Higher Education's Strategic Inflection Point

by Bernadette Howlett, PhD

It is, by no means, a brand new notion, but the idea of credentialing competence (often referred to as competency based education, CBE) is rapidly advancing on K-12 and higher education, as both disruption and opportunity. It seems practically inevitable a significant portion of the education market, especially for undergraduate education as well as junior/senior years of high school, will shift toward CBE in the form of digital badges and micro-credentials.

In this article in Forbes, Ryan Craig discusses the potential for digital badges and pathways to 'revolutionize' education. This is reminiscent of the early 1990s, when online learning was beginning to gather steam. Many experts were highly skeptical of the potential for online learning to be significantly impactful. Based on the dramatic ways in which online education altered the landscape, it seems prudent today to allow that Ryan Craig, and many other similar voices are right.

And, frankly, why not?

The industrial production paradigm gave us higher education as we know it today. It was, at least for a number of decades, efficient to place large numbers of students in a room with an expert to dispense knowledge and test retention. It was unquestioned that such exposure to said expert produced competence. However, the efficiency has gone out of the system, the value proposition is in doubt, and the claim that a college degree evidences competence is no longer accepted on faith.

This change is not ahead of us, but behind us. Higher education has passed through a strategic inflection point (thank you Andy Grove for gifting us with that term). As such, it is incumbent upon higher education thought leaders to discover how to accelerate through this inflection point, as George Brandt put it. This is one of those moments when how we lead matters. In fact, it means everything, because everything might well be on the line.

The Business of Higher Education

The question with which to begin is, "What is the business of higher education?" And let us not mistake we are in a business, no matter how lofty our mission. Much like the railroad industry of the past, who saw themselves as being in the railroad business long after the advent of the automobile, higher education is in the credentialing business, the competency business, not the time-in-seat business. Further, let us no longer assume our degrees ought be taken on faith as conferring the learning outcomes we attribute to them. Clinging to deeply held convictions, similarly led to the near complete demise of the railroad industry.

Upon a time, higher education's role, its contract with society, was to prepare citizens and leaders. The contract is null, expired, shredded on the floor. And spending time debating the rightness of this breach will be at our peril. Philosophizing (as educators are wont to do) about, and against, the new environment of our industry, could leave many in higher education standing on the platform of an abandoned train station, romanticizing about the days when we held forth to rooms of eager shiny faces.