Higher education is at a critical cultural moment, with growing skepticism around the value of a college degree. How can postsecondary remain relevant and valuable? In this episode, we speak with Dr. Kenyatta Lovett, Principal at ESG. He shares a roadmap for delivering value in postsecondary education. We highlight ESG’s excellent report, “The Great Value Shift”, which illuminates how states, systems and institutions can strategically plan for meaningful change and increased impact.
To read the ESG’s report on The Great Value Shift, visit this link – https://edstrategy.org/resource/the-great-value-shift/
Matt Sterenberg (00:01.589)
All right, Dr. Kenyatta Love it, welcome to the podcast.
Kenyatta Lovett (00:06.05)
Thank you, Matt. I’m glad to be here.
Matt Sterenberg (00:09.901)
So I was looking on LinkedIn and saw Melanie Booth post about this great value shift. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Let me click on this and read up on the report, some research that all of you have done. And it’s the great value shift, a roadmap for delivering value in post-secondary education. And I found it really fascinating. Tell me a little bit more about
how this came to be in some of your work at ESG.
Kenyatta Lovett (00:43.182)
Sure. And again, thank you for having me. This all was part of a discussion that’s been evolving over the past, I’d say, 18 or 24 months, really beginning with the start of our work in this whole value movement with Colorado and supporting their work of building a framework. And even prior to that, actually, the ESG, we’ve supported a few states in developing their attainment goals.
take a lot of pride in being supportive of the nation’s attainment agenda that started back in the early 2000s with Lumina planning a flag around a 60 % goal. Several states then embarked on their own vision. I worked in Tennessee at the time with the drive to 55, trying to get to 55 % attainment by 2025. And we recognized that there was an evolution of the attainment agenda.
that went just not only about credentials and just earning degrees, but really how does that matter in the larger ecosystem of the American fabric? And it was a question I actually received when Tennessee embarked on their goal of a few employers asking me the question of, we just producing a bunch of degrees to say that, yay, 60 % or 55 % are these going to be the right degrees that matter?
you know, not only to employers, but most importantly to students and households. And so it was a really good question that I didn’t have a full answer for, just hopeful that we would get to that outcome. And I think we’ve recognized over time that there’s more that needs to be done in addition to just having a degree that actually will lead to the ultimate goal of higher education, which is around economic mobility. So about two years ago, we embarked on that with support for one state.
Then we recognize that more states were having these conversations. There was a movement building up. Obviously there was evidence, and you’ll see in our report, that from Georgetown and their work in 2010 leading all the way up into today with Lumina refreshing their goal and even the Carnegie classification recently being released that actually leans into value. We knew that this was going to be the new national direction that we wanted to help to be, provide some light, shed some light to the field around.
Kenyatta Lovett (03:07.222)
what’s possible, whether you are a state agency, you are a higher education system, or you’re an institution, you know, what’s the role in making sure that we can make academic mobility more promising for students across the nation?
Matt Sterenberg (03:21.427)
I really like how you framed that because essentially what you’re saying is we could reach our goals, but not realize the success that we actually thought the goals would give us. Right? Like we were credentialing all these people, we hit our goal. What’s the problem? It’s like, well, actually let’s dig down a layer deeper. Like, what is this leading to? Like the credentials of value is becoming more more prevalent because I think there’s people that are just questioning the value of
of credential or degree. And I’m going to read from the paper, which we’ll put a description, a link to this in the description of the episode. But here’s a quote from your paper. Value in post-secondary can no longer be assumed. It must be proved and actively pursued. Why do you think that is? Like, that’s a big question. Why? Because when Lumina came out with this, everyone was like, college, college, college, college. And there’s a shift now.
where we need to actually prove this. Why has this shift occurred in post-secondary education?
