 All right so very timely obviously as I spoke in the beginning about looking at different models and different credentials and obviously Heather's talk touched on a bunch of things about different types of credentials and models that are formulating so I'm very excited to have this next panel join us on alternative credentials and talking about how they fit into and complement in some ways compete but or but mostly complement degrees and so excited to welcome three great panelists Katie Hall from Corporation for a skilled workforce Jeremiah Schiffler Schifflet from Lord Fairfax Community College and their higher ed.org portal and Stephanie Krause from Jobs for the Future so welcome to them thank you okay Mike's on good to go good afternoon everyone I'm Katie as Jeff mentioned and I'm excited to be here at the Sailor Summit happy to get to know all of you I know many faces in the room from the work I'm about to tell you about and I have two great panelists today Jeremiah and Stephanie and we're going to share some innovations that are underway at each of our respective organizations and just a general perspective on the theme for the conference that we're at this afternoon I think just to start off it's relevant to note that the mission of Sailor Academy is open education to all the theme for this event is looking at the degree and beyond lowering cost increasing access and exploring alternatives in the guiding principle of connecting credentials which is the project I'll use to sort of set the stage for the panel is that all learning counts all learning should count no matter where it's acquired and that's really the guiding principle of our work and so I think those three fit together nicely and I hope that you all will find this discussion interesting today we I think have until about 4.30 so we will save some time for Q&A at the end so feel free to think about questions and write those down as we go it's also worth noting that we had Mike Adams scheduled to be on this panel as well I think he's in some of your materials some of you know mission you and he was not able to attend so these are the three and that's why you don't see Mike up here today that's right we'll just fill the time so I will let Stephanie and Jeremiah introduce themselves in a little more depth when they talk about the work that they're doing and you can of course read their bios in your program I'm here representing connecting credentials which is a Lumina Foundation funded national campaign to transform credentialing in the United States and there is also a tool the beta credentials framework that's associated with the project so I direct communications for connecting credentials and so I'm very hands-on with the campaign part of the work which includes convening work groups around various topic areas collecting co-sponsors to help us host events to help publish thought leadership in credentialing webinars maintaining the website social media crafting messaging for the nationwide platform and I am the communications director for the nonprofit corporation for a skilled workforce which is the lead grantee deploying the work so connecting credentials as I mentioned is Lumina Foundation funded it's a collaborative 116 now co-sponsoring organizations who have signed on and basically said we agree that the credentialing system in the United States is chaotic it needs to be better organized learners don't know which credentials are valuable in which which ones will get them a job in education some are more valuable than others as we know the bachelor's degree is still often the proxy the cut-off for hiring and employers don't know which credentials are valuable they don't know what a credential means someone knows and can do and so that's really the problem that we're attempting to solve some co-sponsors are in the room today University of Maryland University College is a co-sponsor there are several others so we're always happy to see them at events in addition to the co-sponsors there are about 3,500 stakeholders from all over the country that are part of a mailing list that participate in events work groups ads of thought leadership and so we're we're growing we're picking up a lot of energy through the website sharing of resources I encourage you to visit it it will appear later in the slideshow and as I mentioned there is a tool that's also part of connecting credentials and I'll talk very briefly about that later here's the problem statement that I just mentioned why is Lumina funding this work why does the initiative exist in the first place and why does corporation for a skilled workforce care about running an initiative like this so you can read the problem statement for yourself I described it a couple minutes ago and one of our primary objectives is that the system is working better for some people than for others right so vulnerable populations who traditionally don't have as much access don't have as many opportunities to high quality higher education and credentials they're the ones that are hurt the most by the messiness and the credentialing system in the US so this is not only an economic imperative helping better connect people to jobs but it's an equity imperative this just is a visual that we use all the time that gives you a snapshot of sort of the messiness in the credentialing landscape many different kinds of credentials degrees are credentials industry certification certificates credit and non-credit badges and so they're offered by many different types of organizations so navigating different types of credentials and what they all mean can be very confusing very complex this is just an evolution of the project that I think is helpful I always like to point out that in 2013 when the work began Lumina Foundation tasked us with creating a framework that would organize all credentials that were sub degree they already had the degree qualifications profile which listed competencies for associates degree master's degree doctoral degrees and so they were looking to supplement that with something that would organize everything else what we quickly discovered in researching a framework like this was that sub degree is not necessarily the right terminology there are some credentials that are higher level than degrees it for example would map out at a way higher level than an associate's degree in some cases and so sub degree wasn't accurate and we began building our framework as sort of the meta framework on competencies only not leveled by credentials but by competency statements of what someone knows and can do and I so I think that's an interesting evolution and an insight into Lumina Foundation as well in 15 and 16 we moved into a dialogue around