Credentialing ‘Summit’ Will Tackle Proliferation of Degrees, Badges, and Certificates

More than 150 people from education, labor, business, and public-policy organizations will gather here on Monday to kick off a process aimed at making better sense of the myriad of credentials that people use to advance their careers and employers depend upon when hiring. At issue are traditional credentials in academe and the workplace as well as newfangled ones like the badges issued by MOOC operators and certificates from other so-called alternative providers.

A credential should be “a door opener,” says Byron Auguste, managing director at Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit organization that seeks to encourage more employers to hire people based on their demonstrated competencies, not only their academic pedigrees. Credentials are flourishing because “people want better ways to show what they can do,” he says. But as credentials proliferate, employers don’t have the time or the capacity to figure them all out.

Mr. Auguste says he’ll be taking part in the summit because he sees a need for “intermediaries that employers trust” to help define what the various kinds of credentials represent. There needs to be “a common language of value,” he says, that is understandable to educators, employers, and students, so that ultimately people trying to navigate their careers can know they can “go to X to learn Y to get a job at Z.”

The National Credentialing Summit is sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, along with the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. Lumina has also supported projects like the effort by officials at several colleges and the American National Standards Institute to create a “credentials registry.”

Goldie Blumenstyk writes about the intersection of business and higher education. Check out www.goldieblumenstyk.com for information on her new book about the higher-education crisis; follow her on Twitter @GoldieStandard; or email her at goldie@chronicle.com.