What can Higher Education Contribute to Skill Badging? A Lot
The worlds of employment and education are in the midst of a skills revolution. From laments of a "skills gap" between employer needs and employee preparation (McKinsey, 2018) to vendors such as Emsi who offer to turn syllabi into "skillabi" (Verougstraete, 2020), there have been increasingly urgent calls for educators to focus on skills as the currency that students cash in for jobs. Sometimes, these skills are labeled "future skills" and connected to the Future of Work (Strada, 2019), a looming event horizon heralding a future dominated by AI, robotics, and rapid technological change; a future that demands constant retooling - of machines and people both!
With the future of work and the skills revolution spoken of in almost eschatological terms in the business press, educators are left to wonder if this future portends utopia or apocalypse. For some of the loudest prophets, the skills revolution spells doom for the traditional university. Workers can now - or will soon be able to - pick up whatever skills they need through short courses, boot camps, online offerings, and corporate training. Such training, we are told, will come just in time for use, will extend throughout a worker's lifetime, and can be "unbundled" from any educational content not directly related to an immediate employment goal. In this paradigm, four year university education seems headed for the dustbin at worst, or more likely relegated to a limited role preparing certain sectors of workers, but not most. Skills, we are told, are what employers want - and skills don't need universities. Must the skills revolution inevitably leave higher education behind?
I believe it should not and will not. I believe that skills education belongs in higher education; that universities bring crucial educational value to skills education, not likely to be duplicated by other providers; and that the skills revolution will not realize its promise to employers, workers, and society without the involvement of higher ed institutions. I do believe that the university must change - must enter the skills training space, must extend its educational scope beyond the four year degree, must find new ways to package and credit the skills it teaches. Below, I offer six points of advice for how higher ed should implement skills education - and point out the special strengths universities can bring to the skills revolution. I come to this discussion as part of FGCU Badges at Florida Gulf Coast University - an initiative that is working to integrate skill badging across the student experience at a regional public institution (Timur et. al, 2020).
- Remember the difference between education and training
Education cultivates long-term and "evergreen" competencies; training is timely preparation for an immediate task. Education develops capacities that one applies a variety of contexts; training is context-limited and specific to one workplace; Education is reflective and critical; training helps you act without thinking. Education guides you to figure out the right tools to solve a problem; training tells you what all the buttons do. Education engages the person as a citizen, person, and worker; training treats us only as employees.
Traditionally, education has been the task of colleges and universities, while training has been the realm of in-house corporate programs or vocational institutions. The skills revolution can tempt us to think that training can move online and replace education, but employers and policy makers should be deeply skeptical of such claims. Training is necessary to enable workers to adapt to ever more rapid technological changes. But most often, what we must be trained in are new vehicles for applying our education. Microsoft Publisher didn't exist when I started school; but it applies and depends on core writing skills that I developed over many essays and term papers. Similarly, Excel or Tableau have become essential technologies and a focus for training. But these are applications of basic quantitative understanding and statistical knowledge; without that education, Excel is just Word with lines. Skills may be needed to enter new career areas, but it's our education more than our training that makes us flexible. My field is Philosophy, and I've worked as both a teacher and an administrator. For both jobs, I had to be trained in techniques and tasks specific to the role; but for both, the core skills in analytical thinking, writing, argument and persuasion that characterized my philosophy education have been the chef's knives that get most of the work done, and the reason why changing roles didn't mean changing identity.
In short, for professionals, training is subordinate to education, however necessary training is. As universities join the skills revolution, they should remember that their primary mission is still education.
2. Universities should embrace skill training for the last mile between a general education and a specific job.
As much as it bears repeating that education - not training - is the main responsibility of the university, there is still a limited but crucial role for skills training in higher education. Universities owe it to their students to help them "skill up" for the future of work.
The place where skills training fits in a university education is in the "last mile." In the lingo of shipping, the "long haul" which takes a product from the factory to a distribution hub, is handled differently from "last mile" delivery that gets that product to its point of sale. It's useful to think of a student's journey through college education to their first real job in similar terms. Most degree programs don't deliver graduates directly and exclusively to one career destination. Rather, general education and a college major prepare students for a range of different career types. Often, the career outcomes of one program are quite diverse, and sometimes surprising - as in the similarity in the career options of students who majored in liberal arts fields and those who majored in business (Coffey et. al., 2019). The focus of higher education in the U.S. is primarily on the long haul - cultivating core knowledge, skills, and abilities that graduates can carry into a range of different jobs. That's what a college education is best at doing, and that should remain its main preoccupation.
