U. Wisconsin professor emeritus and sociologist Michael Olneck wrote me the following in response to my 2011 blog entry on badges and exchange credentials:
I was reading your September 25, 2011 blog, “‘Credentialized badge’” is an oxymoron?,” in which you identify Scouting merit badges (and associated ranks) with “nominal,” rather than “exchange-based” credentials.
I think you may have underestimated the value of extracurriculars as credentials in labor markets. While work internships may be the new gold standard, required above and beyond degrees, extracurriculars count, too, at least in some markets. See e.g., Rivera, Laura A. “Ivies, extracurriculars, and exclusion: Elite employers’ use of educational credentials.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29 (2011): 71–90. Also, among Oxbridge graduates seeking “fast-track” jobs, the “what else have you done?,” and how does it contribute to “employability” questions seem pretty ubiquitous. See e.g., Brown, Phillip, Anthony Hesketh. The Mismanagement of Talent: Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge Economy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004, and, if I remember correctly, Brown, Phillip, Hugh Lauder, David Ashton. The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011.
That said, the future of badges as credentials seems to me to remain very much an open question, however, I am struck by the investment that is being made to promote the idea. See e.g.,
http://www.2mbetterfutures.org/about. I think there is a real tension between the use of badges to create new models of learning and assessment, which people like Dan Hickey at Indiana are developing, and the use of badges as “microcredentials” which organizations like ProExam Services are developing (see http://www.credentialingexcellence.org/p/cm/ld/fid=203).
The former will be open and fluid, and serve bounded “learning communities;” the latter will have to be relatively standardized to be broadly useful.My expectation is that badges will “take” within universities before they take as employment credentials, but that university-issued badges may be a bridge to employment, as with the U.C. Davis Sustaining Agriculture and Food Systems degree program (see http://hastac.org/ dml-badges/ SA% 2526FS-Learner-Driven-Badges-Project).
As usual, Olneck is far more sophisticated and to the point than most public discussion.
Mike and I have had this discussion before — credentials markets are dominated by postsecondary institutions, and they are, in turn, dominated by their accrediting guilds.
The only way badges can make it into the credential markets (and, subsequently, the job markets) is if individual schools bless/baptize them as their own by including them on their transcripts.
Look at the recent nod in this direction by Florida Legislators.(No, perhaps that nod was — them falling asleep.)
Once on a transcript, a StraighterLine $99 course looks no different than credits from FSU or FGCU. No one is the wiser.
The only people that get hurt are the bondholders of public university PECO debt — because the school is forfeiting tuition, big-time. (BTW Are not the taxpayers the ones funding PECO debt?)