Credential Engine Releases Equity Advisory Council’s Recommendations On Equity In Credential Data
Credential Engine, a non-profit on a mission to map the credential landscape with consistent information and fuel the creation of resources that empower individuals to find the best pathways, released it’s Equity Advisory Council’s recommendations on equity in credential data, of which HCM Strategists worked in partnership.
Excerpted from Paul Fain’s Open Campus newsletter, The Job:
June 15, 2023
An intentional focus on the publishing of transparent, linked, open data about credentials is needed to drive systemic change in postsecondary education and training.
That premise underlies newly released recommendations from a coalition of experts convened by Credential Engine, a nonprofit group that’s seeking to map the credential landscape.
The recommendations are organized into three tiers, beginning with data points the coalition says all providers should be able to analyze and publish now (costs, transfer, and earnings), moving into information they should be working on (stackability and support services), and then into a third level where the field is headed (career outcomes and job placement).
“You have to be constantly using data to see, ‘Are we having the intended consequences?’” says Cristen Moore, [former] associate principal and director of equity and change management at HCM Strategists, who contributed to the project. “There has to be a clear message to policymakers on both the economic and the moral imperative.”
Likewise, the report says the power of data rests in analysis that is disaggregated by race and ethnicity, income, gender, and other key characteristics.
“Don’t we want to make sure that students know what they need to know to have successful outcomes?” says Scott Cheney, Credential Engine’s CEO. “That’s pretty noncontroversial.”
HCM Strategists congratulates Credential Engine on this release and is grateful to our former colleagues, Lara Courturier and Cristen Moore, for their leadership in this work.