Kenyatta Lovett (04:27.136)
Yeah, think for the longest, when you looked at it agree, it was the default proxy for skills in the marketplace for high demand, high wage jobs, jobs that actually led to considerable amount of mobility. That was just the standardized proxy. I think because data has become much more robust,
people out there, especially our young students, are a lot more savvy about their options and opportunities that are out there. And you combine that with this looming debt that’s almost $2 trillion worth of debt from students who attempted, maybe they completed, but the reality that college costed a considerable amount to engage with. All these factors converge where it’s not a foregone conclusion.
that if I earn a degree, it’s the pathway to the American dream. It’s not a foregone conclusion that if I go to this institution and earn that degree, that the return on investment will be stronger than another option. These things that we just dangerously assumed were part of the American fabric are not necessarily always true. And I think what’s been really good is whether it’s the legislature, definitely for students and even for employers,
the challenge of the degree being that proxy has required to give some more details and nuance around it of being able to demonstrate and explain that, not only to the people outside of the walls of higher education, but to higher education itself. Do we really truly know exactly what we’re providing out there in the marketplace and what that looks like beyond a student walking across the commencement stage?
Matt Sterenberg (06:19.317)
Yeah, I think that’s, and when you think about the, the pursuit of the goal to get more students to college is great, but it also creates its own challenge, right? Like we’re opening up access to all these other people, like the supply of people changes. so underemployment becomes a real thing as you have more people with a bachelor’s degree, for instance. So it’s sort of like, you know,
Kenyatta Lovett (06:43.747)
Right.
Matt Sterenberg (06:44.809)
in some ways problems of progress, but also important questions we need to address because college is interesting. you know, we, made this huge push. More people are going in a sense. It feels like we have more people that feel like they have access to college, but the costs haven’t gone down, which doesn’t seem to be like from an economics point of view. like we have more people accessing, but the costs haven’t gone down. we just have more questions.
Kenyatta Lovett (07:06.658)
That’s right.
Matt Sterenberg (07:12.001)
that need to ask, but you have a really good framing in the paper of three shifts that you recommend for whether it’s post-secondary institutions or systems or state leaders. And I want to just highlight those quickly and then we’ll go through them. You want people to coalesce stakeholders around a clear goal, commit to meaningful measures. And that one is my favorite one. And then align actions to drive post-secondary value.
What does it mean to coalesce stakeholders around a clear goal? Because it obviously seems simple. like, yeah, we should bring people together, establish a clear goal. Let’s dig into it a little bit. How do states, systems, and leaders actually make this a reality?
Kenyatta Lovett (07:52.724)
Yes, and I think we’ve had a few of our clients have to back up as they are thinking about creating this new vision for their system or their state. And they’re in recognition that typically the attainment conversation happened pretty much in a vacuum. Some employers were getting engaged with this. It had some connection, obviously, to the legislature.
but maybe or maybe not workforce development or economic development. When you start to expand this into attainment and value, it’s not just the degrees, but what these degrees actually produce for the larger ecosystem. You have no choice but to bring in different actors, players, stakeholders, to figure out what’s the right conversation we need to have in our state or in our system. And so coalescing around that is not an easy feat.
because now you have to think about your workforce agency lead or your local workforce sports. You have to think about employers or regions or sectors, or you have to think about different types of student populations that see higher education through different lenses and coming together to say what matters the most for higher education as a system and as products is a conversation that probably most people wouldn’t anticipate would be.
a very robust and comprehensive conversation around the different nuances that get at poverty, economic mobility, you name it, where the economy is going next, what are we going to do about the cost of college, what are the barriers that are out there for students or for completion, what are the things that employers are grappling with the most that degrees don’t actually provide, and coming and having those robust discussions with leaders and stakeholders, I think.
is definitely we see as the most important first step, but one that’s very different than what’s happened in the past.
Matt Sterenberg (09:53.483)
Yeah. Do you have different communities, right? You have different entities, different organizations. have a regional comprehensive four-year. Like what are your goals for your students? You have a community college, then you have like global brand, like University of Texas at Austin, right? Like each one of those should have a different, who are we serving? What are our goals for these students or for our learners? And I think so often we just kind of go, all right, graduation.
