A Nonprofit Spent 5 Years Counting a Million Credentials. What Does It All Add Up To?
For the previous 5 years, researchers have been rigorously counting all of the levels, certificates and badges obtainable for folks to earn within the U.S., a determine they are saying now totals 1,076,358.
And for the previous 5 years, some observers have scratched their heads about this enumeration endeavor and requested … why?
The effort, run by the nonprofit Credential Engine, marked its half-decade this week with a digital convening to explain its latest research report and a reception in Washington, D.C., to have fun its anniversary. As a day of Zoom displays gave approach to a night of conversations over cocktails, the aim and potential of all that tallying got here into focus.
More than two dozen states now companion with Credential Engine, utilizing the Credential Transparency Description Language it developed to assemble, kind via and higher perceive their training and workforce information. And some state governments are making use of this technique to assist their residents straight. For instance, a chief from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development defined throughout the webinar how her state is creating a digital search software that lets folks choose amongst all of the credential choices obtainable to them, sorting by occupation, program location and graduate outcomes.
The rising uptake is a signal that extra policymakers and officers recognize the significance of making extra transparency within the training “marketplace,” leaders at Credential Engine advised EdSurge throughout interviews on the nonprofit’s reception on Dec. 7.
“This is the right thing to do for your students,” stated Scott Cheney, the CEO of Credential Engine. “It’s crazy that it’s easier to search for, compare and select a hotel room or a used car online than it is to make an informed decision” about which postsecondary credentials to pursue.
Still, advocates main completely different however associated efforts to make greater training and workforce coaching applications higher for contributors and employers have completely different concepts about what transparency actually seems like with regards to credentials. A few advised EdSurge that they want to see the credential-counting effort tackle deeper questions.
“We still don’t have a great sense of which credentials offer the most value,” stated Michael Bettersworth, a vice chancellor at Texas State Technical College and the CEO of ExpertiseEngine. “Which of these offer the most opportunity for individuals seeking greater career advancement?”
Colleges Have Competition — and Opportunity
As in earlier editions, this yr’s annual Credential Engine report presents a glimpse of the big panorama of credentials on provide from conventional and upstart suppliers—together with schools and universities, bootcamps and apprenticeships. The report divides these credentials into 18 classes throughout 4 varieties of suppliers: postsecondary instructional establishments, MOOC organizations, secondary faculties and non-academic entities.
New to the analysis this yr is a depend of what number of teams within the U.S. present credentials: 59,692. That monumental quantity signifies that there was an “explosion” of suppliers, Cheney stated, together with from giant corporations like Google, Amazon and LinkedIn that provide job-training programs and badges. Of the 4 classes of suppliers, non-academic entities provide the biggest depend of credentials, in response to the report.
The truth that faculties don’t high that listing of credential suppliers ought to sign to leaders at conventional greater ed establishments that it’s time to concentrate to all of the organizations now competing for college students, particularly since enrollment at schools has been declining, stated Eleni Papadakis, govt director of the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board and a member of the Credential Engine board of administrators.
Papadakis argued that faculties which can be open to reimagining how they function—maybe by embracing competency-based training and providing credit score for prior studying—have the chance to change into hubs for a lot of varieties of studying experiences that result in a number of credentials. During an period when the relationship between employers and workers is shifting, she defined, this might assist each corporations and employees navigate new job-training pathways and upskilling applications.
Colleges might play a function in sharing data with the learning-and-training ecosystem, too. For instance, Southern New Hampshire University is utilizing Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Description Language to make open data about its credentials and courses broadly obtainable.
What About Value and Quality?
Credential Engine’s registry of credentials isn’t a rating. Search its Credential Finder system for “nursing” credentials, as an illustration, and it pulls up 1,987 outcomes, together with a licensed nursing assistant license, a nurse help coaching certificates of completion and a bachelor of science in nursing diploma.
The nonprofit’s techniques aren’t designed to inform college students and employees which program is finest, or the place to hunt levels, certificates and badges, stated Credential Engine board chair Barbara Gellman-Danley, who can also be the president of the Higher Learning Commission, an accrediting group. Instead, the nonprofit’s efforts goal to create a extra degree taking part in subject by accumulating and sharing details about all of the choices on the market, she defined.
That makes some sense to Jennifer Dirmeyer, the managing director of the Workforce Talent Educators Association, as a result of it helps to keep away from “privileging particular types of educational systems over others,” she advised EdSurge in an interview. She added that enumerating all current credentials, and creating a shared language to explain them, is a sturdy basis—a first step—for added work.
“This is absolutely necessary, but it isn’t sufficient. We have to live up to the potential Credential Engine is creating for us by using this to elevate the conversation about outcomes,” Dirmeyer stated. “I think transparency about what is happening is not that useful. Transparency about the results of what is happening is extremely useful.”
Other efforts underway might extra straight reveal, or affect, the outcomes that numerous credentials provide to college students and firms. For instance, the Center on Education and Labor at New America has performed analysis about what makes non-degree applications “high quality.” The Workforce Talent Educators Association helps job-training applications guarantee high quality. And ExpertiseEngine goals to assist suppliers reshape their credential applications to make sure that they educate college students abilities that employers are literally looking for.
Bettersworth, of ExpertiseEngine, stated he want to see an index of credentials that signifies which of them employers actually worth. (Bettersworth served on the Credential Engine technical advisory group for a whereas, however does not presently.) Dirmeyer stated she desires to see a information system that helps employers open their minds to completely different sorts of credentials once they consider and rent candidates—and subsequently make extra job presents to folks of all backgrounds.
“If employers can’t use this effectively to actually refine their search process, they’re going to fall back on the same methods that they’ve always used,” Dirmeyer stated. “Those credentials are not going to pack the power they could have.”
Any one effort can solely attain thus far so quick. Yet specialists inside and outdoors of Credential Engine agree that the data the nonprofit has collected—and the shared language it has created to outline that data—might be utilized in every kind of the way sooner or later, particularly since its information is open and obtainable for different entities to make use of.
As Kerry Ballast, a chief with the Texas Workforce Commission, defined throughout the Credential Engine webinar, she discovered that the primary yr of digging into credentials information “is all about quantity.”
Now she is wanting ahead, she stated, to excited about “quality.”
