How to understand the credentialing industry
By Chris Berg and Jason Potts
Let’s take a birds’ eye view of the Australian economy. What do we produce? In order: iron ore, coal, and credentials.
Tertiary education is Australia’s third-largest export industry. And Australia is the third-largest education exporter in the world, behind the US and UK.
The world’s skilled labour markets are dependent upon proof of identity, experience and skills, including education qualifications, trade certification and occupational licensing. The smooth operation of these markets relies on the technical infrastructure that supports those credentials: a continually updated, reliable, trusted and efficient public registry of qualifications and skills.
We call this intersection of the education sector and access points into global labour markets the credentialing industry.
We’re university academics, but the credentialing industry encompasses much more than universities. In fact, it’s about more than just education. A surprisingly large fraction of the economy supplies and deliver credential services.
- High school education and equivalencies (completion certification)
- University credentials (course credits, graduate certificates, diplomas, bachelors degrees, higher degrees)
- Vocational education credentials and trade certifications (hairdressing, electrician, builder, etc.)
- Industry and professional association based qualifications (e.g. accounting [CPA, ACA], law [the Bar], finance [FINSIA], etc.)
- Proficiency qualifications (languages, driving, etc.)
- Occupational licenses (surgeons, pilots, dentists, teaching, etc.)
Credentials prove skills and qualities, and trusted claims of skills and capabilities are an input into contracts and jobs. They are an institutional token that carries trusted information that facilitates transactions in almost every labour market, many service markets, and all professional markets in an economy.
As the economy becomes more complex, the workforce will need to be more highly skilled and globally oriented. This means that credentials will be a more important output (from the credentialing industry) and input (into labour markets).
Credentials are a key institution in a modern economy. The more complex and developed the economy, the more it depends on efficient and effective credential infrastructure and production.
These certifications benefit consumers, facilitating trust in professional and trade services, and employers, facilitating trusted information about skills and capabilities. The more complex the economy, the more important and valuable are credentials.
But what exactly is a credential? Credentials are a type of institutional technology that is produced by the education sector, by professional and trade associations, and by government, often jointly.
So from a public policy perspective, it can be hard to tell where the rules that govern the credential come from — are they from government regulation, or the private imposition of standards by a professional association. Richard Wagner calls these sorts of intermingling public/private rules entangled political economy.
From a technology perspective, a credential is a bundle of:
- Identity (who does it attach to)
- Registry (what is the content of claims made)
- Assessment and evaluation (how have they been verified, and by whom)
- Storage, maintenance and recall (an effective transactional database)
A credential has institutional and technical properties:
- Trust and transparency
- Security and auditability
- Transactional value in use
A credential is essentially an entry in a ledger. But centralized credential technology has limitations in all of the above dimensions. Blockchain technology presents an opportunity to revolutionise the credential sector by offering a more effective, scalable and secure platform for the production and use of credentials.
For Australia, innovation in blockchain credentials, will benefit a major export industry, increasing administrative efficiency and facilitating adoption of digital technology in tertiary education, as well as improve the functioning of labour markets in Australia and around the world, increasing the quality of job matching and lowering the cost of employment. We expect blockchain adoption in the credentialing industry is expected to drive economic growth, exports, and jobs.
Chris Berg and Jason Potts are with the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub.