Editorial: Digital badges promising complement to higher-ed

For decades, Americans have regarded college as a necessary rite of passage to obtain a… For decades, Americans have regarded college as a necessary rite of passage to obtain a high-paying job. Now, however, some commentators predict that a burgeoning technology will give the four-year, financially taxing experience a run for its money.

In a Chronicle of Higher Education blog post last Thursday, editorial director Jeffrey Selingo praised the ingenuity of the digital badge system — a new, pioneering certification infrastructure that aims to redefine what we value in post-secondary education. The badges — which companies, online courseware providers, colleges and community groups all have the power to bestow — will recognize and symbolize, among other qualifications, experience and skills in outside-the-classroom learning and critical thinking, communication and information aggregation. Most excitingly, perhaps, Selingo expects that the badges will provide links to the papers, transcripts and other documents completed to earn them.

Selingo is not alone in his enthusiasm for the plan. A few weeks ago, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $2 million competition to develop a standardized badge system. At the announcement, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs, pledged $25,000 for the best badge-system prototype that would service veterans seeking high-paying jobs.

Of course, despite what Selingo suggests in his blog, it would take a truly remarkable technology to completely supplant traditional higher education. College, after all, provides an almost unbeatable set of professional opportunities, including access to instruction in many possible career fields and a vast network of connections.

Nonetheless, the badge system carries several important benefits. First and foremost, its ability to correlate documents with their resulting qualifications would provide employers an invaluable opportunity to assess applicants’ actual strengths. Instead of simply reading “proficient in HTML” on a candidate’s resumé, for example, a human resources department would be able to determine for itself how extensive an applicant’s training really was.

Additionally, as aforementioned champions have noted, a badge system could serve as a more affordable, albeit less authoritative, alternative to college degrees — the digital equivalent of trade school. And for those who earned their bachelor’s degrees a long time ago, the badges could act as supplements to higher education — extra certification for when college degrees in themselves are insufficient.

Of course, much as with college degrees, employers should take into account the sources of badges — many companies and organizations will doubtlessly dole them out all too readily and thereby diminishtheir value. But as with any new idea, the badge system’s possibilities, at least for now, overshadow its downsides. As tuition-paying college students, we’d welcome any challenge to the entrenched superiority of traditional academia.