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Alternative credentials — basically shorter-term training options other than a full college degree that can show employers proof of specific skills — are growing in popularity. But the systems employers use for hiring aren’t yet equipped to handle these credentials.

That was one finding from a new report out this month from Northeastern University. 

Basically, the hiring system at many companies is literally wired for four-year degrees. That’s what automated systems typically look for, anyway. “The majority of companies that we interviewed reported that their customers were typically not yet requesting digital credential support as a priority,” the report says. Read an EdSurge article further exploring this situation.

It’s a reminder that for things like microcredentials to work as advertised, several different sectors have to change — colleges need to offer them, students need to demand them and employers need to accept them. 

There’s some sign that the student demand is growing, at least according to Jenn Hofmann, a Stanford graduate student writing in EdSurge this week. She points to a recent survey that 81 percent of students want skills they’ll use in the working world after college, and that about half of Gen Zers believe they can succeed in a career with an alternate credential rather than a full degree.

So that leaves the question of whether colleges will move to incorporate more skills-based learning and alternative credentials. But one expert writing in Times Higher Education this week worried that colleges are “too comfortable” with the status quo to embrace microcredentials.

As for employers, one thing that might help move the needle is AI, according to the Northeastern report. After all, the new breakthroughs powering ChatGPT could be used to help employers sort through the complicated mix of credentials. But there are risks to trusting AI too heavily in the job-screening process, the report adds. 

“AI is being used to augment the recruiting and hiring process, but interviewed firms feel caution about its use in decision-making today, and emphasize that it is a tool to augment the hiring process, not control it.”

✍️ COLUMNIST CORNER

GOT SKILLS?: Today’s high school graduates are increasingly questioning whether higher education is worth it, and that’s pushing colleges to consider new ways to bring job skills and industry partnerships into their offerings. A Stanford graduate student explores this topic in a new article. 

CHANGING MINDS: What’s really behind efforts to censor history lessons? In a new opinion essay, psychological anthropologist Nat Kendall-Taylor explores several mindsets prevalent in U.S. culture that cause many Americans — particularly white Americans — to squirm when they encounter concepts like “systemic racism.” He writes: “We can argue about what should or should not be in a school curriculum, but the real work also lies as much in changing the culture.”

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🎧 ON THE PODCAST

YOUR BRAIN ON LEARNING: Experts have described this moment as a “golden age” of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights?

📈 STAT-O-MATIC

$14

The average amount of money students saved for every $1 that grant programs spent to support the use of free open educational resources (OER) in college courses instead of commercial textbooks. That’s according to data from nearly four dozen grant programs serving colleges across the U.S. and Canada, published in new research by Student PIRGS, a nonprofit advocacy network.  

💼 BYTE-SIZE BRIEFS

To boost enrollment and build worker pipelines, community colleges experiment with paying students. (GBH News) 

Courses in the metaverse struggle to compete with the real world. (Financial Times)

New partnership aims to bring affordable child care to community college campuses. (Chronicle of Higher Education) 

📣 SPOKEN WORD

“The genie is out of the bottle, and we’re not going back. … Our students are going to use this technology, and we need to teach them how to use it responsibly. We want to harness the power of AI for the public good.”

— Ishwar K. Puri, senior vice president for research and innovation at the University of Southern California, which announced the creation of a new, $10 million Center for Generative AI and Society. (USC News release)

😆 BACK OF THE CLASS

WHERE DID HOMEWORK COME FROM? It turns out, taking assignments home from school has a long history. Although the practice has some precedent in ancient Egypt and China, a historian writing in the Wall Street Journal pegs the modern version of it to Prussia in the 18th century, when “daily homework was introduced, in part because it was a way of inserting school oversight, and by extension the state, into the home.” People have complained ever since. 

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