By Matthew Pittinsky

Credentialing

in Higher
Education
Current Challenges and Innovative Trends

f we think about what colleges

and universities do, there are
very few things that technology
has not fundamentally either
transformed or begun to
transform. Yet for all of the ways
in which technology is changing teaching
and learning, research, and services,
there is one area that has not been
affected much at all: the transcript.

Illustration by Dung Hoang, 2015

w w w. e d u c a u s e . e d u / e r o

M A R C H / A P R I L 2 015 E d u ca u s e r e v i e w 35

Credentialing in Higher Education: Current Challenges and Innovative Trends

One could argue that the transcript

that is, credentialingis the only nonnegotiable service of a higher education
institution. At the end of the day, we credential. Indeed, America today is a credential society. The U.S. Census Bureau
reports that one in two U.S. adults has
some form of postsecondary credential;
one in four has some form of certification or license independent of his/her
postsecondary credential. But higher
education does not hold a monopoly
on credentialing. It is happening in the
labor market as well, with certifications
and licenses that make a significant difference for workers. For example, the
BMO Education and Training Report 2012
highlights that someone with an associates degree plus a certification or license
experiences a 15 percent earnings premium when compared with someone
holding only an associates degree. And
that premium changes depending on the
certification and license and depending
on the degree (e.g., a twoyear degree or a
fouryear degree).
For many students, the credential is
the coin of the realm. After completing
a twoyear or fouryear program or a
continuing/executive education programwhether brickandmortar, online,
or hybridstudents leave with a credential. Its their currency for accessing
opportunities as a function of the educational investment that theyve made.
Students then take their credentialstranscripts, diplomas, certificates,
assessmentsand move into a world
where they continue to get more certifications and licenses. Their academic
credentials may be stacked into those
certifications and licenses, often as a prerequisite. Indeed, certifications are part
of many higher education programs. If
I were to go through a teacher education
program, for example, my certification
or license isnt going to happen later. The
program is specifically designed so that I
will graduate not just with a diploma but
with that certification as well.
Colleges and universities are the
beneficiaries of this growing credential
society because they are the gatekeepers
36 E d u ca u s E r e v i e w M A R C H / A P R I L 2 015

of many of those credentials. But that is

a curse as well as a blessing. The curse
is the expectation that higher education
must find ways to credential betterwith
more information and in more accessible waysusing the transformative
technology we now have available.

h a t s d r i v i n g
this demand for
more credentialing from higher
education? Academics will likely
disagree. An economist might argue that
credentials are measures. Since we cant
put an instrument into peoples brains
to figure out what they know and how
well they know it, we trust higher education and other institutions to measure
learning. Can a graduating student write
well? Speak well? Think analytically? Is
the student comfortable with and skilled
in using numbers? As
jobs have become more
technically complex,
we need more information about and higher
standards around how
we measure productive
human capital or the
use value of the credentials. The transcript
communicates this
information.
A sociologist, howe v e r, m i gh t a rg u e
that something else is
going on. The workforce hasnt become
that much more complex. Does the coursework completed for
a bachelors degree
correspond with the
requirements of many
of the jobs in the labor
market? Does someone
really need a bachelors
degree to be a firefighter, for example?
What is probably hap-

pening, according to this view, is credential inflation. When very few people had
a high school degree, that degree was the
currency used to purchase a job. Now
that everyone has a high school degree,
the bachelors degree is the ticket. As
more and more people get bachelors
degrees, a graduate degree will become
the employment differentiator.
Then, somewhere in the middle of
these two arguments is the notion that
credentials are signals. With the competition over scarce opportunities in the
labor market, credentials become a way
of filtering people. True, credentials
may not fully communicate needed
information. The fact that I have a bachelors degree in sociology says very little
about what I know and how well I know
it. Nevertheless, one can make certain
assumptions about my knowledge and
skills from the fact that I went through
that degree program and graduated from
the institution I attended.

A currency
credential is students
for accessing

opportunities as a function of
the educational investment
that theyve made.

Credentialing in Higher Education: Current Challenges and Innovative Trends

Whether measure, currency, or signal, credentials are at the center of a new

debate in higher education, with rising
expectations from both students and
employers for more comprehensive credentialing that documents knowledge
and skills throughout a lifetime of learning. I would argue that unfortunately,
most colleges and universities have not
begun to come close to meeting those
expectations. The truth is, we dont communicate a fraction of the educational
experience that happens at our institutions: the leadership experiences and
competency achievements that are a
result of those programs. For employers, these are some of the most valuable
skills and represent the type of information that they are looking for regarding
potential firsttime hires.
The way higher education institutions communicate the information of
student achievement is still very much

Institutions
need to find ways
to transfer this
information not just to
and for students and
employers but also
among themselves.

38 E d u ca u s E r e v i e w M A R C H / A P R I L 2 015

in paper-based ledger form, for example.