Kenyatta Lovett (10:11.021)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (10:23.181)
And it’s like, to what end? So what jobs are we actually leading to? And you highlight the Texas example where they, years ago, shifted their model to kind of a dynamic outcomes-based model where they are incentivizing completion, degree completion, credential completion, but then also its credentials of value.
Kenyatta Lovett (10:25.784)
to what end.
Matt Sterenberg (10:46.945)
And that’s kind of a theme that keeps coming up in your report is the states that are thinking about credentials of value. You mentioned Hawaii as well in the paper, but like the feedback loop to learners to me is such a critical piece where do I know what this credential will get me? What does this lead to? What is the pathway so that I can actually make an informed choice as a learner, which thinking about my experience many, many years ago, right?
Kenyatta Lovett (11:03.768)
Right.
Matt Sterenberg (11:16.427)
I had no idea what jobs earned, what was going to lead to that employment opportunity. Really had no concept of it. And I think because higher ed has hasn’t had to answer the value conversation for many, many years, now we’re getting to this point. And I think it actually can lead to a better experience for learners because they’re going to have more transparency of choice and understand the trade-offs that they’re making when they make an investment in education.
Kenyatta Lovett (11:44.246)
Yeah, I mean, you think about the college search process in the past was more related to the brand of the institution. And the brand then could demand different types of value out there, whether it’s the cost of tuition that people would say, yeah, that’s worth it because of the brand. Sometimes you could get to a program that you know was the nation’s best program.
But really it wasn’t nuanced beyond that. You knew about maybe strong programs, but not the ones that were weaker, right? This new landscape pulls that totally apart and allows for a much deeper conversation, not only about the institution or its programs, but in comparison to other programs and other institutions collectively, and even a different conversation around skills, right? you know, I can use the example of me going to college, I wanted to design cars.
had no clue of what that looked like. I just knew it was cool. I wrote the editors of Car and Driver and Road and Track magazine back in the day. And they surprisingly wrote me back and gave me a list of the institutions and what that major was, right? And I kind of blindly went through this pathway, not realizing that, wait a minute, there are no jobs in Tennessee where I can actually be a car designer. I never thought about that part of it, but I wanted to live in Tennessee.
And you know, now you have much more robust systems for students and households to really think about what people really want to do, what are the skills that are necessary, and what are the pathways of getting there. I think you bring up a really, really good point of with this robust information, what we recognize that’s a missing piece also in this movement is making sure that it’s digestible for families and households to make those informed decisions.
But the great thing is now the data that I had, which was basically, you know, a couple of magazines that inspired me of a career that I wanted to go into and a letter and a list of colleges and to get catalogs back through the mail to now, you know, you can sit down as an advisor with a student, really get at the heart of what they want to do and give them a plethora of options that may be four year institutions. It may be a community college. It may even be a technical college that can also outline what happens at the end of the road for you when you
Kenyatta Lovett (14:03.69)
complete that degree or credential, what wages can you expect? For me, it was a guessing game. And once I got out of college, reality set in of exactly what I signed up for, not necessarily so for students today. And I think that’s a good thing for higher education overall.
Matt Sterenberg (14:22.229)
You brought up the brand piece, which I think is so interesting. You’re essentially making the point in your second shift, which is commit to more meaningful measures, which I think is awesome. Because the brand piece, I think of when I worked in admissions 15 years ago, and it was like, we want to be on the US News and World Report or the Princeton Review. And it’s all these things that are their rankings, their brand.
Kenyatta Lovett (14:50.445)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (14:50.635)
very little understanding of what they mean, what contributes to it, right? You’re put on a list. And I think that’s kind of the problem, right? Is we’re pursuing brand, we’re pursuing recognition without any clear idea of what the outcomes are. And you even highlight this, you have basically four different things to measure. Post-secondary attainment, labor market outcomes, ROI,
would it cost you to basically get that outcome and wealth accumulation. And I think that’s the framing that states and institutions would benefit from because then it becomes like brand is this ethereal thing. what is brand? It’s kind of an affinity thing. It’s recognizable. Like a lot of people, a lot of students are going to apply to colleges because they like the SEC or they’re recognized. I like watching.
