Jonathan Finkelstein is the CEO of Credly, one of the leading organizations in the credentialing space for education technology around the world. Credly is a Pearson business. Previously, as founder of LearningTimes, he helped mission-driven organizations produce and launch innovative online programs, products and platforms that impacted the lives of millions of users. He was also a co-founder at HorizonLive, which was acquired by Blackboard, and author of Learning in Real Time. He's a frequent author and speaker on digital credentials and the future of work.
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Jonathan Finkelstein is the CEO of Credly, one of the leading organizations in the credentialing space for education technology around the world. Credly is a Pearson business. Previously, as founder of LearningTimes, he helped mission-driven organizations produce and launch innovative online programs, products and platforms that impacted the lives of millions of users. He was also a co-founder at HorizonLive, which was acquired by Blackboard, and author of Learning in Real Time. He's a frequent author and speaker on digital credentials and the future of work.
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Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast, we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies. Jonathan Finkelstein, is the CEO of credibly, one of the leading organizations in the credentialing space for education technology around the world. Previously, as founder of learning times, he helped mission driven organizations produce and launch innovative online programs, products and platforms that impacted the lives of millions of users. He was also a co founder at Horizon Live, which was acquired by Blackboard and author of learning in real time, and is a frequent author and speaker on digital credentials and the future of work. Jonathan Finkelstein, Welcome to EdTech insiders.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Alex, it's such a pleasure to be here,
Alexander Sarlin:Jonathan credibly has been such a success story in the ad tech space. And we've known each other for quite a long time, give our listeners a little bit of an overview of how you got on the idea for cradley, and how you started this whole micro credentialing ecosystem.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Thank you for the kind intro Alex, when cradley started, there wasn't a concept of recording skills in a common transparent way and in a way that followed each person from setting to setting. And I think at the time we started as well, there were very clear boundaries between edtech and HR tech, and talent technology. And we really felt like those silos were really holding people back from connecting to their full potential, because after all, learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. And most people who are pursuing learning or taking assessments or earning certifications are doing so with some life goal in mind, whether it's the next step in their learning career or learning trajectory, or the right next step in their career. And when we looked out at the world, there was a tremendous amount of innovation and how people were learning and the ways in which assessments were taking place. But there was virtually no major innovation happening and how you actually reported the outcome, what skills you have, in the earliest days, Alex, and you and I interacted much during those early days, I remember getting the question, whereas people were trying to understand what cradley did and what we were trying to do in the world, they would say things like, Wait, so you guys just sort of do like the badge or the credential at the end of a learning experience. And I learned to actually embrace that question and say, Yes, we're just doing the single most important part of any learning experience, which is, what's the outcome? Like? And how do you connect that outcome to something real and meaningful in somebody's life? And that's really where the idea for credibly came from? How do we actually unlock the right next step for each person? And how do we make sure that people skills are recognized in the right places at the right time? Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:I remember we first met, I was working at Scholastic and you came and gave a talk to some of the Scholastic executives about, you know, all the work you were doing, and just how to think about the electronic sort of showcasing of skills, I believe, is what the talk was about, but credibly wasn't even in existence yet. So maybe we've been been about something precursor to that. And we spoke about it. And it always felt to me, like one of the big epiphanies was, which you've had for a long time is that, you know, diplomas and degrees have been these outcomes of learning for a long, long time. But they're such black boxes, right? You spent years going to school to get a single piece of paper, which is a university degree or a high school diploma. And it's supposed to sort of indicate this vague but important set of skills that a person went through. And realistically, that is not how, certainly not how adults learn, but not even how college students really learn. That instead, if you could break down what people are doing to every time they go to a conference, they should be able to showcase that every time they do a certificate are an online course or if they do something with a Industry Association. You know, that should result in the same type of output as a degree or diploma. It shouldn't all be piled up into just one thing was that some of the thinking behind the company?
