Micro credentials again
The trends toward “jobification” of education, ie. seeing higher education as primarily a pathway to employment, is moving into Asia. This article on Korean education may be misleading if it is seen only as Korean issue.
The article addresses the issues of intense investments in cramming youth with test success to get into an elite university…but recognizes that at the end of that pipeline may not be a life of wealth and happiness.
What megatrends are part of this? Certainly the movement, still oozing into the community colleges, is micro-credential education — pursuing focused and skill-oriented courses rather than “terminal” degrees. It is also part of a recognition that we are re-purposing the workforce, often among the older workers.
Yet, in spite of the affordability and practicality of these trends, there still is that lingering ideal of the past, of the well educated, literate, globally engaged citizen. Recently a state democratic party initiative to educate citizens about how government worked and what was missing in society, flirted with the notion of supporting and promoting the arts as a valued end in itself. However, the economic commodification of education prevailed, and the goal was changed from promoting the arts for its own sake, to promoting socio-economic equity through the arts.
When higher education is all about commodification of one’s marketable skills, perhaps it will flounder when the economy eliminates those jobs we aimed for.