Kenyatta Lovett (15:39.191)
Right.
Matt Sterenberg (15:49.995)
Longhorns football games, you know, like there’s not always a deeper connection. And I think the pursuit of these measures will allow States to know what to invest in and be able to track where success comes from.
Kenyatta Lovett (16:04.782)
That’s right. That’s right. And actually demonstrate something back to their residents of why this investment at the state level or this investment at the national level is so important for the fabric of our nation. you’ll see definitely, I think you’ve read through it, building these measures in different ways is giving a different conversation to students. Back to your point.
of just understanding the brand. liked one aspect of that institution, never thought about the entirety of what it provides to us until we actually engage with it by enrolling or graduating. What you’ll see in this continuum that we provided is, you know, this is a discussion that can be had around the totality of what higher education brings to families and households that can be highly transformative and not just rhetoric of saying, you know, we’re changing households and families and people’s income and economic mobility.
we’ll prove that on paper and prove that through data. And I think what’s really promising is we do have data systems that can demonstrate in very meaningful ways what this provides. And so these four different points that you mentioned, where we see and what we’ve learned, at least from our analysis, are the things that I think that matter the most. And we hope that states and higher education systems will be very serious about incorporating those and putting those in a transparent way to families and households.
Matt Sterenberg (17:27.629)
Where have you seen states and systems work together to make meaningful change based on having good data? Because if you’re just an institution out there looking at these going, okay, we agree on what we should measure here, outcomes, ROI, wealth accumulation, attainment, great. Those are all fantastic things we’ve been trying to do. at a state level, you want to understand this. Systems have to cooperate.
Where have you seen states and systems work together to actually measure these things to make progress?
Kenyatta Lovett (18:05.868)
Yeah, you mentioned a really good example of Texas and what they’ve been able to pull off. you can, this was House Bill 8 that you’re referring to. House Bill 8 essentially was the revised community college funding mechanism that hadn’t been revisited for 50 years. But you can go back a few years prior to that and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board established
a new vision of how they wanted to set the tone for the state. used to be called 60 by 30 Texas. They changed that to building a talent strong Texas. In that, you’ll see a lot of different components that House Bill 8 is really sort of an offshoot of that. But again, they’re coming together to say, one, we want to make sure that we reduce, we want to improve the affordability for students. And if you’re looking at building a talent strong Texas,
there’s a vision and goal of making sure that students don’t walk out with debt. know, two, they recognize that, you know, this needs to be something that’s more for not just for high school students, but also for adults and other types of learners. And so they sort of created that vision as well. The other one was just really around credentials of value is just making sure that it’s tied more directly to workforce outcomes that can actually improve ROI. You put all that together and then you have this really amazing
committee that they formed to explore community college funding. And they have basically the framework or the foundation to go ahead and start to think about what’s next for the Texas community college system. And they create basically House Bill 8, which then the major piece of that is really the credentials of value movement, which is where most states have yet to go, which is we’re going to fund institutions based on
the degrees not just about completion, but these degrees and what they mean for students beyond completion to make sure that they get into jobs and earn living wages and that the ROI is actually to their favor and not something in the inverse. And so I say Texas is a prime example of taking that framework and actually putting it into full action where you can see it in funding and outcomes. even today, I just had a conversation with a Texas institution who’s thinking about
Kenyatta Lovett (20:25.516)
where their rankings were back to the rankings you mentioned of getting on a list, the rankings really deal with finances in terms of how are we faring out in our credentials of value and what does that mean for our bottom line and what about our competitors or our peers, right? Our other community colleges and why are they gaining so much on credentials of value? What can we do to improve? I think what you’re getting at is you’re saying to create a system like that where it’s a little bit more competitive and actually produces a
better larger ecosystem where everyone’s looking to see how can we better serve students in a way that matters because the state has set up a vision or a goal around things that they know are in the best interest of the state, which is ensuring that Texans have higher education that’s accessible, but also produces outcomes that are beneficial to their households and to their own personal economy.
