The article discusses the student credit hour (SCH). The author begins with a rethinking of the basic unit of measurement in American higher education--the SCH. The credit hour was developed at the turn of the 20th century as a measure of student time in the classroom: one hour per week in class for one semester equalled one SCH. The credit hour has been the object of growing criticism for several decades, but the critique is becoming particularly acute now as technology has broken the link between time in a classroom and either teaching or learning. To get a handle on why this measure persists, and to test the hypothesis that the measure causes behaviors that may be barriers to positive institutional change, She and her colleague Tom Ehrlich led a team of researchers in exploring the uses of and alternatives to the credit hour. They started their inquiry by trying to understand how the credit hour, a uniquely American artifact, originated. The credit hour was first developed by college admissions officials as a standard measure of high school course work. Then came a profound transition: the credit hour evolved from a measure of student learning into a tool in the administrative world of budgets, accountability metrics, and external reporting. The credit hour has proven to be a remarkably flexible and adaptive metric. The measure also allows institutions to use a common currency for learning across disciplines that use quite different instructional modalities and have different production functions. But their research shows that there are some serious problems with the student credit hour. The most important is that it creates powerful incentives to perpetuate status quo behaviors. Among the many ways the SCH is used, there are a few that are most likely to create disparate treatment for students, institutions, or sectors. In this article, they provide a short list of trouble spots. A good place to start with a fresh approach to accountability metrics for education is to begin--but not end--with the credit hour.