By David Longanecker
President, Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education
I’ve appreciated the opportunity I’ve had during my final months before retirement at WICHE to participate in the Connecting Credentials effort, both at the October national summit and in co-facilitating the recent work group on Common Language. I want to reflect on where I think we as a community, or perhaps as a group of disparate communities, are today and where we need to go with respect to credentialing. I believe there are two seminal questions that need to be answered:
• Credentials to what end, and
• Where’s “the problem.”
Credentials to what end.
One dilemma is that there are two distinct and different purposes being served by credentials for two quite different and distinct communities. The most dominant purpose reflected at the summit is what I will refer to as externally referenced reasons for credentials; that is, has the education and training prepared a person for the world of work in their field of study and for life as a responsible and well-adjusted adult.
Another issue arose about just how much the credential is supposed to mean. One view, and the one to which I subscribe, is that a credential is an award that provides a pretty good clue of what a person logically knows and is able to do. In the past we have assumed that the accumulation of courses or activities (32 to 40 courses for a baccalaureate, half that many for an associate’s, half that amount or so for a certificate, etc.) provided that clue. Now, however, we also have come to believe that there are other ways in which people should be able to be clued in. So, we are adopting ways of assessing competency other than simply through the accumulation of courses as a way to receive the credential as the clue.
But many believe that the credential (or credentials) must be much more than a clue; that it must be much stronger evidence of competence and should reflect much more than just outcomes based on tests and courses taken. It should represent substantial evidence such as that provided by e-portfolios, accumulation of badges, or other records of achievement. As useful as these may be for some purposes, they are not an efficient method of providing the needed clue, thus the current method of credentials will continue to be an important first step. Imagine for a moment that you are an employer seeking to hire 10 individuals and you receive 1,000 applications. You need some clue as to which 20 or 30 of these 1,000 individuals might be able to do the job and our current credentials do that reasonable well, at least in many circumstances. Narrowing down from 30 to 10 requires more information and those other records of achievement can be helpful in that process, but credentials as we know them aren’t going to go away, which means we need to make sure that they mean what folks think they should mean as a clue.
Confounding the discussion is the other major use of credentials — their use for internally referenced purposes within higher education. In part, we use credentials internally as our own clue of efficacy. For example, we accept the associate of arts or sciences from community colleges as a reasonable clue that recipients of this credential are ready for upper division work at our four year institutions. This gets messy, however, because sometimes we do accept this and sometimes we don’t. And as credentials have proliferated and morphed from their original purposes, we’re not so sure of the clues internally; witness the angst with the introduction of the applied baccalaureate degrees. Even if we do understand them internally, their new meanings internally may not translate to their external validity. For example, the California Community Colleges provide more certificates in the liberal arts than in all other certificates combined. I presume these certificates have meaning within the colleges as evidence of advancement, but I wonder about their external validity in an environment where “a certificate” has traditionally been associated with skill based training.
We in higher education also use credentials internally as a way to ensure to our satisfaction that we are providing a quality product. The Degree Qualifications Profile is perhaps the most significant innovation through which we use the credential, with clearly established standards for achievement, as the measure of assured quality.
Further confounding our internally referenced use of credentials is the disconnect between two distinct parts of our community — traditional academe and CTE (career and technical education) — that don’t think of quality assurance and credentials at all in the same way. Traditional academe considers the degree to be much more than preparation for the world of work, whereas CTE is focused primarily on preparing individuals for success in the world of work. And while CTE might currently involve much more than just the content skills of a specific occupation it is still unabashedly focused on occupational preparation.
In many cases these external and internal referenced purposes coincide comfortably. In others they don’t, which is why we need to find more coherence in the system.
Where’s the problem.
The participants in the October summit, coming from quite a few different backgrounds, clearly saw the nature of the problem in different ways. Some saw the problem as one of the U.S. simply needing more credentialed adults, so how can we pump up the numbers and look better in international comparisons. Some saw the problem as the American system of credentialing simply not allowing people with skills to be able to get credit for having those skills because they hadn’t gone through the prescribed manner of achieving those skills. Some saw the problem as our system lacking both face and content validity with too many credentialed individuals not having the skills that the credential ostensibly conveys (this is where I fit). And, similarly, some saw the problem internal to higher education with a lack of adequate quality assurance to prove our students learn what they are supposed to learn. Each of these perspectives has legitimacy and, indeed, they can be complementary.
