The Coming Era of Alternative Credentialing As New Pathways to Education

Alternative credentials is generally regarded as "something other than the associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree" - in the professional, continuing, and online education offerings of universities and colleges.It is the award of credit to experiential and prior learning, demonstrated competency and mastery from non-degree. Also, it has become a mechanism for people to gain recognition for informal knowledge and skills.

Traditionally, a college degree has become a universally accepted "reference letter" that documents skills and aptitudes. A degree has been the currency that could be traded for a job. However, over the past couple of years, the focus on college degrees and related qualifications is fast changing as new ways of recognition and credentialing emerges.Disruptive, non-traditional new entrants to the higher education market are touting alternatives to university degrees.

This is an experiment in unbundling degrees and validating smaller chunks of skills and learning to provide workplace value to traditional and non-traditional students alike. This terrain remains a bold new frontier for many traditional degree-granting institutions and has become the new wave of change in higher education.

In today's fast-changing world, not every learner has the time -- or resources -- to earn a traditional, credit-based degree. With alternative credentialing, students can take the knowledge they've gained from non-degree coursework to improve their skills and employability.

Fact is, credentials are scattered across thousands of professional associations, commercial providers and licensing bodies, as well as colleges and universities. Alternative credentials, usually shorter and cheaper by comparison, have captured the imagination of reformers. Today's learners (especially millennials) are changing the face of higher education by demanding alternative paths to knowledge and skills attainment.

Examples of alternative credentialing are digital badges, bootcamps, certificates, MOOCs, microdegrees/microcredentials, and other types of qualifications offered by organizations outside academia.

Digital badges are regarded as sharable, online credentials that students can post on platforms such as email and social media networks to show skills learned and demonstrated through the completion of badge-specific criteria.

Bootcamps are a great example of alternative credentials. In response to an acute shortage of coders, bootcamps arose to fill the gap. Bootcamps provide learners with the requirements necessary to help bridge the skills gap needed to succeed in high-demand career fields.

Microdegrees are new forms of digital credential that certifies someone has completed 1,000 hours of learning in a professional discipline. Completing a Microdegree will be the equivalent of a full year of undergraduate upper level courses.

MOOCs (or Massive Open Online courses) and its cousins such as xMOOCs (eXtended Massive Open Online courses), cMOOCs (Connectivist Massive Open Online Courses), and others have all emerged as a part of the new wave of alternative credentialing in higher education, affecting both pedagogy and mode of delivery.

Udacity is a for-profit organization developed by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsy that offers MOOCs. Originally the courses focused on technology and science courses that were presented in a traditional university-type structure. However, its focus has shifted to courses intended for professionals.

Class Central is a free online course MOOC aggregator from various prestigious universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. offered via Coursera, Udacity, edX, NovoED, & others, in multiple subjects that are open to students around the world. Progressive mainstream academic institutions are beginning to accept course credit from these sources. Learners receive a certificate for the completion of a course or a series of courses in a particular topic.

The surge in micro credentialing is driven by a desire for step-change innovation to address growing frictions in mainstream higher education over cost, productivity and quality. It has emerged due to a persistent and growing critique of traditional higher educational institutions' ability to meet workforce needs, especially because the cost to students for a degree has grown dramatically over the past several years.

Employers areplacing more emphasis on alternative. The rationale for this is simple: students and employers are demanding more flexible and relevant qualifications to keep pace in today's quickly changing and increasingly competitive labour markets.

Employers are increasingly seeking to hire people whose skillsets can be proven rather than merely listed on a curriculum vitae. And, these types of alternative educational credentials are going mainstream in many areas outside of academia. Professional associations, industry organizations, and nonprofits have embraced them as a way for members and patrons to demonstrate participation in certain activities or in completing training modules.

The increasing interest in alternative credentials is fueled by a number of factors. Among the prominent ones are the public dissatisfaction with the rising cost of college tuition, the increasing attrition rate, and the growing unemployment among graduates. One response to the above is a new educational product based on skill building.

Information technology companies such as Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft and others continue to offer certification programmes to provide their workers with specialized skills to work with their products.

And, an increasing number of corporate organizations are offering and validating credentials. Among them are Coursera, Lynda.com, Khan Academy, and Degreed, which provides a platform for tracking formal and informal online learning.

As alternative credentials grow and employer confidence in them grows, these credentials will undermine the value of mediocre undergraduate degrees.

Fact is, alternative credentialing will not replace traditional degrees. The marketplace understands traditional degrees. New credentialing schemes add value to existing degrees, rather than replace them. Traditional higher educational institutions could choose to accept an alternative credential as evidence of prior learning. This trend should have an impact on the entry qualification and admissions processes. This trend will go a long way to provide college access to learners, many of whom would not otherwise have had access to university degree.

Nana Prof. Osei Darkwa

President, The African Virtual Campus

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