The Field of Dreams Approach to Credentialing.
“If You Credential It, They Will Care.”
“If you build it, they will come.” — A twist on this famous line from the 1989 award winning movie, Field of Dreams, frequently comes to my mind regarding many organizations’ approach to credentialing:
If you credential it, they will care.
They, in this case, refers to both students and employers. Similar to Carpet Badging, a Field of Dreams approach assumes pushing a credential out into the world is enough to generate value. Increasingly, this approach fails.
Unless your organization carries the clout of Harvard or a brand like Google, your new credentials will disappear in the ever-growing cloud of Credential Pollution.
Creating Trusted Credentials
This problem is solvable. The alternative to a Field of Dreams approach to credentialing is creating Trusted Credentials. Such credentials provide meaningful value for both earners and credential consumers.
We can also improve the situation by creating tools to sift through credential options and adopting machine readable credentialing standards.
I am preparing a list of meaningful steps organizations can take to ensure their credentials are successful. For now, however, let’s not assume that if you credential it, they will care.
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