Were still printing and mailing. To
receive a transcript from many institutions today, a student must fax in the
request, mail a check, and wait in a line to
receive an envelope inside an envelope
inside an envelope.
Today, students live much of their
lives online. That is where they are establishing professional identities and getting jobs. When they graduate, they are
given beautiful paper diplomas, framed
to put on a wall for perhaps ten people
to see. What are also needed are digital
diplomas to be placed into online profiles for everyone to see.
In addition to the lack of digital formats, higher education credentials are
very fragmented, with dualenrollments,
study-abroad programs, badges, and
various certifications. Often these certifications or additional programs are
simply listed at the bottom of the transcript instead of being treated as a
full-market-value credential.
Institutions also need to find ways
to transfer this information not just to
and for students and employers but
also among themselves. With the current trends in terms of institutional
pathways, this need for collaboration
is becoming more pronounced.
In my home state of Arizona, for
example, Arizona State University
(ASU) is working with a number of
community colleges so that twoyear
students, while theyre still at their
home base of the twoyear institution,
can have their transcript data sent to
ASU and put through a degree-audit
program, MAPP (https://transfer
.asu.edu/agreement2/maricopacounty-community-collegedistrict/mapp), to make sure that
the courses theyre taking are
going to maximize their transfer
and completion on time to that
fouryear degree.
This requires an institution
toinstitution exchange of data
around courses, grades, and similar
information. To print and mail that
information and then open, scan, and

index it would be absolutely unscalable.

However, even though ASU has had a
long relationship with Maricopa Community College, for example, and many
colleges and universities probably have
a similar pointtopoint relationship,
for the most part that doesnt generalize
across multiple institutions.
In Colorado, a statewide reverse
transfer program, Degree Within Reach
(http://degreewithinreach.org/), is
the direct opposite: students have the
ability to leave the twoyear program
without getting an associates degree. In
their fouryear program, on the way to
a bachelors degree, if they earn enough
credits to get that twoyear degree, they
will earn an associates in passing,
which means that even if they dont
ultimately complete the fouryear program, they will still have that foundation
of a twoyear credential. This requires
institutiontoinstitution collaboration
and exchange of student records and
student performance data.

hus the rising expectations of the credential

society, the fact that our
paper-based approach is
not meeting those expectations, and policy drivers
about how colleges and universities are
expected to move student record data
within and among institutions are all
creating significant challenges. The good
news is that several innovative trends
including cocurricular experiential
transcripts, microcredentialing, and the
electronic transcripthave the potential
to satisfy these expectations.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I feel that
the digital credential is key to addressing
many of these challenges. It can break
down the barriers of communicating
fifteen to twenty pages of information
that doesnt scale well. If the information is electronic, and if its available as
machinereadable data, we can begin to
communicate more information, and we
can count on the information systems
at the other end to be able to take out

Credentialing in Higher Education: Current Challenges and Innovative Trends

exactly what theyre looking for.

Yet these trends do pose a risk. One
thing that we may not fully appreciate
until its gone is how wellestablished
the academic transcript is as a standard.
We know it is two or three columns. We
know it shows courses and grades. We
know that it contains letter grade assessments and/or numeric grade assessments. And we know what to do with that
information. As colleges and universities
begin to issue more experiential and/or
cocurricular transcripts, if each institution does so in its own way, we could create a Tower-of-Babel problem that will
make the exchange of credentials even
more challenging.
Perhaps the best example of this
is Western Governors University, an
innovator that completely rethought
its program, resulting in a completely
different transcript. The number-one

complaint that the university received

was from other institutional registrars
saying: I dont know how to articulate
this transcript. I dont know how to give
students credits, because I cant find the
basic information that I need to make
sense of the transcript. As a result,
Western Governors University now
provides a traditional-format academic
transcript as well as a competency-based
transcript that reframes the traditional
information.

ikewise, as institutions
start to use transcripts with
machine readable data
rather than paper with the
look-and-feel that we take
for granted, we will need
technical standards for that electronic
credentialing.
Outside of the
United States, there
are some interesting models from
institutions that
hav e b e g u n t o
tackle the problem
of electronic standards for extendi n g t h e i r t ra n scripts in a very
p ro te c t iv e w ay.
Not surprisingly,
many of these are
in countries that
have ministries of
education, which
can help lead innovation across an
entire country.
For example,
the trend in the
United Kingdom
has been to move
aw ay f ro m t h e
degree classification system toward
a GPA system and
to begin communicating more informationnot just

Astranscripts
institutions start to use
with machinereadable data, we will need
technical standards for that
electronic credentialing.

