"Badges" instead of bachelors

While I’m in the midst of visiting with academic groups about possible changes in higher education, I’ll keep sending around the occasional article that seems to touch on these subjects. The other day it was an article about Straighterline. Today’s interesting thought piece comes from the government’s recent endorsement of an alternative credentialing system called “badges.” The question is, what might happen to higher education if businesses look less and less to a bachelor’s degree as the “signal” of quality, and universities like ours thereby lose our corner on the “credentialing” market?

http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/09/22/think-different-not-in-higher-ed/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en