credentialing reform in the US and have begun beta testing the tool with 25 community colleges around the country and employers HR departments and now in 2017 and 2018 we're very much moving from dialogue into action full on deploying the campaign convening work groups publishing thought leadership presenting at events so that's sort of the evolution of the work so far these are just the buckets of work the credentials framework the tool is down here in the bottom campaign activities that I mentioned in one block work groups which have been a primary piece of the work convenes several hundred experts around the country and work groups Stephanie Krause actually co-chaired one of our groups last year pathways for equity and so the work groups really helped inform the seminal document of the work the action plan which is on our website and lays out the action steps we think are the priority areas for reform and then the National Summit was the kickoff event in 2015 so that's on there as well here are some of the priority areas the yellow is hard to see I apologize about that these are the areas that the work groups are focusing on that we're writing on that the field has said are the priorities for credentialing reform and making sure that all learning counts as you can see public policy that advances equity common language making sure that employers educators learners are all speaking the same language quality assurance of course open and interoperable data and tech infrastructure aligning supply and demand so those are some of the priority areas I'm gonna very briefly talk about the tool in hopes that you will go to the website and learn about it more for yourselves the framework is basically an eight level reference tool that lists competencies and describes what someone knows and can do so it has knowledge specialized skills personal and social skills the difference between our framework and the 21 international frameworks that we research or some other existing framework in the US is that competencies level across not the credential so for example in Germany a bachelor's degree is always a level five and then you read across for the competency statements here you can take learning outcomes map them against the competency statements in the framework and get a number so a credential maybe a three five seven three in knowledge five and specialized skills seven and personal skills and so the framework then gives you a profile score that can help you communicate what the guts of the credential are so that's essentially a crash course on the beta credentials framework it's on our website you can download and I encourage you to play with it it's being tested right now as I mentioned and the next step is to digitize the framework so we're investigating an algorithm that would live online where profile scores could be stored and we're also looking at app development potentially this is just a snapshot of the framework on our website you can see level two you can see all the other levels as well and you can read in each category what the credential indicates someone knows or can do if they hold it the goal is laid out here in the vision so ideally a better system would look like this all learning would count credentials would be portable transferable transparent we would be building credentialing pathways including ramps that increase access we know that people come in and out of the system at different points of course building a highly competitive skilled workforce is a primary goal and we want it we want to be agile and relevant we know that the labor market often changes more quickly than we do so here in closing for my intro are a few ways to get involved I believe you'll be able to have the slides so you don't have to write all these down right now but website Twitter Corporation for a skilled workforce you can read about some of our other work as well so there are lots of ways to get involved so let's get into the good stuff as I mentioned I'm joined by Stephanie Krause director of special projects for jobs for the future in Jeremiah or Jay Schifflett database administrator Lord Fairfax Community College in higher ed.org so I think I'm going to come over and make it more panel style and I'd ask that both of you just take five to six minutes introduce yourself and your work and your thoughts on on the subject short. Hey, am I working? There we go. I've got a boomy voice in a beer. Steve can you hear in the back? We're all good. Okay. Hey, I'm Jeremiah Schifflett. I'm from Lord Fairfax Community College. At the moment I'm working as part of around four Department of Labor tax grant project that's called Knowledge to Work. And initially what we did was take seven programs in high wage high growth areas that the college offered and we converted them to a direct assessment competency based education version of those programs. And then part of our our larger vision was to take that work and identifying national competency frameworks that stacked and lattice in other credential areas and then all present all of the resources that we had mapped this competencies and put them into this new ecosystem sort of learning self directed learning portal that we've put together called higher ed.org. So just within the narrow bandwidth of information technology, we use the American computing tool and machineries competency framework for both two certificates, CSEs, the higher ed folks, you know, it's a it's a big deal to the specificity. And I guess we'll get into that more when we talk about the term alternative credentials and all that. And then also HIM and so we have a national partner with the HEMA American Health Information Management Association. We're actually working to build a new national credential in health informatics to bridge the gap in HIM between you know the the people doing the health information management work and the IT side of it because you have to have very specific knowledge in those areas. So then we have the HEMA framework and we've layered in a number of their credentials along with our CSE and our associate and then we also have administrative support technology. We have a search engine repository on higher ed.org and we say OER but really it's kind of all sorts of different resources. I mean we have YouTube videos, we have stuff from Khan Academy, we have traditional courses, we have books on Amazon. So we were we spent a lot of time, you know, researching the data elements that drive competency-based education. We were members of IMS Global and we looked at a lot of the work that they were doing and trying to understand, you know, all the moving data points on how to track artifacts relative to competency-based education. And