Michael Feldstein, an education technology journalist and consultant, explores what competency-based education (CBE) is, what it is good for, and what the potential pitfalls are. According to Feldstein, the basic idea behind CBE is that what a student needs to learn to pass a course should be fixed while the time it takes to do so should be variable. He suggests that “CBE can help students by enabling those students who are especially bright or come in with prior knowledge and experience to advance quickly, while giving students who just need a little more time the chance they need to succeed.” Feldstein also warns that CBE “comes a strong temptation to dumb down competencies to the point where they can be entirely machine graded.” This temptation, he states “runs the risk of making what is already a weaker educational experience in many cases (relative to expensive liberal arts colleges with small class sizes) worse by watering down standards for success and reducing the human support, all while advertising itself as personalized.”
http://mfeldstein.com/faculty-know-competency-based-education/