The Still-Evolving Future of University Credentials
Five years in the past, I revealed a book on the long run of college credentials, making some predictions about what appeared more likely to come subsequent available in the market for levels and rising varieties of various faculty credentials. In this time of uncertainty amidst a rising pandemic, it appears value taking a minute to see how correct these predictions have been and to supply an replace, contemplating the surprising and unprecedented developments of the previous few years.
To begin off, it’s value pondering again to 2016. Education coverage leaders on the federal stage and past have been exploring the rising position of competency-based schooling and non-traditional providers—and calls have been rising for stronger connections between universities and the world of employment. Leading college presidents and the American Council on Education have been acknowledging the necessity to innovate and rethink educational credentials. And it was just some years after the launch of the primary MOOCs, placing the web greater ed market newly within the highlight because it continued its steady growth. What The Chronicle of Higher Education christened a “credentials craze” was in full swing.
New sorts of instructional credentials have been usually being championed as substitutes that will “disrupt” levels, but there was comparatively little proof of precise pupil demand for these upstart choices. We have been within the early innings of what I argued at the moment was extra of a supply-side-driven phenomenon: universities and corporations have been experimenting with new choices, and the groundwork was being laid for a extra digitally-oriented, shorter-form credentialing future.
Today, there may be ample proof of demand for brand spanking new sorts of instructional credentials—particularly for the reason that begin of the pandemic. The progress of instructional platform firms corresponding to Coursera and 2U is being pushed partly by a surge in demand for certificates applications and “alternative credential” choices. The quantity of open badges awarded nearly doubled from 24 million in 2018 to 43 million in 2020. And main firms and business teams are more and more stepping into the credentialing sport, exemplified by companies corresponding to IBM and Google. Strada Education Network’s client polling has proven that 40 percent of working-age adults have earned some type of non-degree credential—and that non-degree credentials are on the high of the record for adults searching for schooling or retraining. Among employers, consciousness of and expertise with new non-degree and digital credentials can also be persevering with to develop—and the potential worth proposition of digital credentialing resonates, based on survey results that we revealed simply final week.
Today, fewer suppliers try to model their choices with names like “nanodegree,” “MicroMasters” and “Credential of Readiness,” as they did a couple of years in the past with a combination of new, usually trademarked phrases. Instead, “certificates” of every kind appear to have the momentum within the United States because the standard-bearer for short-form instructional applications. Yet, there stays a lot of confusion or ignorance within the market concerning the fundamental differences between “certificates” and “certifications.”
The forces that drove curiosity in new varieties of credentials in 2016 stay in place and have arguably strengthened: the rising value of conventional levels; the demand for more-practical, skills-oriented schooling; the shift towards digital supply; the will of faculties to seek out new income streams; and the necessity for employers to seek out new pipelines for expertise. And as anticipated, badging, embedding certificates into degrees and the concept of offering small credentials on the way to a larger one are rising as key traits, and are ways in which new sorts of credentials are augmenting and supplementing (somewhat than supplanting) levels.
The Hiring Process Has Become More Technology-Driven
A key issue I’ve been finding out is how employers are fascinated about expertise and modifications within the hiring course of, together with shifts of their perceptions of faculty and college and different credentials.
Five years in the past, the appliance of knowledge and algorithms to the HR operate—as nicely the use of pre-hire evaluation—have been in a fledgling stage. In 2018, my colleagues and I at Northeastern University had an opportunity to measure these shifts by a national employer survey, which discovered that greater than half of organizations have been starting to leverage knowledge and evaluation in setting instructional {qualifications}—and that 23 % have been engaged in “skills-based hiring” initiatives that de-emphasized levels. Since then, attention to skills-based hiring and employers’ willingness to maneuver past requiring faculty levels has grown considerably, pushed by the tight job market and employer considerations about range and fairness.
Our most up-to-date nationwide employer survey venture, released just last week with IMS Global affiliate 1EdTechFoundation, discovered that 34 % of HR leaders say their organizations have skills-based hiring methods in place in the present day. And a good bigger share of HR professionals are exploring or contemplating this method. What’s extra, our analysis revealed a clearer sense of employers’ motivations: they need higher hiring outcomes, to create new pathways for higher workforce range, and so they’re pinched for expertise. We additionally acquired a greater sense of how skills-based hiring is being carried out: it’s usually by pre-hire assessments, structured interviewing, and the use of portfolios and certifications within the hiring course of.
This skills-based hiring development has real momentum and can also be evidenced in analysis of employer job postings and other data sources. The future will doubtless see a continued de-emphasis on merely requiring that potential workers maintain faculty levels.
But that’s not the identical as saying that employers not worth faculty credentials, regardless of overhyped media studies that employers are “throwing out” levels.
For all of the change, in the present day’s job market continues to value college degrees and to demand faculty graduates—in distinction to the concept that various credentials and disruptive market forces will merely wash away universities. That’s by no means meant to counsel that schools’ methods, choices and worth are good, nevertheless.