we came to the decision that we needed to present as many different types of resources in as many different learning modes so that we could, you know, satisfy all these different needs. And if you think about it, there's not really a good repository at the moment where you could go and say, hey, I want to go to the commons and I want to, you know, look at sailor courses and I want to see how all of those things might fit together in different frameworks. So, you know, as we move our project forward, as the grant wraps up and we started rolling this thing out on our own, we're, you know, looking for all sorts of people who are interested in this area to come forward with frameworks and competency mappings and, you know, resources, you know, might be your particular courses that you want to have offered in our plural. And then that way we can continue to grow this thing and reduce barriers and that's one of the reasons why we're here. And we like sailor so much is that, you know, we did some usability testing early on and there's just a feeling that people get relative to higher education in general where, you know, some of the words that I remember people saying were, it was like filling out the FAFSA, you know, going through admissions and the college setting is a lot of paperwork and it's confusing. And that in itself is a barrier. So, I like that, you know, sailor, you can just go and take their courses, you don't necessarily even have to make an account. We, we tried to, we, you can use our search engine repositories completely open, you don't have to have an account. But we, we narrowed it down to, I think, seven questions that, that you need in order to create accounts. So, you know, we're trying to just reduce barriers, remove confusion whenever possible to, to enable people to do their own learning. And, and we really see it as, as a, as a bridge, because you, one of the things that, that people run into a lot in, in thinking about higher education is a commitment factor. And so, how, how do you know what you're getting yourself into until you've really got into it and you've started doing some learning? So, this is a great way that people can, with zero risk, as far as money is concerned, to go and look and see what all the educational, you know, milestones are in a career pathway they can explore and sort of evolve their own understanding. And then when they're ready to go to get a credential, they can go to a credential provider or maybe they need more support services and they need to go to a university or institution, you know, and it's all about just leveling the playing field of the mix of all those different things. Great. Thank you. Stephanie. Hi, Stephanie Kraus, Jobs for the Future. I promise panels can be hard. I will struggle to be brief and engaging, if not for you, for me. I moved on Monday and then left my husband, two kids and the dog in a new house and flew to Kansas City yesterday and then here today. And I was doing great until I sat on this chair, which is as comfortable as it looks and sunk down. And so that was our pre- conversation. We weren't actually preparing for the panel but trying to figure out how to have a chair heist and take these with us. So when I'm not thinking about stealing chairs or being exhausted, I'm the director of special projects for Jobs for the Future, which tells you a lot. It's about as descriptive as my previous title of Senior Fellow. But as some of you know in this room, I left practice. I was running an education nonprofit in St. Louis and had run a competency-based high school in the technical college campus. So like Heather, I come out of the K-12 space and the youth development space and left out of this real ethical dilemma that we could get students to complete and get students to be credentialed. But morally and ethically and practically, we weren't assured of their competence and readiness. And it was no longer okay for me as a practitioner or person, frankly, to continue to participate in that kind of system. So I spent the past five years working with a cadre of national organizations, eventually making jobs for the future of my forever home, but not without a stint working with Katie as a campaign director for connecting credentials, trying to really go after two primary questions. The first being, what does it actually take for someone to be ready for the world, for the challenges and opportunities that they may face, for providing for their family and for working and seeking a better life? And then the other part is what then are the systems and structures and conditions that enable every person to get ready? And so at Jobs for the Future, we are embarking in something that we're calling New Horizons, which is really a new vision for the organization. For those of you who are familiar with it, in just recognizing and naming that people go in and out of all kinds of settings and systems in their lives, and that we need to blend and blur the lines between working and learning and education and workforce development and youth development. And while we talk about it, organizationally, historically, Jobs for the Future and all of the other organizations I've worked for are funded within particular systems. And so we're after, as director of special projects, I get the really exciting task of helping to broker and design and develop cross-sector projects. So what that means practically is looking at things like what do we know about the science of learning and student-centered learning, and what does that mean for hiring practices or working with employees? How do we take the energy of the opportunity youth movement rebranded from what we call disconnected youth, which is galvanized new investments and resources, and apply that to efforts to educate and equip uncredentialed adults? What do we do to bridge and broker the competency-based ed worlds of K-12 and higher education? So I think I have the best job ever. And I get to continue to work with my friends at CSW and other places and look forward to talking more. That's great. Thanks for the overview. I have a few questions, of course, but I would say feel free to jump in and ask questions. We're going to make this casual and a discussion as much as possible. But sort of the gorilla in the room is the term alternative credentials, I think, for the three of us. So Stephanie, I'm going to kick this one to you first. And then, Jeremiah, I'd love to hear your perspective as well. What does the term alternative credentials mean to you? Is there a better term? And what's the danger with that term? I know this is close to your heart. It is. Equity issues definitely are. I think not to hijack the panel or the title of the