Jonathan Finkelstein:Absolutely. And when you look at those very well meaning systems of creating around outcomes, it's understandable why they exist and why they have been part of the academic environment. But we also know that what people are looking for today is not just trust in the source of the skills, but they want to actually know if someone can apply the skills they have and what specific skills they possess, there's a huge cost of getting a higher rung some cases a third to a half of the cost of somebody's salary, and not to mention the knock on effect of having a So called bad hire somebody who isn't actually able to execute on what you need them to do in terms of opportunity cost and their impact on others. And then that's from the employer perspective. But there's also the perspective of the individual people want to be in places where they're going to be valued for the right things, and where people can understand and appreciate not just what they have done, but what they can do. And we have a system today that's very much focused on what you've done, not what you're able to do. It's why I think people you know, it's one of the reasons that employers have historically relied on using shortcuts like where you went to school, or even where you previously worked, because they are, indeed, that they're shortcuts, I can post a job today on a favorite job board and you know, get 1000 applicants, you know, in a day or two, that's not the problem. It's not quantity, it's actually understanding who's the right person for the job I have. And that's where you want to have trust that somebody can apply skills. So yeah, when you look at transcripts, transcripts tell you what courses somebody may have completed. But most transcripts today don't tell you their ability to do apply those skills. They don't tell you even what they did in that learning context. And by the way, why should that concept of a transcript only exist in an academic setting, if 10s of millions of people have done some college and have no degree to show for it, but I can guarantee you they definitely have skills to show for it. Why is it that they have all of the financial commitments in some cases, the debt or the loans, but they don't have a verifiable signal that they picked up valuable skills along the path,
Alexander Sarlin:it's so important to be able to showcase individual skills. And it just allows all of these educational experiences at all levels to be really unpacked. One of the things that's always been interesting about credibly is every credential actually can have an artifact link to it or even more than one artifact, you can actually showcase the work you've done along with the credential that you are in for doing it. Tell us about that decision and how that is implemented in the credit system.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Yeah, we think evidence is a really important layer or data point around a credential and what it means it helps provide context, it is part of that demonstration of your capability of applying knowledge and skills. And in different groups use that concept in different ways. Some do indeed include original artifacts, somebody's presentation or link to a recording of them giving a presentation and others do evidence that better describes the outcomes of anyone who went through that program such as more information about a syllabus and the kinds of curriculum or the nature of the assessments or in some cases, it's a deeper score report that might have been available just to the individual. And that individual has the ability to actually showcase that more detailed view more broadly. But at the end of the day, we're trying to improve upon what was the status quo, which was, at best, like a one line description of like the name of a course or the name of an assessment, without the context, and we tried to standardize all of the other data around that achievement? How was it assessed? By whom? Is it evergreen? Or does it expire as a skill set as determined by the group that recognize the achievement do they believe you should need to be recertified? Is this at a foundational level or more advanced level, they try to help third parties looking at somebody's achievement, be able to understand their capability level. So it's part of the whole array of data that surrounds an achievement.
Alexander Sarlin:So the idea behind we've been talking about sort of the origin of cradley. But you mentioned that cradley has been a 10 year overnight success. And you know, one of the things that I find really interesting about the credibly world is that that type of customers, the type of different types of organizations that use cradley are so wide ranging, there are so many different types of places that want to be able to give credentials to learners in various contexts. Can you just give a little overview of some of the credibly audience? It's enormous and so varied.
