Dive Brief:
- The American Association of Community Colleges, with funding from the Lumina Foundation, will create a new model to help students, employers and colleges make sense of the variety of credentials across higher education.
- In announcing the initiative, the AACC said it would focus on degrees, certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships and badges in a model that will allow people to identify courses, skills and continuing education credits that students have with each credential.
- Community colleges in Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Iowa, New York, Texas, Wisconsin, Missouri, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Washington and Minnesota are among those participating in the Right Signals initiative.
Dive Insight:
As the higher education marketplace becomes more diverse, the need to make sense of various credentials is increasingly more important. Kevin Carey argues in his latest book that free online credentials will be the true disruptor for higher education, once employers learn how to make sense of them. Carey sees the power in Mozilla’s badges and other credentials like them, which give viewers a chance to see proof of student mastery.
Colleges and universities are moving in that direction as well. The Comprehensive Student Record Project has focused on innovations to digital transcripts, creating new versions of the old, static document that will offer more insights for future employers and give students access to some of their best work long after they graduate.