Are alternative credits only an American thing?

[Johann]

They're literally only an American thing. Trying to "accelerate" your degree isn't really a thing that is done outside of the US. Not even regular CBE courses.

Granted, there are some minor exceptions. Apparently, some universities right now will sometimes accept MOOC courses as portfolio credit, even if it's not official policy to do so. Then there are schools like XAMK where they offer a number of self-paced low-cost options.

Aah! Interesting. I wonder why that is? A cultural thing, or perhaps because of US tuition costs its highly desired to accelerate? Honestly has me wanting to research the history of ACE credits.

I wonder if that means other universities in different countries won't recognize a lot of American degree.

If the degree is RA it's generally recognized. YMMV. E.G. Germany - U.S.MBA's are "AACSB or the Autobahn." Quite a few countries (e.g. UK) - evaluators (ENIC-NARIC) will not evaluate NA degrees. In UK Universities can make up their own minds on admitting someone with an NA degree - in other countries, they may not have that option. I don't THINK most foreign evaluators "dig" as to where you got your transfer credit. If a "good" Uni accepted it -- it's as good as Blockchain. ... I THINK.
Of course, if. for some reason they're required to do course-by-course evaluation, that's different. Then they might care very much how you got the credit.

This type of credit won't be applicable to a local degree program, though. Here in Canada, even Athabasca which is RA will not accept CLEP etc. towards its own degrees. But if you have an RA degree, that contains CLEP-earned credit, I think that's OK.