Jonathan Finkelstein:You know, when I spoke earlier, Alex about blurring the lines between ed tech and HR tech, it's also about blurring the lines around where people learn and how they learn. When I look as you do ad tech landscape, you can sometimes ponder why is such a huge part of the economy and such a large opportunity set to solve for so fragmented with so many different companies on the platform side and the content side and on the type of organization and the customer profile. I think it's very simply put, I think humans are very complex organisms. And learning is contextual. It's based on the time in your life and the needs of the economy in a given time and trending skill sets where certain skills may be retired as new ones take their place and some people learn better in course environments and instructor led and, and some skills are best assessed through psychometrically valid assessments and others have legal obligations for compliance. It is such a wide and An amazing and rich tapestry of learning pathways, learning types modalities. And that's even before you add in the personal mindsets and styles of each person who needs to pick up some new skills, it is very complex. And so the approach that cradley has taken is, let's focus on the outcomes. let's standardize what you can do, regardless of the modality and the format, and the part of your life you're in. And when you take that mindset, yes, you can begin to acquire a network of training and learning providers that are indeed a very rich tapestry as rich as the profile of the people whose lives they represent. Right. So you've got take it and DevOps and cloud security, these are areas of technology has long been on the credential forefront, because it is such a fast changing field. And so certifications have been around for several decades and in the technology space. And so there you've got groups that are vendor neutral, like CompTIA or ISC squared. And then you've got organizations that are helping certify people in their product suites like Microsoft and AWS, SAP and Cisco. And then you move from Cloud and security to like tech and productivity tools that people using their jobs every day that aren't just used by technologists tools like Tableau or Pendo, or into it to like DocuSign, or Microsoft Office, right? These are productivity tools that whether you are in a retail position or in hospitality, or maybe you work in an academic setting, you name it. And these are skills that are required increasingly in virtually every part of the economy. And from there, you can move up and across and you can look at business and finance like leadership training and HR professionals, all of the Sherm credentials in, in HR and HR CI credentials are issued on creditease network, the Project Management Institute, the largest provider of project management credentials, and one of the top credentials named and job descriptions that people are seeking are on the platform. Then you've also got like marketing and design and healthcare from Allied Health to you specialties for physicians, you know, the Board of Pharmacy specialists, medical coders, ultrasound technicians, you can follow your way across manufacturing, construction, retail hospitality, at the end of the day, all of these groups are trying to a, make sure that the people that they train and serve have something valuable to connect them to the right next step in their career. Because if training happens in a vacuum, or like a tree falling in the forest, the training, people begin to question the utility of investing in that training. So you see both groups that have established what I call capital, see credentials, that existed previous to digital credential that have gone digital and seen the ability for it to help propel those credentials deeper into the labor market, increased visibility, and then you have groups that the lower case see where they might have a brand or reputation or a curriculum that they may not yet have established, their credential is something that sending a signal in the labor market. And they're seeing a digital representation of the achievement as a way of growing, what they value in terms of skills in the world. And all of them coexist in this whole marketplace. And at the end of the day, it makes any one person's profile that much stronger, because instead of self reporting, which reinforces lots of systemic bias, you've got a more complete story that's trusted, that helps somebody represent themselves more fully. So you're mentioning
Alexander Sarlin:industry associations, like project management companies, you know, all sorts of credentialing agencies. Would you see education institutions also embracing cradley? Places like high schools, colleges, nonprofits that do education or do conferences? I'm curious at museums. Are there other types of educational institutions that also use credibly sort of outside of that employment, direct employment angle?
