Khem Singh is a 39-year-old product integration and customer experience specialist for VirnetX Holding Corp., an internet security firm in Richmond, Virginia.

He’s also a serial micro credentials advocate.

“The world of work has changed a lot in just the past five years, and the changes continue to accelerate” said Singh, who earned his undergraduate degree in 2004 from the University of Delhi in his native India before emigrating to the United States. “The days when you could rely on a degree alone are over. Higher levels of specialization are needed.”

Brooke Elliott agrees. She’s an associate dean and EY Professor in the Gies College of Business of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and has been leading the College’s effort to design and develop discrete paths of stackable micro credentials for lifelong learning.

“The way we work is being disrupted in every single industry,” said Elliott, who oversees the strategy for Gies’ online programs. “Today, there are new demands on continuous learning, and a constant need to upskill to ensure that you’re satisfied from a career perspective and that you have the skills necessary to be able to succeed in the jobs that are coming.”

In its 2019 report The Future of Work, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that 14 percent of jobs worldwide are at a high risk of automation, creating “a churning of jobs” – with new, different jobs replacing those that are destroyed – and this will result in structural change and new skills needs.

“Adult learning systems will need to be strengthened and adapted to provide all workers...with adequate opportunities for retraining through their careers,” the report concluded.

Building on the success of its pathbreaking fully online graduate programs – master’s degrees in Business Administration, Accounting, and Management – Gies has now developed an ecosystem of credit and noncredit learning opportunities. These new offerings provide a flexible array of credentials ranging from online certificates and skill badges to graduate certificates and iDegrees.

This past summer, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees and Illinois Board of Higher Education approved the launch of Gies’ first credit-bearing graduate certificate credentials based on completing three graduate courses in specific areas of study. It’s a new University of Illinois credential, allowing individuals to build specific competencies and skills to advance their capabilities and their careers, Elliott said.

It also opens the doors to eligibility to state and federal financial aid programs, as well as company-sponsored tuition reimbursement programs, she added.

PATHFINDING

When Singh began searching for opportunities to expand his knowledge and skills, he signed up for classes on Coursera, the world’s leading massive open online course provider. He tried a few online courses in artificial intelligence and machine learning, but found the online experience lacking. “Many of the classes did not have an engaged online format, where I could interact with the instructor and other students,” he recalled.

Eventually, he found classes offered by Gies. “It was a test run for me,” Singh said. “The quality of the students and the content was unlike any I’d seen before. It felt like a real class – not an online experience.”

Singh built a portfolio of Gies graduate credits that transferred into the iMBA program – the College’s fully online MBA – when he enrolled in 2017. He completed his degree in 2019, and continues to pursue learning opportunities that will provide him with specialized credentials for his career, he said.

“If the only tool I have is a hammer, then all I see are nails,” Singh said. “I will make time for quality education. I like the portability and the accessibility, but I also want to really engage with the education. That separates Illinois from other institutions.”

EXPANDING MISSION AND ACCESS

“We’re a land-grant institution,” Elliott said, “and our mission and charter demand that we provide access to education for all who desire it and are committed to pursuing it. And that comes down to two ideas – affordability and responsiveness to the needs of today’s learners.”

She points out that the micro credential offerings allow Gies to “expand on our mission beyond the typical 18- to 22-year-old or the full-time graduate student who steps away from career for a few years by offering more concentrated learning for specific skills and expertise that you can pursue your entire life.”

The concept of micro credentials is gaining ground slowly in higher education. Harvard Business School, for example, offers discrete certificates online, but does not extend credit to its MBA degree program to those who complete a course of study.

“You invested, let’s say, three to six months in learning a collection of skills,” Elliott said. “You’re already part of the way there, and you have developed confidence in your capacity and ability. So from a time perspective alone, we want our students to know their time wasn’t wasted or they might have to repeat something that’s already been learned.”

Elliott said that one of Gies’ primary competitors in the space is private industry, notably in the tech sector where Google, Apple, IBM and others offer credentialing for specific skills – usually technically focused and not credit-bearing.

“In a way, private industry is ahead of higher education – and perhaps responding to a market opportunity that higher ed has been slow to realize,” she said. “But universities have a vast store of educational content created and delivered by world-renowned experts. That content and talent is a market advantage that can be leveraged, and in creative ways."

Jeff Brown, dean and the Josef and Margot Lakonishok Professor of Business at Gies agrees.

“For some 800 years the degree been the most important credential to signal your mastery of a body of knowledge,” he said. “It was one of the near-certain ways to ensure that you had a great career trajectory. But that model – that has degrees as the only product - is being disrupted. Employers and employees recognize that this idea of splitting education and work into discrete, sequential activities makes much less sense in a world where the pace of change is accelerating.” 

Brown noted that people increasingly need to move back-and-forth multiple times between formal education and on-the-job learning, and often do them simultaneously.

“Universities have been very slow to respond,” he said. “We’re changing that.”