In advanced circles, microcirculation landscapes are often referred to as the “wild west”.
The field is packed with tens of thousands of program providers, both in academia, online and external to personal. Short-term plans vary widely, from certificates to badges to bootcamps, spanning weeks to months to more than a year. While some plans offer high returns, others have little or no sufficient tracking results.
Now, two accredited agencies are walking into that vague terrain, hoping to bring some orders and branches into a new market. The New England Higher Education Commission and the Higher Education Commission, which has been studying short-term programs for eight years, are evaluating whether the providers of these programs meet their standards.
Last spring, Neche voted to begin accrediting non-credit program providers, including traditional four- and two-year senior emergency agencies and external organizations that offer them. For colleges and universities, Neche’s recognition will be a quality marker beyond its existing certifications. The move comes as part of a pilot project funded by the Lumina Foundation after the Governor spent two years developing a quality framework for microfinance and testing it in his class of six providers. Now, Neche plans to launch its new recognition process for non-credit providers in the upcoming spring.
The purpose is to start identification with at least 30 applicants. But as non-credit providers compete for student and employer partnerships in a competitive market, Neche officials want to see greater demand and try to strengthen the pipeline from non-scholar programs to work and degrees.
Neche vice president Laura Gambino said the approval seal will also send out worthwhile plans to students.
“There is little quality assurance in that field,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about ensuring students have access to high-quality learning opportunities.” Millions of students flock to these courses.
This fall, the Higher Education Commission is providing its own recognition to micro-record providers, especially those in higher education. The endorseer has been working since 2017 to consider its role in the evolving high landscape. With funding from Lumina and ECMC, it started a think tank on the topic to consult experts and launched its Certificate Lab two years later, a hub to help institutions and students rapidly expand the rapid expansion of short-term certificates.
HLC conducted a pilot project this year starting with four micro-reset providers of external advanced EDs to create and try out possible recognition systems. Now, the recognition process will be launched by January. (HLC and NECHE are accrediting program providers rather than evaluating individual programs.) HLC’s credentials labs are also selecting higher education institutions to participate in its innovation center, a series of webinars for universities and universities interested in developing their microcurrency products or appearing in the field for the first time.
“We’re very knee-beating,” said Barbara Gellman-Danley, chairman of the Higher Education Commission.
A 2023 survey of HLC member institutions found that 91% expect to grow alternative certificate products in their institutions, while 86% hope to help resolve the quality of external providers to explore potential partnerships.
With traditional advanced emergency agencies facing a range of challenges, from falling traditional student enrollment to loss of funding, Gellman-Danley sees them exploring partnerships with external providers to expand their products, thus becoming a “competitive” way.
“They are looking for some kind of solution, and we want to make sure they don’t catch temporary solutions and are ready,” she said. Meanwhile, microfinance providers who are also eager for these partnerships are looking for “reputation.”
“Basic” steps
Certification experts say it’s time to solicit substitute certificates as acknowledgement, both keeping up with students’ transfer preferences and defending them from bad actors.
Nasser H. Paydar, Chairman of the Accreditation Committee for Higher Education, emailed Internal Advanced ED. “Organizations accredited by CHEA and the U.S. Department of Education have demonstrated their ability to review providers and programs. Reviews of these programs should begin as soon as possible to verify their quality and thus protect students.”
Paul Gaston III, an honorary trustee at Kent State University, said the quality assurance of WeChat accounts “really needed to be completed”, and he believed the author was obviously a corpse.
“Accreditors have 100 years or more experience in evaluating procedures,” he said. “The challenge is to adapt these procedures to certificates that are not traditional.”
Assess the new landscape
Neche and HLC officials say they have attracted decades of expertise as evaluators to reimagine a world of shorter, faster certificates.
For example, Neche’s premium framework for non-credit program providers includes “agility” as a marker, as well as more traditional benchmarks such as qualified faculty and student support.
“Non-credit providers must be able to meet employers’ needs, national labor needs,” Gambino said. Unlike degree programs, the program “moves more slowly” in terms of change. As a former faculty member and chair of the Curriculum Committee, “’Agility’ is never a sentence I use to describe our process.”
That’s why Neche plans to recognize non-credit program providers within a five-year cycle and has annual data reporting requirements instead of the 10-year certification cycle it is used for degree-granting institutions. Reviews from peer evaluators will also be available online and in a mixed form to accommodate online providers.
Besides agility, measuring ROI (such as employment and job search) is especially important for short-term programs, Gambino said, because so many students come to participate in them. Neche and HLC also plan to evaluate providers whether their non-credit products can be used as an advocacy program for credit programs if students choose to continue their education.
Gellman-Danley said adapting the skills and processes of the accreditors to the WeChat account landscape also presents an additional challenge that some providers outside of academia do not collect data from traditionally higher education institutions. For example, she found that some showed high job opportunities, but had few indicators to show evidence of students’ learning.
She hopes that HLC’s accreditation process encourages alternative certificate providers to retain better data, but ultimately, unlike HLC accreditation at universities and universities, it does not require accreditation to obtain financial aid and can be ordered to shape.
“These companies don’t have the financial data we might want to see to ensure their sustainability,” she said. “None of them have results, even if it’s really good.” [providers]. They are newbies. This is a new industry…we are surprised by the complexity of getting into this. ”
Future Models
Gaston believes that Neche and HLC can be used as “bells” to model how other endorses venture into the microloop landscape.
By evaluating new providers, he said, acknowledgeers are still claiming their ongoing value and relevance as more Americans question traditional higher education and certification. He noted recent challenges to existing certification systems, especially the efforts of six state university systems to launch their own certification bodies.
Gaston said students would be “offensive” if they ignore the thriving non-nuclear program they embraced. However, certified people “take these increasingly popular opportunities seriously must take more positive emphasis for the certification process and higher education in general.”
Neche President Larry Schall also noted that as the workforce Pell became a reality and federal funds began to flow to low-income students who qualify for short-term programs, it is time to have the tools to evaluate the providers of these programs. States will be responsible for certain quality checks for these plans, so he can foresee that Neche may work with the states to help the process, depending on the final details of the Workforce Pell program.
Just as HLC and Neche and other participants may work with WeChat providers, there will be some competition. But the approver is not very worried.
Gellman-Danley said that with thousands of alternative certificate providers, it’s a “very big market” with plenty of room. She said she was particularly proud of the process of HLC development, but “we appreciate colleagues who are researching or doing so.”
Schall agrees to have multiple endorsements in the wide range of microcurrency Wild West.
“We don’t mind competition,” Schell said. “The number of universities is actually decreasing. The number of non-credit providers is growing. So the supply will be huge.”
