Kirk Carapezza and Mallory Noe-Payne:

This classroom in Nashville looks more like your traditional conference room. All of the students are over 21 and some of them have been sent here by their employers. From behind a one-way window, Doctor Charla Long stares in, observing their work.

“They have to come up in 45 minutes a consensus on these policy issues. And so you start to see how do they work with one another. Are they mean to each other?” Long explained.

Long is dean of the College of Professional Studies at Lipscomb, a small private university. She’s an outspoken advocate for giving working adults college credit for what they know how to do.