In August, President Joe Biden announced his administration’s plan to cancel as much as $20,000 in student loan debt per borrower. While the plan is noteworthy for the welcome relief it will bring to millions of Americans, it also highlights the many ways higher education is failing to live up to its promise. It is an acknowledgment that our postsecondary learning system is leaving far too many learners in debt while struggling to prepare them for the kinds of careers that will help them pay it off.
The White House’s announcement is just the most recent evidence that the nation’s confidence in the value of higher education is waning. About two-thirds of students say college is no longer worth the cost. According to a recent study from American Student Assistance, Jobs for the Future and market research firm Morning Consult, nearly three-quarters of employers say that a degree is no longer a reliable signal for assessing the quality of a job candidate.
About 60 percent of Gen Z students say companies should hire more high school graduates who have pursued education and training outside of the traditional college degree. Likewise, more than 80 percent of employers now think they should look at skills rather than degrees when hiring. Unfortunately, we are not prepared for this rapid growth in demand for non-degree credentials and skills training programs. Students, employers and learning providers have little way of determining quality and they lack insight into which programs are the best fit for a learner’s aspirations. Currently, learners cannot be expected to have any more confidence in non-degree credentials than in their higher education counterparts.
To ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past and that the shift toward non-degree pathways expands — not further limits — economic opportunity for all learners, we need greater clarity and transparency around how we measure the outcomes of these programs.
In recent years, the marketplace for short-term or unaccredited skills and learning and development programs has exploded. In the process, it has become increasingly chaotic and confusing. Learners and workers must navigate thousands of educational programs issuing more than one million unique credentials, digital badges, certificates, licenses and other industry-recognized certifications.
Making sense of this vast landscape is a challenge not only for learners, but for employers, policymakers and even government agencies. The current tools and systems allow for little understanding of verifiable market outcomes or equitable outcomes across socioeconomic backgrounds. Learners are unsure which programs are worth their time and money, employers do not know which credentials denote mastery of the skills they are hiring for and the government lacks the mechanisms to ensure accountability and quality.
In contrast, college degrees are backed by a long history of, if not validation, then certainly trust at scale. Absent similar levels of quality control for short-term credentials and skills development programs, the degree will remain the default for many employers even as their faith in its value continues to decline and more workers pursue other learning options. If non-degree pathways are ever to serve as truly viable alternatives to traditional college credentials, we need far better ways of measuring their worth and value.
Fortunately, there are organizations starting to not only map the landscape but provide a shared vocabulary around the quality of non-degree credentials. Earlier this year, JFF acquired Education Quality Outcomes Standards, a nonprofit working to establish independent measures of education and training program quality. EQOS has developed an outcomes-based framework that allows more easily identifying high-quality opportunities that lead to equitable economic advancement.
The EQOS framework focuses on six metrics of student success, including student learning, program completion, job placement, post-graduation earnings, client satisfaction and program equity which together paint a clearer, more useful picture of education and training provider quality. JFF is now leveraging the EQOS framework to inform and fuel elements of its Education Quality Catalog, working with partners like College Board and KIPP Public Charter Schools to find and access relevant data about education and training program quality.
Meanwhile, SkillUp, a coalition of non-profit organizations in higher education and workforce development, along with partners at JFF, Brighthive and Strada Education, has developed an online, automated process to facilitate outcomes reporting, data storage and analysis among training providers. These online tools let learners compare and contrast similar education and training programs according to their students’ real-world outcomes.
These kinds of innovations will help to ensure that the ongoing shift taking place in postsecondary learning and workforce development is a lasting one that leads to more significant economic opportunities for a wider range of learners. Employers, educators and workforce leaders can come together and embrace a higher standard for quality outcomes in education and workforce development programs. They can discover and share these greater insights by harnessing new data tools and technologies, such as credential wallets and blockchain. By creating new governance structures among employers and governments that liberates information rather than lock it away, we can create a nationwide system of learning that puts people at the center, reduces the risk of learners being saddled with years of student loan debt and is characterized by its rigor instead of its whims.
We must create clearer pathways to success that allow learners to make data-driven, informed decisions about their educational and economic future.
