by TODD FINKELMEYER, The Capital Times
These massive online open classrooms — known as MOOCs — enable thousands of people at once to take a course from a professor at one of these highly regarded universities, but students who complete the classes don’t earn university credit toward a degree. Instead they receive a certificate of completion, sometimes referred to as a badge. For now, a diploma remains the common currency that allows college grads to compete for jobs. But if credits were to someday be awarded for these courses — or if significant numbers of employers were to start accepting these badges as a means into the workforce — higher education could be quickly and significantly altered. “If employers see value in badges, then this has the potential to break open the liberal education degree model,” says Brower. “If a software company values a mobile apps badge, why get a computer science degree? For some fields, this has the potential to break apart what the four-year degree is all about.”
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