The problem is, too many students are getting stranded at the distribution hub. Universities are often stuck in a past where campus employment offices and corporate training programs took care of routing and settling students into first jobs in the harried months before and after graduation. But the rapid pace of change in the workplace has brought us to a place where individual workers are bearing the burden of "skilling up" to meet employer expectations. At the same time we see a growing public expectation that higher ed deliver students an immediate ROI. Under these conditions, universities can serve both their students and themselves by getting involved with that last mile to the first job. Universities should carve out a limited role for focused skills training in the college curriculum. By offering students skill badges focused on particular industries and professions, universities can help students apply their general skills in specific workplaces, and increase employer confidence that graduates can do the job. More than that, industry focused badges can give students more clear insight into their professional options and help them make an informed choice among them, by offering a sneak peek into some of the professional worlds open to a student.
3. Skill badging initiatives should include both technical/workplace skills and human/transferable skills.
If universities need to enter the skills space, which skills need their attention? The most obvious candidates are technological skills or workplace specific skills. After all, graduates get jobs by meeting the needs and expectations of employers. It is because employers perceive a mismatch between entry level candidates and the skill needs of their particular workplaces that we speak of a "skills gap" to begin with. It would seem that the surest route across that last mile spoken of above is to offer students training in the skills that are native to particular jobs.
And so we should, but of course there are limits to how far higher education can travel this route. The most specific workplace skills will usually still need to be learned on site, not at the university. Still, getting only a little more general, colleges can identify and train for the skills that we expect to be common to many workplaces. Increasingly, these are technological skills, since technology, digitization and AI are the forces driving the rapid changes of the Future of Work. To an extent, this is the job for STEM programs in Engineering or Computer Science, but the need to "tech up" goes beyond specialists. All professionals need to build facility with the computer applications and digital platforms that facilitate even work that is not explicitly technological in content or primary skill set. Excel, Tableau, Adobe Creative Suite, Google Analytics - learning such tools is a necessity for work across the range of professional skills. It's crucial that universities provide students instruction in these digital skills - whether that takes place as part of a course, or in the form of a smaller micro-credential.
These skills show the rationale for badging in a compelling way. Employers are very interested in knowing which job-relevant computer applications a job candidate has mastered - but a college transcript will not usually tell them. A badge extracts that competency from the course, program or short course where it may have been acquired, and makes it visible to the employer as a discrete item.
But digital and industry-specific skills are not the only skills students need for the Future of Work. Consider this chart from McKinsey's Skill Shift report, visualizing skills predicted to grow in importance over the next decade (McKinsey, 2018):
This chart shows that the need for technological skills is on the rise - we knew that. But McKinsey's research also shows that as technological skills grow in importance, so too do the skills that computers can't replace, or can't replace easily - from critical thinking and creativity to communication and empathy. These human skills fall into the social/emotional or higher cognitive categories, and need for them is substantial and growing. This may seem to some like a man bites dog story, but for college and university educators, there's nothing new or surprising here. These human skills are mostly identical with the transferable skills that have been the core product of liberal arts education for centuries. But like specialized technological skills, these core skills often remain invisible on a college transcript, because they're not the name of a course. Badges can recognize human skills, and help students "name and claim" them in the employment market.
Higher education plays a crucial role in making sure that human or transferable skills are recognized and taught. For one thing, the development of these skills is already a primary purpose of the general education programs and liberal arts majors that lie at the heart of university education. For another, these skills cannot be acquired on a short time frame. No one becomes an effective writer or an insightful critical thinker by taking a four week boot camp. It takes years of practice and reflection, and many iterations of the assignments that cultivate the skill. Colleges and universities have the time to develop these skills over the time a student spends there. Indeed, the importance of human skills to professional success is perhaps the best economic reason to continue to value the four year college degree. If higher education doesn't provide employers with these skills, I doubt anyone else will.
4. Use curricular and co-curricular resources to teach skills
So far, the skills education I've discussed - in technological/ industry specific and human/ transferable skills - could be addressed by expanding the higher education curriculum. But colleges and universities extend beyond the classroom, and co-curricular spaces can be an excellent arena to practice and apply skills. Higher education should bring academics and student life together in an intentional way to maximize skills development for our students.