panel, but that we get into a tricky place in putting alternative next to credentials. As I mentioned before, going sort of in earnest after this question of what do we need to be ready? The first thing to name and own is that it's more than credentials. There's some kind of combination of competencies and credentials and also connections that get us ready. And so if we pull back from credentials as sort of this mobility marker, we have to also recognize that there are other things that come up alongside of it. So one of the things that I get concerned about when we talk about sub degrees or alternative credentials is that the power and possibility of smaller forms, newer forms of credentials that are better aligned to workforce needs or where we're headed in the future is that they're nimble and that people truly can be equipped. And they could, in fact, I believe truly close some persistent inequities. And they also could perpetuate those inequities. If they're not connected to quality assurances, if they're not connected to employer buy-in and the right kinds of validation, if credibility and connections don't come with them. So we can take a poor person in an under mobilized community where there are too few opportunities for economic advancement and make that person more competent or give that person an alternative credential and not actually promise the person the kind of economic mobility that he thinks he's getting. And so I think instead if we look at how the credentialing marketplace is evolving and expanding and how the economy and the jobs marketplace is evolving and expanding and how the work that we're doing sits at the confluence and how we're sort of in a new time because of the rapid changes, then the question is not what are alternative credentials, but what are the implication of all forms of credentials in this new world, in this new economy as Heather said, both the emergent ones and the traditional ones and the ones that we don't even know are going to be created. Yep, that's right. And that's one of the things that Stephanie mentioned that we're very conscious of in the connected the connecting credentials project and that Lumina Foundation is very conscious of this danger that you could unintentionally create a second system, your system, right. So, Jeremiah, you had an interesting perspective on sort of the history. For me, I feel like it's more or less unintentional sort of classism that we sort of unnecessarily present to students in, you know, middle school and most circumstances certainly in high school where we present this, you know, you have to get a four year degree. That's the only way that you're going to get your foot in the door. That's the only way that you're going to make it in life and, you know, it's not that it's not good in some circumstances to head for that achievement. But, you know, if you pay attention to, you know, the presentation before us or, you know, you look at bureau labor statistics data, you realize that there is an incredibly growing gap between, you know, high school and four year diplomas where there are, you know, millions of jobs in the next, you know, 10 years that are going to be created in that space where people need very specific education in order to do those jobs and to label them with the word alternative, I feel like does it a disservice and it just adds to that stigma that already exists where, you know, trades and, you know, some of those are the best paying middle class jobs that exist that are very stable over time. I mean, we're always going to need electricians and, you know, those kinds of things. And by intentionally saying, you know, hey, you need this for your degree, you're saying, oh, this is some, you know, cloud and that you're doing a great disservice to these other, you know, there's other, all these other nomenclatures. There's micro, credential, there's nano degree. I mean, why does it have to be so diminutive? You know, what is the, I mean, sure, there are subsets of other things, but, you know, it's like, couldn't we say something positive? You know, if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, they use this term post secondary non degree award. And I think for me personally, if you just took the word non degree out of that, you would probably be getting closer to something that I think is more reasonable. Like, you know, it's post secondary and it's an award. Okay. Now we've got something that everybody can start to feel good about. You know, why can't we add positive words to it? We have to be like micro, nano, pico, something. You know, anyway, that's just my personal feeling. So we probably can't come up with a better term than alternative lives. Or the best kind of panel. Will you speak on alternative credentials? We don't like alternative credentials. Right. We like them, but we're not sure about the language, right? Which is what happens a lot people end up nitpicking the language. So anyway, I think that I think that's a valuable framing and a discussion that has to be had. So in the marketplace where things are getting smaller and more granular, how do learners, students, workers assess credential providers, choose what is most suitable for their path and their employment? And how do employers figure out which providers are most valuable, which credentials are most valuable? So I feel like from the student's perspective, that there's three main points that they should pay attention to. The first one is learner control. Can I get the types of resources in the delivery modes that are going to help me to succeed when I need it on my schedule, on my terms? I mean, that's one of the first and foremost. The second one is going to be portability. If I start down this path but I don't finish it, can I take portions of that somewhere else and does it mean something? And then the final one is the verification. Is there some sort of cache around the verifability of this credential? And I think as long as they're paying attention to those three things, that they're going to get steered in the right direction. So thinking about this question of navigating the credentialing marketplace, I already confessed that I moved on Monday. So let me tell you just a quick little anecdote here. So my husband and I, two kids and a dog, were moving and were moving from a small house to a bigger house. My dad and his wife are also moving. They're moving from a bigger house to a small house. And we both have real estate agents. We sold first. He cannot sell his house, which is a bigger family home. There were five of us at home. And so I think when we consider navigating the space, we have to think about the different generations of learners and workers and