40 E d u ca u s E r e v i e w M A R C H / A P R I L 2 015

courses and grades but also information

about students learner experiences. So
the question has become: what does this
new document look like? The Higher
Education Achievement Report (HEAR,
http://www.hear.ac.uk/) is trying to get
ahead of the problem.
The HEAR asked: How can we
develop a standard that doesnt stifle the
innovation of individual institutions to
communicate the information that they
want, in the way that they want it, but
will still allow a reader to know what to
expect in each section? Perhaps section
one describes the institution: the types
of degrees it issues, where it is located,
how it is accredited. Maybe section two
gives more information about courses
and grades in a conventional format.
Section three could be the place to put
other types of experiential learning.
And section four may be a summary
of courses and grades and experiential
learning from a competency perspective. How do we think about that kind of
a structure for a document and the types
of information that are associated with it?
The HEAR is still early in its adoption in the United Kingdom, and I
wouldnt describe it as an unbridled
success. Some institutions arent sure
how much information they want to
communicate in their credentials. But
the nice thing about the HEAR is that its
backwardcompatible. If all an institution wants to do is issue a conventional
academic transcript as a HEAR, then
it sends only sections one and two, for
example. But if it wants to begin to communicate competency, experiential,
and other types of information, it can
extend the transcript using an extensible
machinereadable data format. Theres
also a template that gives readers of the
credential an expectation of where that
information can go over time.
In the United States, early work also is
happening along these lines. One example is a call for a Postsecondary Achievement Report (PAR). Included in a PAR,
we might have, for example, a cover page
that talks about the college/university,
the student for whom the credential

Credentialing in Higher Education: Current Challenges and Innovative Trends

has been prepared, how awards are

issued (graduating magna cum laude, for
example), and some information about
accreditation. This might be followed by
the actual transcript, since there are still
expectations surrounding credit hours
and how we break education up into
discrete chunks.
The report would allow an institution
to present this information in a conventional format but would also offer
the opportunity to go deeper. For
example, Stanford University offers an interactive
digital transcript .
Receiving the transcript in electronic
format, the reader
can click on any
course listed and
go right into the
catalog description of the course.
Clicking fur ther
leads to the syllabus.
From the student perspective, clicking even further leads to an eportfolio and,
depending on the program and what the
student has done, shows actual evidence
of the learning inside that classroom.
At this point the report might bring
in competency information, as Northern
Arizona University is doing. For example, what are the major competency
expectations for a degree in the liberal
arts? Did the student work well in a team
structure, communicate with diverse
populations, and analyze complicated
materials? Did the student achieve
full or only partial mastery of those
competencies?
This offers the opportunity to present
experiential information. Elon University has developed an experiential transcript that follows the traditional lookand-feel of a conventional transcript
but presents additional information that
includes whether a student was a leader
in a group and how many hours he/she
put into it, for example.
Finally, the PAR could present not
just ledger information but also info42 E d u ca u s E r e v i e w M A R C H / A P R I L 2 015

graphics to represent achievement over

time. Why not display a trend-line GPA
or pie-charts showing the students
exposure to different courses in different content areas?
Now the question becomes: are our
information systems set up to be able to
capture that information in a scalable
way, and what level of attestation or verification or certification are institutions
providing in terms of those rules and
activities? The notion of the PAR is
very much about setting the
horizons for presenting
a broader superset of
data and information. How can we
create an overall
document framework, as well as
an extensible
machinereadable
data format, that
will allow us to communicate that information differently across
institutions but in a way that
can scale over time?
Then, how do we enable learners and
graduates to use that framework to integrate their certificates and diplomas into
their online identities? Students should
be able to claim an electronic credential,
with the associated security that makes it
official, and put it into their LinkedIn or
Facebook profile or into an online professional community profile (e.g., Care
.com). They need the ability to collect
multiple credentials from their home
institution and also other institutions
licenses, badges, MOOC certificates,
and experiential, academic, or competency transcriptsso they can share and
deliver those credentials securely online.
Not surprisingly, the alumni office
has become one of the biggest promoters of sharing credentials. Offering
students the ability to take their higher
education credentials and combine
them with other credentials over their
lifetime is a way to both promote the
institution and enable students to make
the most of the education that theyve

earned there. Sharing their diploma

or certificate online is amazing social
validation for the college/university and
raises awareness among social networks,
driving more interest back to the home
institution.
Lastly, the learning process for students should be a key consideration of
electronic credentialing. How can we
take the machinereadable data embedded in these credentials and open up
new types of analytics to help learners
understand different types of pathways?
How can expanded forms of electronic
credentialing help students to determine
which courses, which experiences, and
which activities might have the biggest
impact on their learning and their education as a whole?

redentials matter in a
knowledge economy as
a key indicator of critical
life outcomes, and the
first step is modernizing
the credential infrastructure for a digital world. Colleges and
universities need to capture the entire
educational experience to create a common understanding of both course and
campus-based achievements. And higher
education needs to do so electronically
via a consistent document structure and
data standard that institutions can use as
a way to extend their traditional academic
transcript or as a next-generation successor. Finally, higher education needs to do
all this in a way that protects, preserves,
and limits access to that data but that
makes the data portable, available, and
actionable for learners, graduates, other
institutions, and employers.
n

2015 Matthew Pittinsky

Matthew Pittinsky
([email protected])
is CEO of Parchment (http://
www.parchment.com) and
Assistant Research Professor,
School of Social and Family
Dynamics, at Arizona State University.