Credentials

"When trying to understand, let alone navigate, a landscape as chaotic and confusing as America's credential ecosystem, a guidebook from trusted experts is essential. This is that—the resource you'll want to read and reread to ensure you have a firm foundation for the journey."

Scott Cheney - CEO, Credential Engine

"A future-focused analysis of credentials and credentialism doesn't get any more timely than this. This is a must read for higher education leaders today, but it may prove even more important for future leaders interested in an equitable and sustainable future of work and learning."

Parminder K. Jassal - CEO, Unmudl Skills-to-Jobs Marketplace

"Given the accelerating rate of change in the workplace, credentials have become an even more essential tool to ensure the relevance of skills. The authors’ overview of the credentials landscape should help readers understand more fully the complex factors at work in how they are used by employers and educators."

Van Ton-Quinlivan - CEO, Futuro Health; Former Executive Vice Chancellor, California Community Colleges

"Paul Gaston and Michelle Van Noy tour the burgeoning credentials landscape from traditional degrees to emerging and unfamiliar new credentials and through non-degree credentials to apprenticeships, describing their characteristics and considering their applicability and quality. In doing so, they provide a very helpful introduction and analysis of an increasingly complex field."

Peter Ewell - President Emeritus, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems

"Credentials does a wonderful job of laying the framework of why credentials are important to an advanced society focusing on educating the workforce and building the economy. By looking back as a way to look forward, Paul Gaston and Michele Van Noy
document the importance of well-defined credentials while suggesting what the competency-based credentials of the future will look like. What I like the most is how they advocate for quality and equity both within each credential and in the transitions made among credentials."

Aaron Thompson - President, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

"Credentials are fundamental to employment and opportunity, but also to personal identity. They are of interest to educators, employers, and policy makers. Yet despite their ubiquity and significance they are poorly understood; even more so every day as the number and type of credentials have exploded in the last two decades. Gaston and Van Noy provide an excellent framework to help navigate this proliferation. They plot an insightful way forward for college and university administrators, faculty members, academic advisors and others as they design academic programs (and associated credentials) and help guide students to use credentials to achieve their goals.

Thomas Bailey - President, Teachers College, Columbia University

"The importance of this book is reflected in continuing calls for attention to quality and equity in education at all levels within postsecondary education. With government at both the state and national level as well as other stake-holders seeking increased accountability through accreditation, this readable book could not be more timely."

Leah Matthews - Executive Director, Distance Education Accrediting Commission

Foreword—Peter Ewell
Preface: Prompted by Confusion, Created in Crisis
Frequently Used Acronyms

Part I: The Promise and the Problem
1) The Purpose of Credentials: How They Work
2) The Promise of Abundance: An Opportune Environment 
3) The Problems of Proliferation: A Risky Environment

Part II: Degrees of Difference
4) The Associate Degree
5) The Bachelor's Degree
6) The Master's Degree
7) The Doctorate
8) Non-Degree Credentials: Certificates
9) Non-Degree Credentials: Certifications and Other Options
10) Apprenticeships—A Special Case

Part III: Implications for Action
11) Quality and Equity in the Credentials Marketplace
12) Academic Leadership at a Critical Time

References
Index

Paul L. Gaston

Paul L. Gaston, Trustees Professor Emeritus at Kent State University (Ohio), has served four universities as a faculty member, dean, and provost. Having offered 14 years of university service as a provost (Northern Kentucky and Kent State), he has focused more recently on teaching, writing, and consulting.

His recent books include General Education Transformed: How We Can, Why We Must (AAC&U, 2015), Higher Education Accreditation: How It’s Changing, Why It Must (Stylus Publishing, 2014), General Education and Liberal Learning (AAC&U, 2010), The Challenge of Bologna: What U.S. Higher Education Has to Learn from Europe and Why It Matters That We Learn It (Stylus Publishing, 2010), and Revising General Education, with Jerry Gaff (AAC&U, 2009). His most recent book prior to this one, Ohio’s Craft Beers (Kent State University Press, 2017), explores alternate approaches to “higher” education.

His more than 50 published articles on literature and higher education include studies of the British hymn tradition, Anthony Powell, George Herbert, the role of the provost in fund-raising, the Bologna Process, minor league baseball, accreditation reform, Il Gattopardo, interart analogies, and the cultures of futures markets. He is one of the four original authors of the influential Degree Qualifications Profile (Lumina Foundation: 2011, 2015.)

He received his degrees from Southeastern Louisiana College (BA) and from the University of Virginia (MA, Ph.D.), where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He is now Distinguished Fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities and a consultant to Lumina Foundation.
He lives in Northeast Ohio with his wife, Eileen, and two cats, Scout and Binx. For recreation, he enjoys hiking, cycling, reading, and supporting Chelsea (soccer) and the St. Louis Cardinals. His Twitter name is CardsFaninOhio.

Michelle Van Noy

Michelle Van Noy is an Associate Research Professor in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department and the Director of the Education and Employment Research Center at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is also on the faculty of the Higher Education Ph.D. program at Rutgers. Previously, she has conducted research at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers; the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University; and Mathematica Policy Research.

She has 25 years of research experience on the connection between education and work. Her research has included studies of technician education, community college noncredit education, student decision making about majors and careers, quality in non-degree credentials, higher education labor market alignment, and effective practices in workforce education.

She recently published an edited volume for New Directions for Community Colleges “Lessons Learned from TAACCCT” documenting findings from DOL’s $2 billion investment in community colleges through the TAACCCT grant program. She has published articles in the Community College Review and Economics of Education Review. She publishes widely for practitioner audiences with over 50 papers and reports on workforce and education related topics.

She holds a Ph.D. in sociology and education from Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a M.S. in public policy from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, and a B.A. in psychology and Spanish from Douglass College, Rutgers.

She lives in central New Jersey with her two sons, Evan and Andre, and her cat, Momo. She enjoys running, reading, cooking, and watching her sons play in local youth soccer.

Community College Daily - Clarifying the terrain of credentials

Community College Voice Podcast - Talking About Credit vs. Non-Credit Issues 

Community College Daily - Q&A: A Closer Look at Credentials

Webinar - Credential Seekers, Proliferating Programs, Frustrated Employers: How to Solve the Disconnect