Earlier this month, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) released a discussion paper calling for a national conversation on the nation’s often fragmented “credentialing ecosystemâ€â€” an expression the author uses to define the decentralized nature of the country’s credentialing marketplace. Written by Evelyn Ganzglass, the paper urges key stakeholders in the postsecondary education and workforce communities to thoughtfully reevaluate and improve the transparency, utility, trust, and portability of credentials currently available to individuals for use in the labor market.
The paper goes on to call for a “large scale expansion of the use of credentials that recognize an individual’s competencies – regardless of means of acquisition – to improve employer competitiveness, reduce skill shortages, expand career advancement opportunities for workers, reduce time to credential for workers and students, and improve returns of accredited credentialing systems relative to costs.†It highlights the overly complex landscape of the current credentialing marketplace, the widespread lack of transparency within it and goes on to outline the contours of a credible alternative to this current framework by emphasizing the importance of an individual’s competencies rather than the amount of “seat time†needed for attainment.
Ultimately the paper argues that, “using competency as the basis for credentials would create a transparent student-centered approach to credentialing.†This overarching recommendation, along with many other important findings, was endorsed by a number of signatories including the Workforce Data Quality Campaign, of which NASDCTEc is a national partner. The full paper and a list of supporters can be found here.
Steve Voytek, Government Relations AssociateÂ
Tags: credentials