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In Australia, certification is effectively governed by TEQSA and the relevant accrediting body for your discipline. TEQSA examine whether a university's degree

In Australia, certification is effectively governed by TEQSA and the relevant accrediting body for your discipline. TEQSA examine whether a university's degree meets the AQF requirements for being a Bachelor's degree (or other kind of degree), and in our case the relevant discipline body is ACS, and they also look in depth at the quality of what we teach. Each of those is a thick, thick, document full of things that go far beyond the exams. It is the education in a degree, not just the exam-answering, that they attempt to accredit. I realise that degree-certification-bodies isn't what you meant by "certification" -- that you're thinking more of the "industry cert" model, where a training centre teaches you material, and then you pay to take an exam from the certifier. The point though is that's not what society (or at least as represented by government) wants university to be. It is, at least currently, supposed to be education not just training and testing.

sago 12y ago
The same kind of thing happens in other countries, including the US. There are authorities which accredit universities as providing suitable standards of education to award a degree. That wasn't what I was getting at, no. It prevents diploma-mills, certainly, but does nothing to stop the perverse incentives. And doesn't help any alternative methods of achieving the same competency to compete.
- wbillingsley 12y ago
  The point is that so far it seems it's not just the "competency certification" that the market and society is demanding -- it (for the moment) really is demanding the education that you describe as a mis-sold extra. That's not so surprising to me, in that a degree tends to be an entry to a career. And that career can be long enough that competencies are likely to change in unpredictable ways over your career. So, it makes some sense for graduate employers to be more interested in an education they believe means you are likely adapt well to those changes, and perhaps lead those changes. Rather than a competency certification that shows you know the current state-of-play. Whether that will change over time is an interesting question. If the market does move towards just certifying competencies, I have an awkward suspicion that it will be because of general trends towards workforce casualisation. If you see employees as disposable (hire the skills of today, and tomorrow fire them to hire the skills of tomorrow) then education is less important than today's competency. This isn't intended as a criticism of MOOCs, nor in any sense to diminish them. I'm not only interested in them, but trying to develop some -- I have something of a vested interest towards MOOCs... It's just that I'm personally more interested in how we can improve MOOCs to offer an education, rather than how we can get the market to stop demanding an education and just want a competency-certification.
  - sago 12y ago
    Aren't you just defining competency in a very narrow way to move the goalposts? If the goal is that students show competency in adapting to changing requirements, and mastering information literacy, then that is the required competency. By competency, I don't mean some narrow technical expertise, but whatever skills it is that an employer needs their workforce to have, that universities claim to impart.

sago 12y ago

The same kind of thing happens in other countries, including the US. There are authorities which accredit universities as providing suitable standards of education to award a degree. That wasn't what I was getting at, no. It prevents diploma-mills, certainly, but does nothing to stop the perverse incentives. And doesn't help any alternative methods of achieving the same competency to compete.

wbillingsley 12y ago
The point is that so far it seems it's not just the "competency certification" that the market and society is demanding -- it (for the moment) really is demanding the education that you describe as a mis-sold extra. That's not so surprising to me, in that a degree tends to be an entry to a career. And that career can be long enough that competencies are likely to change in unpredictable ways over your career. So, it makes some sense for graduate employers to be more interested in an education they believe means you are likely adapt well to those changes, and perhaps lead those changes. Rather than a competency certification that shows you know the current state-of-play. Whether that will change over time is an interesting question. If the market does move towards just certifying competencies, I have an awkward suspicion that it will be because of general trends towards workforce casualisation. If you see employees as disposable (hire the skills of today, and tomorrow fire them to hire the skills of tomorrow) then education is less important than today's competency. This isn't intended as a criticism of MOOCs, nor in any sense to diminish them. I'm not only interested in them, but trying to develop some -- I have something of a vested interest towards MOOCs... It's just that I'm personally more interested in how we can improve MOOCs to offer an education, rather than how we can get the market to stop demanding an education and just want a competency-certification.
- sago 12y ago
  Aren't you just defining competency in a very narrow way to move the goalposts? If the goal is that students show competency in adapting to changing requirements, and mastering information literacy, then that is the required competency. By competency, I don't mean some narrow technical expertise, but whatever skills it is that an employer needs their workforce to have, that universities claim to impart.