Jan
2022
‘maze’ of education credentials
Growing ‘maze’ of education credentials is confusing consumers, employers
As more jobs require postsecondary training, more providers jump in to offer it — including fakes and scammers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/26/education-credential-certificate-scams/
a “maze” of nearly a million unique education credentials in the United States, the nonprofit Credential Engine reports, including not only degrees but also badges, certificates, licenses, apprenticeships and industry certifications.
The way new kinds of credentials are being developed and awarded is “a bit like the wild West,” a study by the Rutgers University Education and Employment Research Center found.
Even before the pandemic and the subsequent labor squeeze, 39 percent of human resources managers said they spent less than a minute reading a resume, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.
Conventional higher education institutions are increasingly alarmed about the holes that have developed in a system that was previously much simpler.
A quarter of American adults now hold nondegree credentials, meaning something short of an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to federal data, and they’ve become more popular in recent years.
“As online education becomes normalized, as a credential from Google or Microsoft can get someone a job, all of a sudden we’re in an environment where higher education doesn’t have a monopoly on education,” Ahluwalia said.
The Credential Engine Registry so far includes full or partial information on about 30,000 educational credentials. That’s about 3 percent of the total it eventually hopes to list.
+++++++++++++
more on credentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=credentials