Matt Sterenberg (21:18.721)
We’ve seen this firsthand at Parchment too. We work with California and the Texas Higher Ed Coordinating Board on course sharing initiatives. So the ability to take classes at other institutions outside of your home college. know, I may not have a class that’s available to me at my home college this semester, but I really need to take it to complete on time. I can take it at a nearby community college. And the reason we’re working with those states is because they move to a completion.
funding model, right? Or credential completion funding model. So I just think it’s cool that the state makes a decision and then you can see kind of the policy impacts of what they’re willing to invest in and they’re incentivizing collaboration and they’re basically like the systems actually working together because the incentives are in the right place, which I think is absolutely fantastic. Yeah.
Kenyatta Lovett (21:49.73)
Yes.
Kenyatta Lovett (22:11.49)
Yeah, you highlight in a good way in the document, you’ll see our three different shifts. Without all three, you’re missing a piece. And I think what you highlight the most is if you don’t coalesce around a goal first, creating those measures actually loses a lot of its impact and potential if you don’t first have everyone in agreement and marching in the same direction.
Matt Sterenberg (22:36.107)
And the credentials of value thing, it’s a trust builder. So if you’re in labor right now, you might look at certain credentials and say, there’s no value to us or we don’t trust it. When a state says, these are credentials of value, this is what labor says is important. And then you end up producing those individuals, those credentials. And they say, yes, we’re going to hire this person. value that. And then they begin to trust.
educational ecosystem again. And then they’re going to make further investments. And by nature of them trusting their credentials, like there’s more interaction, more cooperation, and there’s just more inherent value in all credentials at that point, because, we trust that institution is doing the right thing to prepare students for the next step in their educational professional journey. So I think that’s a really cool byproduct of this work.
is that you’re building trust between education and labor. And that’s basically what you highlight today is that we have to prove that there’s value here based on this gap.
Kenyatta Lovett (23:44.258)
Yes.
Yeah, yes. And we see a few states getting going in that direction. you know, I’ll note Louisiana is another one that I think is starting to move really quickly into that direction. And you mentioned the partnership with Labor and Workforce, their workforce agency for the Louisiana Board of Regents. The workforce agency has created, you know, certain star jobs in terms of the demand and the outcomes and the wages. And they have a
you know, partnered with that workforce agency to sort of create their own credentials of value. But it is this partnership that eventually you start to see everyone coming together and rowing in the same direction. And you’re right, you’re building a trust system that really is combating this challenge that we have right now where people are questioning, you know, is higher education worth it? And I think this is a very timely and immediate response to that of saying, not only is it worth it, we’re working to prove it even more and more through the
the collaborative work that we’re carrying out.
Matt Sterenberg (24:47.863)
So Dr. Lovett, put yourself in the position, you’re a state administrator, someone who’s working in higher ed at the state level. What challenges do you expect to run into? What hurdles? What things have you seen in your work with states that people need to be prepared for? Like what are the objections? Because higher ed is complex, the incentives, the collaboration, cooperation, then legislators, the political climate. Like what can you expect?
Kenyatta Lovett (25:08.547)
Yeah.
Matt Sterenberg (25:15.201)
What have you seen people do to overcome some of these challenges?
Kenyatta Lovett (25:18.574)
Sure. You’re talking about shift three, right, which is turning this into action. The first one that I think is the biggest barrier is going beyond creating the metrics. And what does that mean at the institution level? What types of transformation are going to happen there? Obviously, you’re talking about academic programs that now are under a different lens or a different level of scrutiny of.
Is this producing good ROI for students or is it not? And so you can see the enormous amount of pushback that’s out there, whether it’s faculty or the members of academic affairs or even institutions themselves are saying, great that you’ve got this framework. Can we just not go as far as to the implementation because you’re getting into our lane. What I’ve seen that’s been very promising is that people have been able to change the narrative
of this conversation. One to do a really important thing, which is to debunk a ton of myths that this new credentials of value movement is going to be to the detriment of liberal arts programs in education. And if you look at the data that we’ve seen from different parts of the state, you recognize that there are a lot of liberal arts programs that are under supply and high demand and high wage.
