CBE pilot in Washington state Link 
1. The certificate was part of phase one of an experiment by a handful of Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges. The next phase, which began in January, is the creation of a fully online, competency-based associate degree in business. The degree will be a transfer credential, meaning students should be able to move easily to four-year institutions. The courses will feature only free and open content. And Lumen Learning, an Oregon-based company, is designing the material to be adaptive, meaning it will respond to each student’s prior knowledge. Competency will replace grades in the degree track, with the equivalent of a B being the minimum mark students must meet.
2. Seven other two-year colleges in Washington, including Bellevue, plan to sign on and begin offering the competency-based associate degree later this year, according to Broughton. A key reason for the degree’s creation was research showing that there are 1 million people in the state with some college credits and no degree. Broughton said many of those people need a flexible form of higher education to go back and earn their degree. “We saw that we need to serve learners who are not with us now,” she said. “The goal is, eventually, every college can do this.” Washington’s two-year colleges have joined more than 200 other institutions around the country that are giving competency-based education a whirl.
3. "It's a generic degree from another college," said Strickland (AFT President). "What we oppose is corporatization of the learning process."
How very significant the writer chose Bellevue College--a good school located in a city where character and architectural creativity go to die. Here is another interesting quote:
4. “Students voted with their feet,” she said. In particular, Marks said students like the self-pacing, the flexible due dates for work and the program’s “high-tech, high-touch” approach. Faculty members had to do a lot of work up front to create the programs. Mapping course competencies in particular is laborious, said Marks.
But there was a payoff for instructors as well as students, she said. “It makes you pay more attention to instructional design, your outcomes and your assessments.”
Comment: *Somebody* please tell people that saying "touching students" is not effective educator-speak. They voted with their clicks actually, and we're losing students to WGU. Our R1 schools seem a bit silent about this issue, but they need to wake up that WGU is not just a community college problem. Or just an eLearning problem.
Here is the most interesting quote on the entire page--written in the comments.
4. Academic freedom must take a second seat to learner needs and the societal benefit of education access. When I hear academic freedom, I hear faculty members trying to avoid being held accountable to adult education best practices.
Connect to Stoo Sepp's Link Open Letter To Higher Admins
Comment: Let's imagine that somebody in this Happening is a part of this pilot. Imagine she can't respond to the notes above because she may or may not be involved with the hiring of teachers in this pilot. Let's imagine that she's working with this grant but she can't write anything about it until it's been officially announced. Let's say there is a giant wall of HR and PR between what she would write here and what's she's writing in a paper journal.
Let's imagine she has an openly gay business dean who came to her with a salespitch about the CBE pilot. (Read that sentence again, this dean will be a president someday. Prediction, meet Reality Now). Imagine she interrupted him by saying, "Of course we need to do this. Stop giving me the sell, and tell me how you're selling the idea to others. Want some tea?"
Let's just say that when she finally gets to write about this, it will feel similar to what she imagines how Dylan felt like at the Newport Music Festival in 1965.