their entry points into the marketplace. So for my husband and I, we immediately went online. And the entire experience, including our interactions with the realtor, was via text, online signature, and Zillow. And I even got my data reported to me every day to see how many people were looking at my home and how many had saved it and where were we headed. My dad's realtor is a friend who he grew up with. And it got posted in the local newspaper, which is perfect for my dad, but not perfect for a young family like mine, who I didn't even think about looking in my local newspaper for a new home. So as we consider how we coordinate navigating this very complex, often fragmented space that people are going in and out of, I think that it makes sense for us to think about the various needs for navigating that space. If you are an aging adult learner, or if you are a young millennial or somewhere in between, if you are a first generation students, what are the different needs and access points that are already available to you? I really like, and I so appreciate that UMUC is in the room and others like Thomas Edison, a lot of our folks who are a part of the competency-based education network, we see a lot of the CBE institutions, competency-based ed institutions, who are sort of front runners in rethinking navigational supports and student support services and unpacking them a little bit. Because I think we're realizing that as the higher education landscape is evolving, we need to, as a professional community, become more adaptable and malleable with that. And as the face of today's college student continues to change, we need to mimic that malleability that we've done on the academic end, but now on the student support services end. The discussion that comes up quite a bit in our work groups in multiple different work groups, aligning supply and demand when we have employers on the call, data and technology infrastructure, what's needed in higher education in order to provide services, there's always the discussion of a mix between technology and still needing the high touch and how that will move along a spectrum depending on the learner. And I should also say, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I talked earlier about it's some combination of competencies and credentials and connections that we can talk about one group over here who can connect into the credentialing marketplace and find a certificate or a badge or a degree or something else pretty easily. And then there's the group that needs more support, but they're in the marketplace. They just don't know what choices to make. They need help. I think we all also know, especially for folks coming out of the OER space, that there is still a very large group, almost a third of American adults who don't have a credential and who don't have previous formal post-secondary education. And so the question is not only what's happening in the marketplace and for the folks who are there, but what about all of these people over here who are needing better and more learning and working opportunities who haven't even connected to the marketplace in the first time? And how do we connect with them and get them in there? Jeremiah, a question for you in your, I think, pretty relevant to your work at the Community College. What's your take on extended transcript, e-resumes, portfolios, badges, blockchain? Those are all sort of hot right now. Is one more promising than another, do you think? Yeah, I think it's too early to tell that one is doing a lot better than another. We developed an extended transcript relative to our direct assessment programs and in doing so, we learned a lot of things and then more recently, I was at the IMS Global LIA Conference in Denver and I saw UMEC's presentation that they did on their extended transcript and I was pretty impressed by some of the things that they had done and I think the pathway that they're heading, at least in that regard is very valid to go beyond the competencies and list the connections of the artifacts to those competencies so that there's this more referential integrity for people to understand how people got there. It was some pretty impressive work. We've had our sites set on wanting to be able to push completions and badges and things out of our work to some other portfolio system, LinkedIn or whatever but we just haven't felt that the marketplace is exactly in the right mix yet and we haven't found the right alignment for this types of things and I think it's a great direction to head because it helps level that the playing field of, hey, I have this degree section but I don't know if you pay attention to a lot of them but it's like, here's the section where you list degrees and then here's the section where we list the other, right? And it's like, as long as we keep that sort of mentality or organizational structure about the thing then I'm not sure that they're ever gonna they're ever gonna be fully seen as equivalence in different ways. I kind of like the work that I've seen in PathBright, they have this nice mix of you can put together your own videos and all these sorts of things to sort of be more demonstrative about how you're gonna show your skills. It really allows people to do creativity but it kind of maybe lacks some other things that I see in other areas that are better. So I don't know, the whole thing hasn't fully evolved yet but I like the way that it's, I like where it's heading. Some interesting things are coming out and really I think the ultimate future lies in things like, I'm very familiar with the company Tencent who does the massive app, Mobile App WeChat in China and they're actually having companies that are coming to them because they have such amazing big data because WeChat is kind of like a combination of Facebook and LinkedIn with PayPal and so you can get this sort of richness of data around people's lives and so you can see all their interests and where they're going and I think eventually we get to this sort of semantic web big data point employers will be able to make algorithms to identify people who are the right fit for jobs based on their actions and all of the things that they're indicating so that they could actually pursue people who are the right fit for that, whether they're looking for that job or not. Katie, I might add, so I mentioned my move twice not time to mention my mama's status. Poor Katie has been subjected to several thousand photos of my two boys over the years. I think as a mom, so just the human element here, the idea of portfolios and having some sort of digital record that shows what my boys, as they progress through their lives, know and can do and the kinds of experiences