And so it’s not just the computer scientist or the engineer that we’re saying our credentials are valued, but it’s a much more robust mix of programs and courses. The question you have to ask is why is it there a high demand for history graduates in our region or English graduates? And what does that mean? And what can we do to other programs to make sure that they have good ROI or good outcomes? And so one is really debunking that myth.
Two, for institutions, is this is directly tied to an enrollment management conversation. We do know that for community colleges after the pandemic, those who came out because of the enrollment declines, those that came out really with better outcomes had a stronger tie to workforce and career related programs. But I think that’s not just only the point. It’s about students knowing for certain exactly what’s going to happen if they enroll in a college.
Kenyatta Lovett (27:35.626)
Knowing that certainty meant that that risk wasn’t as great of just not knowing what’s going to happen. And so tying it to enrollment management, I think you’re seeing a lot more institutions recognize that the value conversation is also intertwined with this new enrollment challenge that’s out there that they need to figure out. And then I’d say, know, beyond that, the whole conversation around value still brings into question value to whom?
And we recognize that, and you’ll see that in our document, that it’s not solely about economic value, although that is kind of the more top of mind right now. Conversation across the nation is around wage outcomes, but credentials produce other forms of value to individuals, to communities, to a state that are equally worthy of recognizing. There might be a situation, Matt, that
firefighters and teachers will never cross that wage threshold that says it’s a credential of value. Does that mean that people shouldn’t go into the teaching or firefighting professions? Absolutely not. That means the state has to find a way to saying these things are part of our economic or social necessity as a state and we create a value, we’re to create a value framework solely around that as well too. So it’s not just economic value that you’re going to earn that wage.
but we want a robust ecosystem of professions and skill sets in our community. And we want to recognize that. The other one that we see too is, you know, connected to this is a lens through mobility that people start at different places. And so how do you recognize the credentials of value that are actually ways that are stepping stones, entryways to other degrees and other credentials. And so you can look from the lens of mobility as well and say, yes, you know, the English major.
may not produce a degree where people can land jobs and earn wages, but they also position people really well for law school, right? Or this non-degree credential that someone has earned may have gotten them into the job market and they’re barely at a living wage outcome, but now they have the confidence that they can go to college. And because this college will actually honor that non-degree credential towards a degree pathway, they can quickly advance in their career and support employers in their needs for skills.
Kenyatta Lovett (29:53.822)
I think that’s the other big barrier issue out there is people will get locked into the thought that this is around the vocationalization of higher education, which I think in fact it’s not. It’s just providing a lens on higher education, creating a system and a standard that people are actually moving in a direction of understanding that students need to know and employers need to know and legislators also need to know and other stakeholders of what exactly is this contribution in higher education.
how do we get something out of it that’s just beyond the brand, I guess is the best way to put it.
Matt Sterenberg (30:29.933)
I’m so glad you highlighted what you did. The fact that liberal arts, think, feels like this is sometimes a threat, right? Like, well, we want to produce well-rounded students. It’s not just purely a transactional, you know, everyone’s concerned about, this education get me a job? And I think there’s some people that say, listen, it’s not our job to get you your immediate next job, or we can’t guarantee you this immediate next job. Our job is to kind of prepare you for life broadly.
and this pressure to get students this next job, the last mile problem. I think some people in education would push back on that. But this allows us to actually measure what the outcomes are. Because before, people would make jokes about if you’re a philosophy major, like, what are you going to do with that? And actually, you could say, well, based on what we’re measuring, you’re going to law school as you highlighted with an English major. We’re actually able to prove this liberal arts education has a ton of value for x, y, and z. And so I think
Kenyatta Lovett (30:59.042)
Yes.
Kenyatta Lovett (31:20.995)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (31:27.807)
instead of perceiving as a threat of saying, we’re going to make it completely transactional, 98 % of our graduates have this specific job, think about it like, no, based on what we’re measuring, you think your liberal arts education is beneficial. Now we can actually measure it and the data can prove it out. So I really like that framing of saying like philosophy majors actually in high demand for this reason, history majors.
