Why Isn’t It a No-Brainer to Embed ‘Certifications’ Into Bachelor’s Degrees? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, covering innovation in and around academe. I’m back from some time off. Hope you all enjoyed your holidays, too. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week.
Why isn’t it a no-brainer to embed ‘certifications’ into bachelor’s degrees?
At community colleges, the idea of students earning industry and professional certifications as they pursue their education is often standard operating procedure. At four-year colleges, not so much.
This is true even though recent research suggests that liberal-arts graduates can improve their job prospects considerably if they graduate with even one or two industry-specific skills along with their degree. So when I heard about a new project to encourage more bachelor’s-level institutions to embed certifications into their curricula, of course I was interested. I became even more interested — and little perplexed — when I learned from the project organizers that the college folks from the liberal arts seemed the most resistant to the idea.