Academic deflation

I once had a conversation with a man who scared me.

It was over 20 years ago, and I remember him being quite a lovely fellow. He was simply proud of his son earning his PhD.

What scared me was his conviction that in order to keep up in the imminent future, an undergraduate qualification would not be enough; one must earn a postgraduate qualification. Not to get ahead, but to remain competitive.

With the ink still drying on my Bachelor of Science degree, my heart sank at the prospect of several years’ more slog.

The man was describing academic inflation and upon reflection, I realised I had experienced it already. Only a few years prior, as I was studying my high school diploma, “going to uni” was all the rage. Accounting was inexplicably popular, and competition for the trendiest major – Communication – drove its course entry score to the dizzying heights of Medicine and Law.

Not going to uni was seriously uncool, which no doubt contributed to a shortage of tradies such as plumbers, who to this day can charge a fortune for changing a washer.

The parallels to Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches are uncanny. This is a story about creatures called Sneetches, some of whom have a green star on their belly, some of whom do not. Of course the latter group covets those little status symbols, and their envy is duly exploited by an entrepreneur who invents a Star-On machine.

After the plain-bellies eagerly pay to get their own stars, the elitism of the original star-bellies wanes, and so the entrepreneur invents a Star-Off machine. The former elites pay an inflated price to reclaim their privilege, and so the pendulum swings back and forth with stars going on and off bellies until all the Sneetches run out of money.

Back in the real world which recently declared Australia’s most educated generation faces the worst job prospects in decades, I wonder: is academic inflation undergoing a Sneetch-like reversal?

The UK office of Ernst & Young ruffled a few feathers when they dropped the degree requirement for their entry-level jobs, while Elon Musk famously maintains that you don’t need a degree to work at Tesla.

I admit to not taking too much notice of this trend until Google launched its Career Certificates. Their courses can be completed online over several months, and they cover red hot topics such as data analytics and UX design. Their website says it all:

Learn job-ready skills to start or advance your career in high-demand fields. These certificates developed by Google connect you to top national employers who are hiring for related roles.

Furthermore, the tech giant’s SVP of Global Affairs claims we will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related entry-level roles.

Wow… if it’s good enough for Google, then “top national employers” isn’t an empty promise. Suddenly that little green star doesn’t shine so bright.

Perhaps after years of academic inflation, the pendulum is swinging back towards academic deflation. The prospect should sound alarm bells for a sector that’s already reeling from the impact of COVID-19.

If the trend towards short, practical, employer-sanctioned courses continues, one day of course we’ll collectively realise that the way to get ahead of the pack will be to embark on a longer, deeper dive that leads to a qualification with scholarly gravitas.

Hence the next generation of students going to university may no longer be doe-eyed teenagers craving a foot in the door, but experienced operators seeking to enhance their careers.

Which will in turn attract the young ones back when they realise they’re missing out on all the best jobs.

That is until everyone, once again, has stars upon thars.

The past tense of open badges

Some commentators are heralding open badges as the nemesis of the college degree. I don’t quite see it that way.

It is true they are uneasy bedfellows. As Mark Smithers observes…

“It’s interesting that the reaction to open badges from senior academic managers is often to dismiss them as being child like and akin to collecting a badge for sewing at scouts.”

…and…

“I also suspect that traditional higher education providers will resist providing them because they don’t fit in with traditional academic perceptions of achievement and credentialing.”

I wonder if these academics have consulted their own faculties of education?

Of course, open badges and college degrees are not mutually exclusive. If a particular university can overcome its initial prejudice, it will see badges for what they really are: representations of achievement – just like those pieces of paper they dole out at graduation ceremonies.

There is no reason why a university couldn’t award a badge upon the completion of a degree. In fact, it could also award badges upon the completion of individual subjects within the degree. That would give the student a sense of accomplishment while in the midst of a multi-year program, and I imagine showcasing one’s backpack on the university’s VLE would become rather competitive.

Speaking of competition, I don’t see open badges as a serious disruptor of the higher education system in the way that MOOCs are. And that’s because MOOCs are disrupting the delivery of education, rather than its credentialing.

A degree will always command a certain level of gravitas. It represents a structured, comprehensive education from – according to broader society – an elite bastion of knowledge and research. In short, it equips you with the intellectual foundation to do something in that domain.

In contrast, open badges are task oriented. Beyond the nebulous notion of “study”, they recognise the execution of specific actions. For example, Mozilla issues its Div Master Badge upon successfully using the div tag at least 2 times in its Webmaker Project.

If the task were passing an exam, the badge could indeed represent the acquisition of knowledge; but the spirit of open badges dictates that the task be performed in the real world, and hence represents the mastery of a skill. And this is meaningful to the corporate sector.

For example, if I were an employer who needed a graphic designer, I would seek someone who knows how to take awesome digital photos and edit them in Photoshop. So an applicant who has earned badges for digital photography techniques and advanced Photoshop operations would be an obvious candidate.

Yet if I were seeking a IT executive, I don’t think open badges would cut the mustard. Sure, badges earned by an applicant for various Java programming tasks might be attractive, but a wide-ranging role requires the kind of comprehensive education that a degree is purposefully designed to give.

When we look at learning through the lens of the college degree, we see its application in the future tense. The learner has a well-rounded education which he or she intends to draw from. In other words, the degree recognises something you can do.

In contrast, when we look at learning through the lens of the open badge, we see its application in the past tense. The learner has demonstrated their mastery of a skill by using it. In other words, the badge recognises something you have already done.

So the degrees vs badges debate isn’t really about the latter displacing the former. The emergence of badges is merely re-roasting the same old chestnut of whether degrees are necessary for the modern workplace.

And that’s an entirely different matter.