Jonathan Finkelstein:Definitely. So one of the largest segments of credential providers on our network, our academic institutions, academic institutions, from Miami Dade College, to Wharton, to open course providers like Coursera, and edX, and everyone in between for your institutions and state institutions. I think what we're seeing in that sector in particular, is institutions that have refined their intention or focus on employability outcomes. These are institutions that are either regional players and have deep connections with local businesses and are trying to create a bridge to the communication gap that exists so that those employers can find more readily where the skill talent is. We're finding groups that are either looking at non degree or non credit bearing programs that are professional certificates, which have very established labor market value, but where it's really hard to establish a strong signal as to who provides the people who've been through the right training, and then within degree programs addressing the problem we were talking about earlier people with some college but no degree, how do you surface the skills inherent within given courses. So they have value in real time, whether it's within courses or the completion of courses, but that speak to applicable job ready skills in terms of the other sectors, you mentioned, certainly in K to 12, we see a lot of work in professional development for teachers, and in nonprofits that do cultural or informal learning. That was, as you point out, we did a lot of work at our start in that sector, and they are still well represented. I think, as the focus on employment outcomes and sending signals has grown, I think, you know, one of the things that we have seen is sort of a fresh look at how do you bring forth the employability skills in things where that might not have been a priority previously, but across the board, folks who are newer to credentialing are recognizing that they stand for something in the world, a set of values, a set of skills that they can uniquely offer. And if you're walking around with your punch card from place to place, and you want to make sure that you know, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, the way we did report cards was you got a piece of paper at the beginning of the day, just called your report card, and then you went to each of your eight or nine period teachers, and they all wrote your grade on it. And then they ended the day you had like a completed report card. It was not electronic, and it was just a grade. But I kind of think in a lot of ways, what we're doing it credibly is giving people a digital version of that. So that there's something that's trusted comes from multiple sources, and can come from surprising places sometimes. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:I've done some section four classes. And I've noticed that the credentials for section four always come through credibly. And it's been a real asset to some of the tech companies that the some of which you've named, that need to give credentials in a consistent way in various capacities as well as higher ed, academic institutions. So you know, you mentioned the sort of portability of the credentials. And that is a really big part of of the story as well. We're in a world where I think we're incredibly started, the idea of portable credentials was really, really, really new. And now there's an organization called credential engine that tries to monitor how many different credentials are out there. And there are hundreds of 1000s of possible credentials in all the different subjects that you've named. And then some, I'd love to hear you talk more about that idea of a person not having their transcript locked up in the university or not having the training they did at one company locked in some HR file at that company. It's very empowering, especially in a world where people have so many different jobs in a given career right now, for an individual to be able to take their report card, you know, take their punch card around with them and take all the learning they've done at every, at every job and every academic educational institution with them. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you've seen that manifest for some credibly users? Or, you know, how did you think that sort of changed people's ideas about what lifelong education could be?
Jonathan Finkelstein:So I think to the first part of your question around the growing count of credentials, I think it's worth noting that we weren't counting these things before. So there's two things at play, I think, one, we're now counting things that were not countable, or the nobody had been able to wrap their head around before. But there were a lot of training providers and places to learn and skills being recognized. In some cases, there was a paper certificate and other places, there was the obligation of the learner to go self reported on a resume. But we've always had a very large and vibrant ecosystem of places to learn and have your skills assessed. What we're doing now is we have the technology to begin to record those to begin to put them in a common format. And yes, part two is there is a growth in the number of providers of skill based learning and assessments and achievements. And I think that is because of the technology enablement. And because of a realization that there are many different types of needs, and many different ways to develop a skill as we were talking about earlier. And we have the technology to we have platforms that enable all different types and modalities of learning and assessment. So I think, though, that the first part is the reason that we kind of feel that the count is so big, or that it feels like a noisy environment, because we're actually doing the counting. And we're actually delivering it in common digital methods and tools. Now, you were also I think, asking Alex a little bit about sort of what the ability to break down those silos means for the individual.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, you know, before we leave just the counting behind, I mean, I'm not bringing it up as a noisy environment. I know maybe a common question you probably receive is, in a world with so many credentials, how do people stand out and all that kind of thing? You know, I actually don't see that as a real problem. I think that amount of choice, I'm looking at credential finder, they have 38,000 different credentials listed from hundreds of different frameworks. I think there's nothing wrong with that at all. Actually, I think that that is a good thing. It enables anybody to join the market and to publish credentials, and people to pick and choose and sort of decide how they want to represent their skills and to whom And from what institution? So personally, I don't find the noisy environment a problem, but I'm sure you get that question a lot. The other part of the question was just about the portability of credentials and how you've seen that. Have you seen that manifest over time? It's funny