Incoming college students are often told, "you'll learn as much outside the classroom as you will inside it." I'm not sure this is literally true. Specialized skills native to college majors are definitely taught in the classroom. Likewise core skills like writing, critical thinking, and communication get special attention in English, Philosophy and Communication classrooms, to name only the most obvious courses. But what the campus environment undoubtedly provides is a rich playground of places where core skills can be put into practice. Student government, club meetings, service learning projects, campus tour guides, student newspaper, plays and concerts - these all give students opportunities to use those those public speaking, writing and critical thinking skills honed in courses. And not only to practice the skill in its classroom form, but to develop the skill by applying it in the "real world" simulation that is campus life. It's in the student senate or the greek house where critical thinking can become the skill leadership; in the group of students scrambling to get a new club off the ground that creativity and organization become entrepreneurship; in the young person promoting their student play or concert that writing starts to become marketing.
One of the key attractions of badging as a form of skills education is its flexibility to include both instruction and performance, both assessable skills and their application in practical contexts. That's the feature that gives employers confidence that someone who earns a badge is actually able to apply the skill - because they've demonstrated it. But this combination of instruction, assessment, and application also makes colleges and universities the ideal environments to carry out skill badging initiatives. It has been the insight of American progressive education since John Dewey that students learn best by putting ideas into action. A university is already both a site of formal instruction and a living laboratory that gives students space to try out their skills and enact their ideas. This gives higher education the opportunity to offer the kind of complete and contextualized skills education not likely to be duplicated in other contexts. Universities should take advantage of this with badging initiatives that bridge the classroom and the dorm room, with badges whose requirements bring together instruction and campus life activities. This not only has the potential to provide superior skills education-especially for the core human skills. It also gives colleges a way to assess and explain the real value of "the college experience" to the students and families they serve.
5. Make partnerships with industry and local professionals
A university is a part of its local community. Other than the few elite colleges whose graduates scatter to the winds, the majority of higher education institutions are also integral contributors to their local economies, sending most of their graduates to work in the state or region in which they're located. Online providers of badges or micro credentials cannot claim that level of local connection. Universities should make the most of it, and bring the community into the skill badging process, to the collective benefit of students, employers, and themselves.
In part, that means consulting with employers on industry-specific badges, and involving important regional companies in developing skills education. For instance, my institution - Florida Gulf Coast University - has partnered with the Arthrex corporation, a major employer in the area, to offer a medical device industry badge to students. The flexibility of badging makes it easier to manage properly the boundaries between the university curriculum and a partner company, separating a topical course taught and graded by university faculty from a badge assessment in which the employer has a direct role. FGCU has thus managed to offer students access to a highly desirable local employer while maintaining the integrity of its academic programs. This face of employer-involved badging can put structure and transparency into the kinds of informal recruiting arrangements employers have long made with universities. A badge open to all qualified students can help route students toward job opportunities, more equitably than a connection between an employer and a favored faculty member or department. Using specialized badge programs to connect graduates with local jobs is a natural link between skills education and job placement. Higher ed should work these local connections to build more robust skill badging programs and strengthen college to career pathways.
Employer partnerships aren't just for industry specific skills, though. The human or transferable skills I mentioned before are important for every employer, and colleges shouldn't miss the opportunity to build partnerships for badging core skills. At my institution FGCU, a College of Arts & Sciences career program is enlisting the help of the professional community on a pilot project to badge transferable skills like critical thinking and communication. We don't lack for volunteers. Corporate recruiters, local business owners, regional nonprofits, local Chambers, and our own alums have stepped up to serve as guest judges for events that assess students' core skills. Students benefit from the feedback and advice of experienced professionals. Not only that, the university benefits by expanding friendraising and corporate partnerships across the whole institution. Colleges of Arts & Sciences have the most direct involvement in teaching transferable skills to the student body - both through Gen Ed and in CAS' own majors. Skill badge programs can help humanities and social science programs make the kinds of employer connections that already benefit students in the so-called "practical" majors. Employers benefit too, by gaining access to and appreciation for the rich talent pool that exists within these degree programs. Research shows that the career outcomes of humanities and social science graduates are similar to those of business majors (Coffey et. al., 2019); a badging event can be the blind date that helps a buttoned-down employer and a bookish student discover an unexpected affinity.
This brings up another reason for higher ed to develop skill badging programs in partnership with local employers and professionals. Aside and apart from the benefits of acquiring skills and getting recognized for them, badging assessment events can be great networking opportunities for students. Instead of waiting for a senior year career fair to start collecting business cards (sorry - I meant LinkedIn connections), students participating in a series of badge assessments over several semesters at their college can start meeting local employers and developing a professional network much earlier. Higher ed should embrace the role of the guest judge in skills assessment. Besides giving a student real world insight on her skills performance, the networking opportunity that comes with a visiting professional is a benefit in itself - and it's a byproduct university skill programs are especially well placed to deliver.
