“We have seen that technology creates opportunities to reorganize business processes and reimagine entire industries. But even as IT and the internet have created new ways to research, learn, and impart knowledge, higher education has avoided disruption,” said Kennedy. “Colleges and universities hold a legacy franchise—the responsibility to educate students plus the power to grant them degrees. This reduces their incentive to help students take advantage of opportunities to learn outside the classroom, since it would reduce revenue, and they lack strong incentives to raise standards because it could drive away their customers, the students. Students meanwhile have little incentive to push themselves harder than necessary to earn their degrees, since those ‘sheepskins’ derive their value largely from institutional brand quality rather than clear measures of academic achievement.
“Given the need to build up America’s skilled workforce, now is the time to create alternative paths to certification that would let students pursue their best options for learning while applying competitive pressure on colleges and universities to improve quality and reduce costs,” he said.
“If we want more educational innovation and lower costs, as well as higher-quality educational outcomes, then it is time to break the legacy connection between teaching students and certifying their academic achievements,” said Castro. “We should move to a model where students have alternative ways of demonstrating their knowledge and skills. But this is in part a chicken-or-egg problem, with employers still relying on degrees and students not having access to alternative accreditation systems. The federal government should solve this by fostering a national network of certified organizations that assess the learning and skills of young people before they enter the workplace.”
The report calls on Congress to enact a series of reforms when it reauthorizes the Higher Education Act:
1. Establish a process to accredit organizations that provide certifications;
2. Encourage federal agencies to accept alternative certifications in lieu of degree requirements;
3. Require the administration to encourage the private sector to recognize and rely on alternative certifications in their hiring decisions;
4. Allow students to use federal aid for alternative learning options, such as MOOCs;
5. Ensure graduate programs consider applicants with alternative certifications; and
6. Require the administration to conduct a regular survey of employer needs.
“Increasingly college graduates lack the skills needed to help effectively drive U.S. economic growth. Dramatic reform of higher education is both necessary and possible,” said Atkinson. “Separating the tasks of education and certification will increase pressure on existing institutions to hold down costs and to provide measurable improvements in education. These reforms will also give students better information about the quality of the education they can expect to get and give employers better information about the readiness of job applicants, both of which are critical to creating the right incentives to boost the quality of teaching and learning.”
Material from a press release was used in this report.
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