I believe we would be well served to look at “the problem” in two ways. First, we must come to grips with what the purpose of a credential is, whether it is intended to be a clue or the perfect measure. I believe it is best to state up front that it should simply be a clue that on the one hand provides a valid filter for those outside higher education to interpret and on the other hand provides legitimate signals within higher education of the efficacy of our processes. Second, we should look at the evidence to help us dispel some of the mythology that abounds in the rhetoric around credentialing today. Evidence clearly tells us is that, despite the hyperbole of many in business, the bachelor’s degree is highly valued in the economy today, at least compared to not having such a degree; as Tony Carnevale points out, the wage premium for baccalaureate holders is increasing. And while there are tremendous variations in the returns on investment by field of study, virtually all baccalaureate degree holders get jobs that pay a living wage, even though many, if not most, baccalaureate degree holders end up in jobs not directly related to the field of study in which they received their degree. This suggests that credentialing at the baccalaureate level, for the most part, is not a problem. While it’s not as effective a “filter” when a larger portion of the population receives it and there is plenty of evidence that students should be learning more, EVIDENCE suggests that as a clue for job readiness, it works reasonably well.
The story at the associate degree level is a bit less clear. What we know very clearly is that the associate of arts degree is effective internally as a signal of preparedness for continuing education toward the baccalaureate, but that it is virtually useless externally for determining employability, showing virtually no economic gain over those of a high school graduate. The associate of applied science, on the other hand, has substantial economic value, at least in the allied health and STEM related fields (not so much in business, the arts, and such). All in all, though, we have pretty good clues with respect to associate degrees.
Certificates, however, are another story. We know that some certificates have substantial economic value and that others do not; in fact, some appear to have negative value given the costs of securing them and the modest salaries they lead to. In part, the problem with certificates is that there are no general guidelines for what constitutes a certificate. With degrees, like it or not, we have a sense of the amount of activity required to receive the award and at least to some extent what the learning is supposed to have been. We don’t have such rules for certificates. They can range from weeks to years in length and the desired outcomes are often simply in the eyes of the providers. While many, if not most, certificate programs have no externally validated standards, such standards have been established. At the summit we had available to us the framework developed by the National Association of Manufacturers and for many years ACT has provided industry based externally validated outcomes/competency assessment for certifications in thousands of occupations. So, it’s not that we can’t know the efficacy of certificates. It’s that we have chosen not to. And the “we” in this statement is both higher education and industry. Our higher education institutions that offer certificates have enjoyed their discretion in defining what constitutes a certificate program and our accreditors have let them do so because they could care less about these non-degree credentials. Industry has enjoyed the localization of certificate development, allowing such awards to be tailored to local needs, both because this fits their unique needs and because it limits the workforce mobility of their employees.
Which brings us to the new branding mechanism in American higher education, badges. I’m personally an expert on badges having been a lifelong boy scout (I didn’t make eagle; didn’t have enough badges). More importantly, we at WICHE, working with Blackboard and Mozilla, actually created a series of badges, which you received for participating in our MOOC on badges. Coming to the summit I was quite skeptical about badges — not about their intended purposes, but rather with their efficacy. I think it is wholly appropriate to find ways in which individuals can demonstrate and be recognized for knowledge and skills that they have attained but that are not captured in current credentials. For high-school and college students this can be an effective way of “stacking” credentials, ultimately leading to a certificate or degree, or the badges can also stand alone. For older adults these can be an effective means for demonstrating skills and abilities useful in transitioning within the workforce, or simply for accumulating evidence of knowledge to be shared via social media. The purposes, therefore, aren’t a problem; it’s determining the efficacy of the badge that is problematic today. To date, virtually all badges are internally created and validated. The lack of any standards with what constitutes a badge and any external validation that the participant has achieved these standards raises questions about the efficacy of the badge, and, indeed, the badge movement. Is the badge based on demonstrated competency, completing a process, or some of both? Who attests to the value of the badge? These issues need to be resolved for badges to gain credibility. I do see some leaders in the badging arena working hard and creatively to address these challenges under the rubric of open badges standards.
I hope the current “connecting credentials” effort creates more coherence in and greater validity to our credentialing processes, and does so in a fashion the brings both those audiences within and outside higher education to clearer understanding of the meaning of different credentials. To accomplish this will require greater discipline in defining standards for varying credentials. It will also require greater collaboration, respect and mutual appreciation between higher education and its external partners.