that they've had is pretty powerful and it's matched with the professional knowledge of how unpredictable the future of work seems to be and I just am losing my, I am a cautious mother and I'm not certain, I don't feel sort of anchored and trust that if they carry along credentials from particular institutions that those will be enough to show what they know and can do and so when I think about it from that perspective, the e-transcripts as they continue to evolve or allowing my boys to own their learning and be able to have it held by them rather than a particular institution is extremely powerful. I think that's key and you've both mentioned it, right? The learner, worker, student having control over their own knowledge and learning. Now the equity piece of me would say that that will only work if it has substantial buy-in and saturation so you can do that but if it's only happening in these more alternative spaces or more distance learning or university college with adult learners and it is not paired with substantial employer buy-in or the buy-in of higher education leaders and others, then it won't have the kind of hold and power when they bring in that kind of piece. I'm hoping my boys are six and four that it will evolve quite substantially by the time they need to use something like this. Yeah, imagine what the technology will look like when their job hunting. I do not want to. Okay, so we're gonna do one or two more questions and then I'd love to have some questions from the audience for the panel. So speaking of saturation and buy-in which is the end game, right? Employers are the primary consumers of credentials so they have to hire based on credentials, they have to know what someone who comes in the door knows and can do for them. Do you find that employers are valuing e-transcripts? Are they on board with some of the newer types of credentials are students able to communicate them and get hired based on some of the smaller blocks? So I think Katie should answer this based on the employer engagement work group for connecting credentials and some of the things that she's heard from employer cosponsors, if you would. Yeah, happy to. And I'd love to hear about any of your employers if they're buying into the e-transcript. So the headline I think is that the progress is slow, right? We have some leading large employers plugged into connecting credentials who have started to turn the tide. We have Ernst and Young, a representative from Ernst and Young in our stakeholder group for connecting credentials. And you may have seen a year or two ago now in the UK, Ernst and Young stopped using a bachelor's degree as a proxy for hiring. And they're now using lists of competencies in the application process, which is a big deal. There are other big employers in the US who are starting to trend that direction as well. But it is slow when you sort of step out and you're in front and you have to show how you're using a competency list as opposed to a bachelor's degree which everyone's more comfortable with. So one other example that I'd mention as I guess a lighthouse is Lake Michigan College in Michigan, it works very closely with their employer partners mostly manufacturing and a one big hospital system. And employers have asked for a list of 10 things that someone can do in addition to their credential. So the credential matters less when you have the list of competencies and can hire an interview based on that. But we hear all the time still that employers just need to get someone in the door who can show up on time, they can teach them on the job. The credential matters less than sort of the employability skills, the non-technical skills. So I would say that there are leaders emerging but that it's slow. And we're trying to highlight these examples as much as possible. And to show the ROI, you take less time hiring, there's less turnover, you get a clearer picture of what someone can do than you might get just because they have a history degree, no offense to anyone who has a history degree and political science. And the other thing just to extend wearing the connecting credentials hat that we heard in that space was as many of you may know that many large employers are using big data to be able to cull through resumes and figure out what candidates are eligible for particular jobs and that there's a legitimate technology limitation in the supply and demand signaling and a real clear need for funders and investors who might be in this room to up the investments in developing better and more streamlined, unlining technologies that figure out how to unpack what questions do you ask of folks who are uploading their resume to monster.com or to some other, you know, or giving it to a firm, how do you begin to unpack those documents and put them into a more competency-based hiring frame? Yep. Yeah, our experience has been pretty well received. We go to HR departments of our regional employers that we were working with and by and large when we show them credential frameworks and we talk to them about that, the HR departments love it. But the problem that they have is that a lot of them are smaller businesses and they don't have the money to invest in being able to understand exactly what the competencies are for the particular job roles. Now, I mean, there are a number of professional organizations that are working. You know, I think Akeem is a great example of that in health information management. And I think as things sort of head towards that sort of a model, we'll look at some change, but I don't know that the average HR offices is ready to start thinking about things in terms of competencies. But you know, we have this conversation all the time about people come in with a bachelor's degree from here or there and they don't understand, an HR office isn't equipped to understand the subtle nuances of this course at this institution from this course at that institution and what do those courses even mean anyway? So there's no real way for them to get from that to job skills. So they all see it as like, oh wow, it's an aha moment, but they're just not quite, most of them just aren't quite ready for it yet. And I know that I keep sort of bludgeoning the point here, but the role of social capital and pedigree cannot be ignored in this. You know, I've sat on the hiring end, I've looked at, oh, he was a Marine Corps member. Oh, she's a Teach for America alum. Oh, God, look where he went to school, he went to WashU. We do that. We might not name it and own it, but we always do it. We sift and we sort and we connect to the networks that we're connected with. And so as we think again about how are we not only getting folks to navigate this space where