This is a great book by Sean Gallagher, the Chief Strategy Officer for Northeastern University’s Global Network. It is easy to read and well written and researched. If offers an historic overview of university credentialing and an up-to-date look (2016) at the current state of the game.
The book confirms that the university credential is alive and well, HR leaders and recruiters still use the bachelors or masters degree as the number one indicator of competence, despite increasing amounts of rhetoric to the contrary.In fact, the author interestingly notes that many of the large tech organizations that are most vocal about the value of a university degree are still using it as the recruitment standard.
He cautions however that credentialing may be in the same place that on-line learning was around fifteen years ago i.e., not well accepted or understood. It certainly is clear that most HR recruiters are confused by e-portfolios, badges, boot camps, MOOC certificates, competency-based programs, micro-masters, nano-degrees etc. Business has shown little interest to this point in any of these in comparison to the degree. The author has interviewed some of the leading university graduate recruiters from the business sector and I was somewhat surprised by the frankness of their answers. The simple fact is that they are screening sometimes thousands of applicants and so not have the understanding or the systems to account for the value of these credentials. As HR truly enters the digital age and talent analytics becomes a more common place and commodity service this will probably change.
Most of the alternate credentials are given, at least initially, by the private sector. Investors often funnel millions of dollars into these ventures, but their success is spotty at best. There is also still a fundamental distrust of a private for-profit certification and they are more successful when partnered with a university that has a reputation for quality. The accreditation authorities are clearly also struggling with what needs to be done to ensure quality.
Despite this many universities are trying out new forms of certifications. Badges at UC Davis, Boot camps at Rutgers and Northeastern universities, MOOCs from Coursera at John Hopkins University, Harvard’s HBX CORe, NYUs industry focussed diplomas and Southern New Hampshire University’s competency based undergrad programs.
Advice from the author is that university degrees are not going away anytime soon but there is a need for credentialing innovation especially for life-long learners and we need to talk more to employers to better align our degrees to their needs. Oh and keep a careful eye on where talent analytics is going – that could be the big disruptor in university credentialing.
Interesting.