Jonathan Finkelstein:because you know, I'm thinking about what you're just describing about, you know, catalogs of credentials. And if somebody gave you a dot matrix print out, see, I'm doing a lot of things that date me in this conversation. But like all of the flights that are available over the next like week, air mountain, there may be hundreds of 1000s, or millions of flights, you just want to know about the ones that are the right ones, either based on cost or distance, or the ones that accept your frequent flyer program. These are data problems that technology can solve. So I'm with you. This is not about quantity, it's about getting people to the right thing in a trusted manner terms of people's profiles. Yeah, I think, you know, this is an area where you stay at this problem long enough, you can start to see what you kind of drew up in the huddle at the beginning take shape, and it's super exciting. We now regularly see profiles on credibly, that encompass everything from someone who earned their GED, to then going on to picking up a CompTIA certification. And you can see the trajectory of somebody moving into an in demand career picking up skills, and you see them get a job at IBM and as part of exciting new skill based hiring and new collar work initiatives that IBM runs. And then while they're there, they might be doing a course at Forge rock or engaging in a Coursera course and becoming an IT support associate through you know, a partnership with Google, like you're really seeing these tracks in the snow that people are leaving. And we're also starting to see the evidence that the reason people are able to make these moves is because of their prior credentials. These are deeply connected. There's not only I think, really great ways now of connecting pathways from each of these different types of providers, yes, on Bradley's platform, but also among the institutions themselves. We're seeing more partnerships, b2b type partnerships between big companies and community colleges, where they're creating talent pipeline initiatives. At the end of the day, they're speaking a common language, they can have an outcome that's described in this very elegant simple wrapper of a credential or badge. But that lets them figure out how to connect their programs or to recommend you know, what people have called stackable or you know, credentials are pathways. It's real. It's one of the areas that we're we're trends that I'm most excited about is how do we unlock the ability for businesses and training providers and colleges to partner better, so that they can remove the inefficiency and the duplication of training and find talent that might not otherwise have surfaced?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, I had a really transformative conversation many years ago with Ryan Craig of university ventures and achieve partners who I know is one of the investors incredibly in the past. And he pinpointed the applicant tracking systems as the actual bottleneck. I don't know if that's still true. But it was a really interesting take, saying that it was really that many, many companies use the same handful of applicant tracking systems. And those tracking systems are just not very good at recognizing any kind of alternative credential other than a college degree or past experience, those types of signals you'd mentioned earlier. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. Do you think there's any movement in that space?
Jonathan Finkelstein:As usual, I agree with Ryan. And that is true. We've definitely seen that, you know, we have had on our platform for some time, we syndicate job openings, that algorithmically we matched to the skills within your credential. And we're able to say, okay, based on these project management and design thinking or cybersecurity or ultrasound skills, we think these jobs would be the right match now, well, that's really helpful to understand the value of the skills you've just picked up and the market for them. At the end of the day, that approach just sort of sends you right into the top of the funnel and to the top of the applicant tracking system that everyone else is going in. And unless there is a hiring manager, an HR Recruiter or a staffing agency that understands what verified skills mean, or what specific credentials can signal, you're still leaving it to the individual to self advocate. And you're hoping that there's someone on the other end, who understands the difference between the sharp signals that a credential can represent. And what we've done is a few things. One, we've partnered with companies like zip recruiter and Upwork. If you log into either of those platforms today, you'll see inside your profile button that says Import from credibly and you can bring your credentials into your profile. And you can match more accurately and more quickly to jobs that care about your skills. And so there's a becoming a common language within the job boards that are now creating room for this concept to play out. And then we also have introduced some of our own tools. We have a Talent Match product, which allows anyone to put a job description into the platforms we work with A large number of enterprise