they might become credentialed in smaller and more piecemeal ways or newer ways, I really, really believe that we have to be much more deliberate and intentional in exploring the role of social capital and exploring how we equip folks not only with the competencies to obtain a particular degree, but then use that degree for the advancement purposes that it was intended. And that we plan for that in an intentional way. So there's a ton going on. We've touched on a little bit of it and I know lots of you are involved in other innovations that are underway. One that I think is interesting to mention about social capital specifically, which is sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally left out of the conversation, right? Credly, who's one of our partners or some of you may be familiar with is newly working with City and Guilds. And part of what they'll be building into their digital platform is an algorithm that accounts for brand power, which I think is so important because sometimes it's not mentioned, but it can't be underestimated. We're human, we recognize what we recognize. And history is history. And so brands are brands for a reason. So I think all sorts of interesting examples of work going on. And we've been a little bit critical, but hopefully thought provoking. Who has questions for the panel? I think we've got a few minutes left, yep. Something that really interests me is boot camps, how they've come up so quickly, how employers are hiring a lot of graduates from boot camps. What do you guys see the traditional higher ed market? How are they trying to compete with that? And what are you guys learning good and bad from those? So I mean, I think that there are some extremely successful and effective boot camps. General Assembly is the one that comes to mind. I would just flag again my pedigree and who gets in and who does well and who has the prerequisite skills and competencies to financially and practically support a program like that. But the idea of intense training in short periods of time that often is experiential, one of the things that I think is a great opportunity of boot camps or these smaller forms of credentials in which what you get at the end of a boot camp I would consider a newer form of credential is things that are better aligned to how we learn and live. Like fundamentally, on the one hand, folks are looking for efficiency. Is it faster, cheaper? But on the other hand, the more optimistic human end is it more like how we learn and live. And so for boot camps, what an incredible opportunity for folks to very quickly and for some, not all, affordably upskill and advance. And if somebody has brand power, what Katie said, then it really can have a huge lift. So General Assembly to me is a premier example of someone who has brand power and buy in within their industry and other industries where it functionally acts like what I just mentioned, a Marine Corps or Teach for America or a Peace Corps. There's some level of halo effect there where there's an association of what it means that you went through this particular program and what that might say about who you are. I don't feel like it's an either or. I mean, I think there's plenty of room for both. You know, it's not about, it shouldn't really be about competition. It's about fulfilling the needs and having the right alignment, right? I mean, so maybe the boot camp is what that particular group needs to get to that level, but maybe a traditional course is what this other group needs to get to that particular level. I think there's room in the marketplace for all of those things because people have such wild varying needs as far as delivery modes and skill sets are concerned. We, of course, support the competition. We're not a higher ed institution. And there is some competition. Some schools in Michigan are losing enrollees to boot camps, which they can get done in two weeks, six weeks, eight weeks for much cheaper. So that is certainly an issue. And that's just the way it's working in the market right now. There are some neat examples at a couple of colleges in Michigan in healthcare where the waitlist to get into an RN program in Brown Rapids is two years. And so they've started sending applicants to a boot camp first that gets them through the first, however many credits of the RN program, then they're able to sort of stagger entry and let some in a semester late, a year late depending on the boot camp they attend in. And so that's a really positive model. It works out for the learner. It works out for the institution. They can keep the waitlist down and it just increases efficiency. So I think, yes, there's, certainly there's some competition in the market, but there are great examples of them working together also. And I wanna add something on top of that. Relative to the work that they're doing, I think over time you'll start seeing better alignment between things where, as different career pathways emerge and there are competency frameworks within those, that you'll see these things like boot camps that all sort of stack and lattice into these other things. So as two year or four year institutions become more adaptive to understanding what those things are and how to roll those things into. I know in our particular instance, I mean, we accept some of the credentials from AHIMA that roll into your CSC and coding or your associates in health information management. And so, you know, you can start it with a boot camp and then it builds and it builds and it's all about seeing those pathways and the alignments across all of the different choices. Another question? Mm-hmm. Sure. And then we'll get one more. Yeah, so you talking about what I'm, you didn't, I don't know if you used the phrase, but it's almost sounds like a step, they hear the phrase stackable credential where there's actually a college credit evaluation that's tied to this smaller unit. And is that something that might be a way to sort of minimize the class problem we were thinking about of two classes of learning, two classes of training, where if I've got my, you know, five classes in web development, but it's worth 15 credits, I could stop there, but then maybe I can go on to Lord Fairfax or wherever. Do we see that as a potential way to minimize the two tier system? And also, is that something that is, seems to me that's something that should proliferate? Is that something you're seeing? Absolutely. We advocate for stackable credentials and try to figure out the best way to make it clear what the opportunities are, right? How you can stack different credentials, how you can show what your competencies are. You know, we are looking in depth at all sorts of different groups