Defending the Value of Higher Education

In what seemed like an instant, millions of college students and tens of thousands of professors and staff went home, logged on, and made the most of an unprecedented situation.

Throughout this crisis, higher education leaders faced many challenges. Networks and support systems had to be reimagined and reengineered. Many higher education institutions worked hard to provide students with an equivalent experience—a concept students have challenged and institutions have struggled to legally define.

This crisis has accelerated existing challenges and proven devastating for many institutions. Some will never recover. More than ever, leaders are being called on to defend the value of traditional two- and four-year institutions in a post-crisis world. The promise of an equivalent experience may have been what was needed to finish the semester and stabilize finances and enrollment in the near term. Higher education will need to come to the realization that the future is not about delivering an equivalent experience. It will be about higher education's unique ability to offer a transformative experience.

Fueled by looming budget cuts, significant shifts in enrollment, and increased demands to demonstrate value, leaders may embrace a natural tendency toward conservativism by simply tweaking policies and waiting until things return to normal. Forward-thinking leaders recognize that there is another path, one that positions their organizations to address new challenges and embrace a new definition of the sustained value of higher education.

Claiming the Value of More Experiences

Academic coursework, the central focus of higher education, has proven, in many ways, to be the easiest element to shift to online. Of course, the transformative experience of higher education has always been about far more than the content of academic coursework. Peers, professors, staff, and alumni provide valuable social capital. Athletics, research, social clubs, internships, study abroad programs, and other high-value learning experiences are also worthy elements of an educational experience. In fact, such experiences often offer students the greatest opportunity to develop the most in-demand employability skills: communication, growth mindset, emotional intelligence, creativity, decision-making, leadership, and cultural intelligence.¹ These ancillary experiences are the highlight of most recruitment events and hold significant value to students and employers. They are also integral to promoting equity and offer far more opportunities for leadership and success for all students. Moreover, for many institutions, these types of experiences are core to the institutional brand identity.

Unfortunately, as valuable as all the extracurricular experiences are, such claims remain very difficult for employers and others to verify. It is not just dubious barroom bragging about one's college athletic achievements that undermine the value of the experiences (more than 85 percent of résumés include misleading claims).² Verifying claims of internships, research, and other valuable learning experiences is nearly impossible for employers and becomes even more difficult over time. Moreover, false claims of these experiences undermine the value of the institutions that provide and support them. As higher education institutions seek to define and defend their value, empowering students with easily verifiable credentials for a greater number of substantive accomplishments would offer significant long-term value.

For example, Lehigh University, in partnership with Hyland, has begun recognizing high-value student competencies and experiences with Blockcerts—blockchain-secured digital credentials using the Blockcerts open standard to ensure longevity and interoperability of these important records. Lehigh's Center for Career and Professional Development has designed a Learning Outcomes Framework that aligns existing distinctive experiential programs with the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) competencies and employer partner feedback. Lehigh students who participate in four years of Division 1 athletics, study abroad programs, or the university's prestigious Mountain Top Institute are awarded Blockcerts embedded with competency-based microcredentials that may be shared with employers. Lehigh can leverage its international reputation and brand identity to instantly certify these records of distinction, provide student-owned credentials, and, for the first time, give employers the ability to instantly verify them. Lehigh's digital credentials are high-value recognition for unique achievements aligned to credentialing paradigms that are easily recognizable and broadly trusted.

Equity, Agency, and the Modern Student Experience

Equally important as the formal recognition of co-curricular experiences is empowering students to own, share, and curate their academic credentials over their lifetimes. This current crisis has disrupted the education of millions of students, accelerated large shifts in enrollment across institutions, enhanced the need to retrain and upskill displaced and unemployed workers, and led to shifts in demand and career changes. These shifts are particularly impactful for already underserved populations. The crisis has exacerbated what we already understand about the needs of modern students and the modern workforce. More than ever, individuals transition to multiple schools and careers; they require and desire to continue their education and are part of the most mobile workforce in human history.

Current processes for requesting academic records from higher education institutions, often via third-party intermediaries, impose unnecessary affective filters that may disincentivize learners—particularly those who are historically marginalized—from accessing their own credentials to pursue additional learning. Open, free, unmediated, and lifelong access to learner records is foundational to supporting learner agency, a core tenant of the modern student experience, and providing transformational value.

Hyland is working with higher education institutions in the United States and around the world to issue to students digital credentials that can be verified anywhere, instantly, and for free, without dependence upon any intermediary. Rather than being limited to a narrow network of institutional participants, these credentials are deployed using the Blockcerts open standard so they can be shared, viewed, and verified without any proprietary software.

This is a seismic shift away from deep-seated routines built around not trusting students with their own official records.

With digital credentials, higher education organizations are not only able to support student agency in their pursuits of lifelong learning, but institutions are also able to provide a digital reminder for alumni engagement and alumni access to schools for additional experiences.

In addition to summative records such as digital diplomas and transcripts, this technology enables unique credentials to become part of a student's portfolio of evidence for specific accomplishments. By decentralizing and recognizing these accomplishments with verifiable credentials, we empower learners to choose what they share with whom. Leadership roles in an organization within a college or university may be an asset for employment at one organization but may not be at another. Modern student credentials need to belong to the student and accumulate and grow over a lifetime. Digital credentials are an ideal way to both empower students to access credentials and preserve privacy by putting access to credentials in the hands of students.

Leveraging new technologies and open networks that support a new level of student agency over their learning identities is not simply a technological and process shift. It is a fundamental assertion toward greater equity, empowerment, and self-directed pathways of learning.

This is a rare and challenging period for higher education, and despite some innate conservatism, schools also have the power to reflect and verify students' unique dynamic academic experiences. The value is already there; it is time for leaders to redefine how it is recognized, accessed, and leveraged over a lifetime.

Learn more at Hyland.com/HECredentials.

Notes

1. Bernard Marr, "The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need for the Future of Work," Forbes, April 29, 2019. ↩
2. J.T. O'Donnell, "85 Percent of Job Applicants Lie on Resumes. Here's How to Spot a Dishonest Candidate," Inc., August 15, 2017. ↩

Mary Strain leads US business development activities and public sector adoption for Hyland Credentials.