The future of college credentials
By DANIEL MEISER
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
What this story covers
College students need to set themselves apart on the job market. Digital badges, which show what skills students possess, are one way to do that. Colleges are pushing for more badges to make students more employable.
Why it matters
Employers report that a lot of recent college graduates are not prepared in the areas of professionalism, leadership and critical thinking — and having badges would showcase these credentials.
Aidan Pass will be on the job market this time next year.
The Towson University junior is already thinking about ways to set himself apart in a crowded field of college graduates seeking employment. He knows that many graduates take months to find their first job. And he doesn’t want to wait that long.
“The school system has failed to equip graduates with the means to find a job, and the students lack the initiative to prepare themselves,” Pass said.
One way that students like Pass are trying to stand out on the job market is by earning digital badges while in college. Badges work as a way for students to keep a digital paper trail of their accomplishments so that employers can identify their strengths and learn more about graduates than their grade point average and major.
Colleges are also searching for ways to enable their students to become more empoyable — and they hope digital badging is a solution.
Employers want “soft skills” from new hires
Digital badges run the gamut — with some showing that students have mastered technical skills such as coding or social media analytics. However, other badges demonstrate that students have “soft skills” such as leadership and critical thinking.
These soft skills are often lacking from recent college graduates, according to a 2018 report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. This study measured competency in key categories that employers were looking for in students. The soft skills of communication, planning and others were most lacking, not “hard” or technical skills.
Only 40 percent of employers thought students fared well on professionalism. Nearly 80 percent of students saw their critical thinking abilities as sharp enough to tackle the daily issues that working professionals could encounter. Yet employers said nearly half of students were not ready on this front.
In the category of leadership, 70 percent of students were said they were prepared, while only 30 percent of employers felt that to be true.
That’s why some colleges are pushing for new badges to show that students have taken courses that enable them to be leaders and strong communicators or critical thinkers.
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USM system makes a push for digital badges
The University System of Maryland began experimenting several years ago with digital badges as a way to allow students to show their specific skills.
“It [improving education] will involve the effective utilization of the right tools to solve an identified educational need blended with strategies to integrate these new approaches in culture-changing, sustainable ways,” said MJ Bishop, head of USM’s Center for Academic Innovation.
One issue that arose in the development of the digital badge program was how students would share these credentials with potential employers. The USM has partnered with the online platform Portfolium to support the system’s career-readiness digital badging initiative.
Creating an extensive online profile on the platform is one way students can showcase their digital badges as well as any other credentials they earned. LinkedIn is another place that students could highlight these skills.
“This is a digital paper trail of leadership and experiences so that potential employers can identify institutional recognized candidates,” Pass said.
Towson has embraced the idea of digital badges and allowing students access to alternative forms of credentialing.
“These badges would allow students to have access to other credentials besides a degree inside a higher education model,” said Lorie Logan-Bennett, director of the Towson University Career Center.
Towson already has three badges and is now piloting a new one called the leadership badge. This form of micro-credentialing would be open to all students regardless of major or class standing.
Greg Faller, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication, works with students to develop new pathways and help students through the process of acquiring a digital badge.
“Students are looking for additional ways of showcasing what they have learned from school, internships and jobs, and any other experiences they have had,” Faller said.
Towson, as well as other universities in Maryland and the U.S., have begun to embrace digital badging and the various benefits that could come from them.
“This leadership badge can signal to employers that a student has undergone a rigorous process by which there ability to lead has been highlighted,” Faller said.
What’s in a badge?
The pushback to this new style of credentialing is what is the true worth of a badge? How rigorous can these be when they do not have credit hours or a specific set of prerequisites behind them?
Experts and students alike wonder how the process of digital badging would be standardized across a wide range of universities. Would the quality of the process be exemplary in all cases? The answer is maybe not.
At some colleges there’s a rigorous process that students have to go through to earn a badge, while at others this may not be the case, said Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, a news outlet that covers higher education.
“I think colleges should make their standards public by possibly attaching them to a transcript in some way,” Jaschik said. “Then a student or graduate could point to a process and prove to employers how they stand out from others.”
In many cases, new forms of credentialing like digital badges would serve to only help those students who wanted to go above and beyond the norm, but it would not replace any kind of formal education.
“By no means do I think digital badging should replace various kinds of certifications and learning opportunities but, I think this is a good way to augment someone’s qualifications rather than just checking off a box,” said Pass, who is applying for a leadership badge at Towson.
The kind of vetting process that goes along with digital badging could apply to much more than just a four-year degree that a student is working toward, Pass said.
It could be implemented in high school settings where students could learn skills that employers desire and have a place in which to showcase their abilities.
This question will only be answered once digital badging and micro-credentialing become fully mainstream. Until then it is important to watch the trajectory of these kinds of programs, as well as many others that will certainly appear in the future.