In my e book I may need been a bit overly optimistic concerning the resistance of conventional greater ed, nevertheless. College enrollment has been on the decline, dropping 7 percent between 2010 and 2018. Then got here the pandemic and even steeper drops that “show no signs of recovery from 2020” as documented by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and different sources. Even if this decline doesn’t fairly match the dire predictions of mass faculty closures that have been well-liked in 2016, the current historical past and near-term outlook for conventional greater ed is extra damaging than I imagined.
Lifelong Learning and Post-Baccalaureate Education because the Bright Spot
The want for extra steady lifelong studying in any respect ranges is rising, and there’s extra proof the needs of the job market are changing faster than ever, which means a higher want for upskilling. According to a brand new nationwide survey of C-suite executives that we just lately carried out, 70 % stated that U.S. employees needs to be nervous about their expertise turning into outdated over the subsequent few years. Quarter after quarter, the outcomes of a rising roster of publicly traded edtech firms—together with Udemy, Coursera, 2U, and Duolingo, for instance —symbolizes the market demand for lifelong studying and upskilling.
Although the necessity for lifelong studying doesn’t imply that everybody wants a bachelor’s or grasp’s diploma, graduate schooling is a better ed vivid spot, and one I predicted in my e book that’s confirmed out by the information, regardless of frequent claims within the media in recent times that the graduate diploma market was saturated and on the sting of decline. Sure, there are some hyper-expensive traditional graduate programs which are delivering poor worth for college kids. But these are by far the exception. The overwhelming majority of grasp’s enrollment within the U.S. has been professionally-oriented for a quantity of a long time, and demand has been surging, particularly as graduate enrollment has moved to on-line. Even earlier than the pandemic, 40 percent of U.S. graduate-level college students have been already on-line or hybrid.
The share of Americans who attain a grasp’s diploma earlier than age 29 has risen consistently during the last 10 years, and has doubled within the final 25. The Council of Graduate Schools and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center have documented vital progress for graduate enrollment—up 5 percent between 2019 and 2021, in comparison with a 5 % decline in undergraduate enrollment. And, the salary premium for advanced degrees stays excessive, which means the levels usually repay.
Innovations corresponding to stackable non-degree credentials as an on-ramp and low-cost MOOC-based degrees from high universities are more likely to solely develop entry to post-baccalaureate schooling. The number of MOOC-based degrees is approaching 100, up from only a handful a yr after my e book’s publication. In addition, our current analysis with company HR and studying leaders additionally suggests a extra fluid and modular future, primarily based on the development towards digital microlearning and the adoption of platforms that mixture programs, studying experiences and credentials from a variety of sources. Employer acceptance of credentials earned on-line has additionally grown steadily, based on our most up-to-date analysis—reaching greater than 70 % in 2021, up from 61 percent in 2018 and 40 % in 2013. This development, too, has seen a bounce ahead because of the pandemic.
Innovation within the lifelong studying {and professional} schooling area has additionally taken the shape of bootcamps – which have been comparatively new on the scene in 2016. Positioned by many as challengers to college diploma choices, this supply mannequin was predictably co-opted by brand-name universities – together with Penn, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, the University of Cambridge, and numerous others – by partnering with enabling firms. Online schooling providers firms – or “OPMs” as many seek advice from them, have continued to play a significant position within the scaling of on-line greater schooling, inside, and now more and more past the U.S.
One dynamic that I by no means dreamed of: the acquisition of struggling for-profit faculties by non-profit (and particularly public) universities, such because the examples of Purdue and Kaplan University in 2017 and the University of Arizona and Ashford in 2020. At minimal, it is a sign of a better schooling market that’s within the course of of being essentially reshaped.
It’s Still the ‘Wild West’ in Some Respects
Despite these developments in credentialing innovation, there may be nonetheless a significant want for requirements, infrastructure, considerate coverage, revolutionary experiments and analysis to assist the event of an ecosystem of high quality credential choices.
In the years since 2016, I’ve had the privilege of contributing to and studying from a quantity of initiatives and initiatives on this area – the Lumina-sponsored Connecting Credentials marketing campaign; the launch of the Non-Degree Credentials Research Network; the event of UPCEA’s Hallmarks of Excellence in Credential Innovation, and a lot extra. It’s been fascinating to listen to from college and authorities leaders and entrepreneurs from around the globe who’re all enthusiastic about this matter. And it’s actually helped anchor my columns for EdSurge.
All varieties of new credentials are proliferating, however they aren’t guided by any constant central framework, and so they aren’t but essentially “compatible” in methods that may really reshape job acquisition or diploma attainment. In an more and more international and digital greater schooling market, the problem forward goes nicely past anyone establishment, accrediting area, market phase, and even one nation. UNESCO for instance just lately convened an effort to “move toward a common language on microcredentials. And the European Union, quite a few particular person international locations, and numerous NGOs – in addition to business teams and academic leaders within the U.S. – are onerous at work on requirements frameworks.
Whether it’s 2016, 2021, or 2030, faculty and college levels are usually not going away anytime quickly – however the position and worth of instructional credentials within the job market, the varieties by which they’re earned, and the worth demanded by college students is repeatedly evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic launched the world economic system – and the postsecondary panorama – into a brand new period, and there may be thrilling work forward to proceed innovating and documenting developments on this area.