where this is very pronounced, like immigrants and refugees. And you know, I flew, I was an army medic, but I came back and had to start at square one. To be an EMT. And so, yes, absolutely, stackable credentials are a great opportunity, I'd say, in short. And I'm sure both of you have the same. Yeah, I think that there's the sort of logical sequencing of stacking up credentials and then there's those sort of mobility markers that I was mentioning before. So in the one hand, being able to do an array of things that I can afford in access to build toward a career path or sort of sequential career advancement is terrific when it works. Another thing that's interesting is coaching and supporting a learner, regardless of age or stage, in a very sort of quick, higher income, you know, get this quick certificate or credential that can get you into a higher paying job, that can get you family sustaining wages, that gives you the economic stability that later enables you to pursue your career pathway. And that's a different kind of stacking that we don't always talk about. And then I told you about my move, I told you about my kids, let me tell you about my mother. We just moved my mom into town and she's aging, she's on social security, she can't actually live on the social security payments that she's making, but she's been a substitute teacher mostly for special education for 15 years and way back when got a graduate degree in counseling, but she can't get hired as a teacher because she doesn't have the degree, so she makes less than $80 a day to function as a teacher, which is not a living wage, which is hard for her and it's also hard for her, don't kids who are helping care for her. There are shorter pathways for career and economic boosting and stability that also need to be looked at and those connect in with things that we have been thinking about for years, things like prior learning and being able to assess in some of the colleges and places represented here, but I think we still have a ways to go on that end. Right, yep, yeah, I mean, I think bottom line is using credentials as an opportunity to tell our story in what we know and can do in a way that makes sense to the world and helps get us better opportunities is what the goal should be. Yeah, and there was a question here. It's you. Yeah, I saw your hand a minute ago. I'm kind of intrigued with the language thing, Jeremiah, you mentioned it, you talked about personal branding and sort of creating your story, I think behind some of the things you said, I mean, I think about like competencies, like if I'm hiring and you're competent, you're competent, you're a rock star, I don't want the competent ones, I want the rock star. And so the question is, what do we name things? Like marketing now and education is really harder than it's ever been. Two-year degree, four-year degree, certificate, graduate degree, now it's like what? You know, like what we got here? And so any comments on how we sell these things as universities and how do we appeal both to the employer and to the student and talk about jobs for the future, how do we give them the tools to create their story so they can have a job for the future as opposed to a job for today? I amazingly feel your pain. I mean, this is the exact situation that we've been in in trying to sell the competency-based education, direct assessment programs, it's confusing. I mean, higher education is already kind of confusing and then you add this, oh, we've got this new thing and it looks like this and la la la and it's just overwhelming. So, you know, the work that we've been doing sort of points to that we have to spend more time working with employers to understand what their needs are and then we either work through them or in concert with them to develop the right things for them. And I think that's where the whole thing, that's the crux of the entire kit and caboodle. You know, if you look at the industries that have these credentials, these post-secondary awards that are being super successful, they're spending the time to do research, to go into these employers to understand what the competencies are like at the job level so that education can be mapped to them, right? Instead of, hey, we're gonna educate people over here and we're gonna create jobs over here and then we're gonna try to figure out what the alignment is. You know, it really just doesn't make sense. And I would love to tell you that there was some simple answer or some great idea that I came across if there was, we'd already be using it. But I think the reality is, is that we're gonna have to try to get away from some of this derogatory language in general around micro-nano because if you don't know much about higher education, when you look at it, you're already thinking, well, this is just some little tiny thing, right? What does that mean? And I think we need to be more cognizant of the branding language that we use around these things and try to make it simpler and maybe not even focus on what the delivery modes are and just focus on, hey, this is the job that you're gonna get at the end of the, this is what the point of this thing is. This is for this job and that's what's gonna get you there. So I would add just two very quick things. In one of the early conversations of C-Bend, the competency-based education network, Chris, you may have been a part of this conversation. We had a conversation about, you know, as parents or people, like, do you wanna be merely competent, right? Like, I want my child to be competent. No, I want him to be a rock star and the power behind language. So I think it's the difference between whether we setting our systems up, designing systems and supporting people. So from a human-centered perspective, it is how do I recognize and what a person knows and can do and develop that person to his best potential or to pursue the opportunities he wants from a system's perspective? It's how do we enable learners and workers to move on when ready? How do we articulate the skills and attitudes and dispositions that they need to be prepared? Bottom line, are they fully prepared to take on a particular role or job at a system's perspective? But fundamentally, from a human-centered perspective, it's how do we let these people thrive? And can we design our learning and working pathways to support that possibility? So just to put a bow on it, I think to answer the question that's in the title of our panel, right, Alternative Credentials vs. Degrees, Andre Compliment or Replacement, we'd probably say all three in some cases. Thank you for your great questions. I'd like to thank our panelists. I appreciate it. Looking forward to the rest of the day. Thank you.