businesses right now. And some of them come to us by way of trying to create a standard language for skills and upskilling pathways for jobs within the company for talent mobility. And what they want to be able to do is basically say, Hey, I've got these 1050, you name of job openings, we extract the skills, tune that to the human looking at it to make sure we got it right. And then we use that same language to automatically present to them in real time as they appear candidates both internally and externally, that meet their requirements. And so there, you've got both sides of the marketplace, speaking the same language. And because we're relying only on skills and the preferences for the business and the individual, and not typical demographic, and identity markers, we're also able to present a more diverse pool of candidates, because we're moving the kinds of bias that those applicant tracking systems, whether they intended and most have never intended to do this, but they perpetuate the approaches that summarily leave out people who are highly qualified just because they're taking shortcuts. And so we're really keeping it super straightforward, being very open about the API and how we present candidates, but that's our vision and is to be able to when it comes to talent acquisition be super efficient, and accurate on both ends of that labor market,
Alexander Sarlin:I'm really happy to hear that sort of the two sides of the market are coming together. Because I totally agree that you know, the credentials can have such a strong signal from the recipient. But that signal only works if it's being received accurately by employers. And I know you've been thinking about this for a long time. So it's really exciting to hear them coming together. It strikes me as I hear you talk about it that you know, you think about a traditional resume, and the traditional resume has experience and it has education section. And then sort of at the bottom in this very unstructured section, I tend to have this little skills, and people list, you know, every computer program they've ever done, and any languages they know. And all this sort of it's very unstructured. And it feels like the vision of the future that you're painting here with credibly. And these partnerships is one that is completely the other way around where people lead with their skills. I know that skills based hiring is this sort of trend in HR right now and feels really important. People lead with the skills where they got the skills is semi irrelevant if they have them, and they've proven them. And then their education and their experience is really secondary to what they can do. And that changes the workforce pretty significantly.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you think about it, yes, skill based hiring is a term we're hearing increasingly. And yet everyone who's hired as long as I can remember, it's always cared about skills, we've always kind of thought of ourselves as doing skill based hiring, and that's what you're looking for. But the difference is, I think we used to think about it, as you put out a job opening, you then fill the funnel with hundreds of people, you try to get it down to a manageable number 510, maybe to interview and then you start figuring out like assessing whether the skills are there. And this flips the model. And the reason I think we're able to flip the model through this way of thinking is indeed we're going to the organizations that have been involved in that person's skill development. And so you're not relying on self reporting, which is very inconsistent, it's out of date, and even well, meaning people misrepresent what they've done, not even touching the bad actors who are intentionally exaggerating. And by the way, we know from research that this is an issue that is skewed by gender, more likely to exaggerate their skills on resumes and job applications than women are. And so there's all of these problems that when you put them in the mixing bowl, result in understanding why that skill assessment tends to happen when you get to the last few candidates. But if you go into the top of the funnel, with the skills and it being put in in a consistent and and trusted way, you can imagine that the 10 people at the end could be 10 Completely different people, but maybe even unlikely, more highly qualified, and the right, right fit. We're also seeing this as part of the fun of being part of Pearson Now, which is very well known for its assessments and credentialing businesses, you know, the ability to think differently about how along that whole continuum, you can augment the types of assessments you can do to create that fuller picture around people's capabilities, both through Pearson products, and at least as importantly, through the broader ecosystem.
Alexander Sarlin:I wanted to ask about that. You mentioned earlier how some of the some tech in cloud and IT companies have been sort of ahead of the curve on credentialing for quite a while. And there is an ecosystem with things like the Amazon or Cisco certificates where there are jobs, many jobs that literally say, if you have this CISSP or this Cisco particular certificate that is required to apply to this job. And I'm curious if you have seen over these last few years, more of that sort of ecosystem development where you know where it's This basically says, Oh, if you want this job, you need this exact credential. And here's how to go get it, click here, go learn that, go take this test and come on back. And then you can get in. That's obviously a wildly different talk about turning the funnel upside down. You know, that's a wildly different way to recruit candidates, have you seen that movement really start to take flight?