6. Use rich assessments that build on faculty strengths
As I've learned lately, showing an interest in skills training or badging is a great way for an educator to get attention from providers eager to do it for you! The online space is already full of products claiming to make skill assessment seamless, efficient, and easy (if not cheap) for universities. Some of these are well designed and add value - others not so much. Without denigrating the good products that are out there, I'd like to argue that a university benefits from taking a faculty developed approach to skills assessment. Universities are centers of pedagogical expertise and innovation - full of faculty who are intentional and reflective about guiding students to achieve learning outcomes, and often very creative about how that learning takes place. Faculty can improve skill badging by grounding it in rich assessments.
How best to assess skills is a hotly contested question in education. For years, standardized tests like the SAT or GRE were taken as the best available measures of skills like critical thinking or language use. But the higher ed assessment community - led by organizations such as the AAC&U - has increasingly advocated assessments that look at the work the students do in real classrooms, or authentic assessments that apply core skills to real workplace problems, actual or simulated. This kind of rich assessment gets at what students can do, rather than abstracting learning to what can be measured on a multiple choice test (Banta, 2011).
The turn toward skills has seen both kinds of assessment. Much of the instruction available to workers in online learning platforms relies on a few multiple choice comprehension quizzes for assessment. The instruction may be good - I've used such platforms myself to learn new computer applications. But the assessment says little about whether the student has actually mastered the application or can apply it in the workplace. Such programs may call themselves microcredentials and may issue badges, but without rich assessment, they fall short of the ideal of measuring what students can actually do. Other approaches - for instance the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which has students respond to a simulated workplace problem - have tried to tie skill assessment to the real world contexts where skills are applied.
Universities can distinguish themselves in the skills space by taking the path of rich or authentic assessment. We can test student skills in case studies, labs, hands on learning, simulations, and "mock" anything - interviews, trials, pitches, etc. For instance, at my institution FGCU, we run a Performance Task event - adapted from the CLA+ test - where students are placed in a simulated workplace scenario, given some documents to work with, and asked to work in groups to respond to a problem facing the organization. Judges use rubrics to assess how students demonstrated communication, critical thinking, and teamwork skills in the activity.
This kind of approach has a number of signal advantages over more standardized skills assessments. It assesses what students can do. It assesses the application of a skill rather than an abstract aptitude. And importantly, it is readily understood and appreciated outside the university. Employers immediately pick up on the relevance of rich and authentic assessments to their own needs; and they enthusiastically participate in such events as observers or guest judges. Rich assessments can help a badging program be a bridge between the "real world" and the university curriculum. The university is the natural home for this type of assessment. It requires the creativity and pedagogical design skills that faculty have; it bridges assessment and content, a challenge teachers face in every course; and it benefits from the local community and employer connections universities can best cultivate.
I hope I've shown that higher education is an indispensable part of the skills conversation and a crucial provider of skills. In the new focus on skills and skill badging, universities have much to contribute. But they contribute best when they contribute as universities. We don't need to think of skills training and college education as rivals. Quite the contrary - universities can and should make skills training a vital part of a broader educational program, and skills advocates should see the university as a place where skills are both taught and put to work.
Dr. Glenn Whitehouse is Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. He directs PAGES, a career program for liberal arts students at FGCU, and is currently chairs the Steering Committee of FGCU Badges, an initiative preparing to implement skill badging campus wide at FGCU
References:
Banta, Trudy, "Our Primitive Art of Measurement" Peer Review 13, no. 4 (2011)/ 14, no. 1 (2012), p. 35.
Coffey, C., Seitz, R., Saleh, Y., Degrees at Work: Examining the Serendipitous Outcomes of Diverse Degrees, Emsi, 2019
McKinsey Global Institute, Skill Shift: Automation and the Future of the Workforce, (MGI, 2018).
Strada Institute, Robot Ready: Human+ Skills for the Future of Work, (Strada, 2019)
Timur, A., Jaeger, D., Motley, C., Whitehouse, G., FGCU Badges: Badged to Workforce Ready @FGCU, unpublished white paper at Florida Gulf Coast University
Verougstraete, Remie, "Highlighting the Value of Human Skills in Higher Ed.", 10/22/2020 blog post on Emsi website https://www.economicmodeling.com