Kenyatta Lovett (31:46.446)
That’s right.
Matt Sterenberg (31:55.681)
which is close to my heart. I was a history major. And then you also highlight in the paper, Hawaii’s work to your point about credentials and what they lead to in the stackability. Hawaii has done something where they have different categories for credentials, which I think is hugely necessary, especially as we have like the credential inflation here, but foundational, springboard, door opener and advanced. So people can see exactly what the journey is, what the pathway is.
Kenyatta Lovett (32:15.139)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (32:24.407)
get an understanding of how many credentials they need to get in order to get where they want to go. So I really, really like all the information in the paper. But Dr. Love it, is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you or anything that you want to highlight before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Kenyatta Lovett (32:43.586)
Well, I want to bring a question back to you, if that’s OK, Matt. And it’s a big, fan of parchment and the great work that’s happening out there that you all are leading. Where does the value conversation intersect with parchment and the ability to be part of this higher education superhighway and making sure students can navigate higher education in a much more efficient way? Just curious from your perspective of where it plays out for parchment.
Matt Sterenberg (32:47.692)
Yeah.
Matt Sterenberg (33:13.409)
Yeah. So you highlighted earlier, like the degree as a proxy for learning. think everyone is saying that that’s not enough because of the cost of higher ed, underemployment, all those things. so, well, what do we do now? And there’s kind of a group of people that say, well, we just need to credential all this stuff. And that kind of brings its own challenges. What we believe is it’s about how do we take what a credential means? So the skills and competencies.
Kenyatta Lovett (33:36.269)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (33:43.403)
within it. And we’ve got a long way to go as we develop this with institutions and with partners. But now that we’re part of the instructor team, we’re part of the instructor company. They’re the teaching and learning platform. Parchment’s the credentialing platform. So now that we have the classroom experience, we have the credentials, we can do a better job of explaining what these credentials are, what they mean, and the skills and competencies that a learner has. And then once you have all that information.
then you can more easily tie like what a student knows with the opportunities that are available. And then as you start to have a bigger call out of portfolio or a comprehensive learner record, you have a better way to describe everything that you know, rather than, you know, a transcript of, got a B plus in Latin American history, which what does that even mean? Like, what do I really know? You’ll have, because we’re connected to teaching and learning, you’re able to
Kenyatta Lovett (34:29.507)
Yes.
Matt Sterenberg (34:40.863)
more quickly describe what you know, people can see what you actually know. And then it becomes like a talent marketplace, right? You have a documentation on everything that you’ve learned across your entire educational journey. And then employers can come to you and it becomes an actual ecosystem and a network where I can connect what I know with the opportunities that are available. And so that’s kind of the vision is we just see it as.
Kenyatta Lovett (34:48.963)
Yeah.
Matt Sterenberg (35:07.735)
How do we describe more of what learners know and connect it to the opportunities that are available? So, so much work to do in this space, but that’s the idea.
Kenyatta Lovett (35:14.636)
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, yeah, employers want skills, they don’t want credentials. And I would say another thing that we mentioned around liberal arts, which it’s good now that they have a mechanism to demonstrate value when we think about AI and the disruption in terms of what are the skill sets going to look like in the future. That approach is going to help elevate certain programs that probably have core skill sets where AI
needs those skill sets to lead a new profession or a new career pathway in a way that we can’t imagine today. So whether it’s validation of information, you name it, if you’ve interacted with AI, the fact that you would have that in a skill set package, a record for a student actually helps them out there in the marketplace even better to say, yeah, even with this technological disruption.
I’m able to show you that I can take this job and do well at this job. So I love that. Love that.
Matt Sterenberg (36:19.959)
Well, Dr. Lovett, thank you so much for joining me. We will put the link to the paper in the description, but really interesting work. So if you’re a state or system or institution and you’re just looking for a framing of how to start thinking about these challenges, check it out, check out the work of ESG. yeah, thanks for joining me. Appreciate it.
Kenyatta Lovett (36:39.416)
Thank you, Matt.