Jonathan Finkelstein:You know, I think it's one of the reasons that organizations are compelled to join this movement. And this ecosystem is that they know they've got quality signals for readiness. And I think because we're creating a more consistent, dynamic network based approach to this, we're opening up the opportunity for overtime, hiring managers and recruiters to broaden their understanding of signals. I mean, skill based hiring, you know, what we don't want to do is create another caste system or another system that summarily dismisses people where it's just brand based, but I do think that, you know, what we are seeing is, organizations care deeply about their reputation, their credibility and their brand. And whether they exist with the long standing credentials in market or are new to the space, they know that their credentials, say as much about them as an institution and what they value as it does about the person. They're certifying. And so I think, you know, many organizations are really looking to uphold their standards for quality. And I think it's inevitable that we'll see groups that come to trust new brands and new providers as great sources of talent. And we'll be able to, you know, I think widen the aperture on from just Do you have a degree? Or do you have a particular tech certification to a wider group of talent pipeline, trusted partners, but we do indeed see, though, there are very specialized areas, whether it's in allied health or health care, or groups that serve government and government contracts are an insurance and accounting where very specific credentials are needed for compliance purposes or regulatory purposes. And until recently, those groups had a really tough time finding the sources of that talent. Like you might have a particular credential and maybe you put it out on your professional profile somewhere, or you just got it on your resume. The ability to have a real time view of all the people who've just been certified in those areas is in and of itself a really interesting innovation, that speeding the time to hire for those kind of hard to fill roles.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, it's a really interesting, nuanced point that you're making that it you know, if it's fully brand based, it may be a walled garden, and people can charge whatever they'd like for the assessments. And it could create a very strange set of incentives potentially, and equivalencies are hard to get. So it's a complex system. And we'll leave it at that. But I hope that we does stay open and diverse. You know, you've mentioned a couple of times something that I wanted to hone in on, which is people who have some college who have gone to college, and there are 10s of millions of them, and then they want to move forward in their career. Do you envision a future? You know, we've seen these polls recently, we've reported on them on the podcast where students are more than ever before likely to say, Look, I just want to get the amount of education I need to get to the next step in life, I don't care about it being four years, I certainly don't want to spend a lot of money. I just I'm really looking for an outcome. I'm looking to sort of get somewhere. And if there's a way I can get that there more quickly or more efficiently, more cheaply. Sure, I'll try that. Do you think that the credential movement that you've been part of will start to enable a world where there's a significant movement away from, you know, traditional institutions and towards, oh, I need these six skills to get my dream job, I'll go get the six skills, and I'll get them the fastest, cheapest, most effective way possible.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Yeah, I mean, as a new dad, two and a half years in speaking too soon to be Dad, if you'd asked me this question. 10 years ago, I might have been a little bit more skeptical about putting my money or my son in the mix here on this. But I do think I think this is like a great time to trust that there are multiple pathways to a successful upwardly mobile life for any given person that we you're seeing this with the degree requirement dropping from any job requirements, whether it's the federal government or companies like IBM or Google introducing its own grow with Google certificates to try to create a network of employers who to our earlier discussion, who can look for different signals. And yeah, I mean, the latest research in the last month from the National Student Clearinghouse said that we've now a 39 million Americans who have attended college but or no degree or other credential, and that was actually up like over 3 million from just 2019. Like that's a lot of talent that doesn't have a credential or a signal to show for it. And a lot of people who are willing to supplement the learning that they already had with other learning, whether it's back at a college or university setting or from the workplace. From an association to knit together to tell a more complete story. So in any event, I imagine my son growing up in a world where I would be very comfortable with him choosing to piece together the right next step at the right time. And as long as he was learning to feel empowered, and had ways to tell that story, and show how those skills connected to each other, I think there's a world emerging where every organization that has a vantage point or position to assess skills is going to be part of that story for each person. No one's going to own the whole thing. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:I think that's a really exciting vision. And I agree, I think that, for the first time, I think in my life, I'm not completely convinced that that traditional institution, you know, traditional legacy, education has a definitive advantage over kind of that patchwork approach where you can actually make it work through skills. One, just
Jonathan Finkelstein:quick note to insert, because you and I think both care deeply about higher ed and the whole ecosystem and the partners that we work with and serve in that space. And I do think that we see a need to certainly when it comes to the concept of a liberal arts, education and signaling human skills, that there is a very deep need for parties in this ecosystem. And I think colleges, universities could be the leader and should very well be a leader in this to signal well roundedness to signal civic involvement, ability to have foundational human and other skills. So anyway, I think there's huge opportunity for colleges and universities to rethink their so called in quotes, products, and to rethink how they partner or to think about how they partner with employers in new ways. Because colleges, universities have an essential role to play. And those who lean into this and innovate will do very, very well.
