In a recent article titled “College Ed Must Adapt or Die”, Jason Wingard, the President of Temple University in Pennsylvania stated simply, “Consider this my burning platform memo for higher ed.” What was he referring to? There is a crisis happening in higher education right now, and if it were any other type of business, there would be widespread panic.

We're diverting from our Stakeholders in the Modern Credential Marketplace series in this blog post to talk for a moment about Dark Data. What is Dark Data? You probably generated Dark Data at some point today, not because you were travelling the Silk Road or looking for a new identity - but more for an activity like checking your bank balance, looking at your medical records, or digitally signing a document.

There is an entire ecosystem that revolves around skills, and that ecosystem is changing. It started with education, and the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which, while it did not have the impact many thought it would, spawned an era of self-paced alternative education that created a boom in online courses.

Over the past year, we’ve focussed our Lens on Learners: the types of learners, how they learn, and what they want from their education. With our Lens on Educators, we’ve explored what it will take for the education system to effectively bridge the gap between learners and employers.

Centralised methods of education have been the hub of learning historically for a long time. However, at what we now consider the K-12 level, education was often decentralised. Learning occurred at home, or with a small local community of leaders with different specialties, in one-room schoolhouses and more.

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger

We focus our Lens on Educators a bit wider than usual today, as we digress into the realm of possibility. We take a blue-sky approach to consider what the future world of learning might look like if we borrowed a verification system the banking industry has been using since the days of the stage coach - and end up in a Web 3.0 hyper-connected Meta University. Here’s how it started...

As we focus our Lens on Educators in the latest arc of our Stakeholders in the Modern Credential Marketplace series, the real story is the interaction between educators and learners. Because it is the learners who will take the skills and knowledge transferred to them through education out into the world, where they will need to do something with them.

Continuing our Stakeholders in the Modern Credential Marketplace series, we turn our Lens on Educators, starting with a look at how educators can impact the employability outcomes of learners and programs around them now. The reason is simple. Change must start somewhere, and as when setting any goal, we need to aim for that which is a stretch for us, but still achievable.

So far in our Lens on Learners series, we have looked at lifelong learners, those who are unemployed and underemployed, and those still in grades K-12 (or their country equivalent of elementary and high school). However, we haven't as yet addressed one group, one that we still need to talk about - those learners who are recent college graduates. These learners currently face the question “What now?” Let's dive in and see...

Continuing our Lens on Learners series, we come to one of the most challenging and perhaps most important topics of all, yet one of the most difficult to navigate. We talk about the skills gap, the need for soft skills and ways to quantify, measure, and document them when it comes to universities, trade schools, and even adult learning, but what about starting even earlier?