Alexander Sarlin:And have already I think some of the schools that have been really on the forefront of this have really changed the discussion a lot. I completely agree. It's actually I think one of the big ironies of higher is that higher education has had certificate programs for many years, it's had all sorts of different levels of program that the only issue is that they live editorializing a little bit here, but they've let the cost of the regular degree sort of move into those programs as well. So master's programs have become inordinately expensive certificate programs, you know, that people talk about the sort of Yale forestry certificate program, I think that costs some huge amount of money. And it's a really, it's great, but it's you know, it the ROI isn't necessarily there. I think that if schools leaned into their well, their expertise, frankly, and their incredible experience delivering all different formats of education, but then really think in a student centered way about the sort of cost to return ratio, they could take the space back in a heartbeat. It's just it's been slow to move, in my personal opinion. But we end every interview, I know we're coming on the end of the hour, we end every interview with two questions that we ask every guest and I'm really curious about your answers to them. The first is about a trend that you see in the Ed Tech landscape that you think our listeners should be aware of.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Oh, great question, Alex. There are several of importance to me, we talked a little bit about the trend towards or recognition to put action behind statements about improving diversity and inclusiveness of our employment environments and our learning environments. I think that is hopefully something people aren't just thinking as a checklist exercise where they can say it matters and not actually do something about it. I am heartened to see a lot of action being put behind enough I think parties that if we keep the pace going, we will see some results. I would say that secondarily, we hear about concepts like learning in the flow of work. What does that mean? It means that you learn every moment of your day you learn by making a typo that gets auto corrected in your favorite documents. You learn by doing Google searches and watching YouTube videos, you learn by doing projects on the job. And I think there's a recognition that that is a really fertile area for capturing more signal in the flow of work so that we can more organically help people surface skills that might be represented in the work they do every day. I'm excited. There's a project at Pearson that I'm getting to know called Aria, which is about this, it's how do you take somebody's desire to let's say, learn about digital marketing or become a project manager, maybe they're new to that or trying to make a career transition, take a project that they could do on the job, connect them to a mentor to help guide them and some resources. So they're doing work and actually getting a new signal that says they're ready for something. That's just one example of I think, the work and the possibilities there. Yeah, those are two things on my mind today. Yeah, that's
Alexander Sarlin:a terrific and what is a resource that you might recommend to our listeners, that could be a book, a newsletter, a podcast, a report, anything that has sort of crossed your desk over the last any amount of time that you think would be really powerful for people who want to dive deeper into anything we talked about? Well, I
Jonathan Finkelstein:have a handful of favorite podcasts. And I think one is a little bit offbeat in terms of your question in terms of its popularity, but I love the how I built this podcast. And I'll tell you why in this context, I think it's important, I think, for a lot of the impactful opportunities out there for what kinds of problems to go tackle in this space. A lot of them are thinking about how do you build something that will scale and have an impact. And one of the things I like about guy Roz's podcast is he tends to talk to you, people who started products or companies that achieved a level of scale and success. And you can see across them, the kinds of thinking and the mistakes and the failures people make. And I think it's so important to understand that failure is part of all of this, if you're creating a new credentialing program, if you're creating a new business line, if you will, within your higher ed setting, if you're creating a new platform to recognize skills, or you're trying to tackle the problem of removing systemic bias when it comes to hiring, like these are big, ambitious goals that virtually every one of your listeners has some connection to, or is part of in some way. And I think thinking about these problems, the way startups do is really a great mindset closer to home. And the problem set books like Jamie Marisota, says human work, which you know, I think really addresses the role of humans in a culture that is adopting machines and technology, I think really understanding what automation is bringing and what humans can uniquely bring is a really important part of this. We don't want to design systems and programs, which are going to fail us in a few years. And then just one more if I may only ask for one I'm ready on. I'm reading right now how to tell a story by the folks who produced the moth, which is another favorite podcast of mine. And I do think that when it comes to the problems we you and I've been talking about today, Alex, that that is very much about storytelling, especially for the individual learner or person, member of the labor market today. How do you tell your story. And sometimes I think every person has multiple stories. And what we're trying to do at cradley is give them the evidence, give them the tools to figure out what their story is at any given moment, what they're able to do and where they want to go and what's the next chapter in their journey. And I love thinking about life through as a series of stories. So I recommend the book. I haven't finished it yet. I'm in it right now.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic. So that's the podcast, how I built this from Guy Roz human work by Jamie Merritt SOSUS.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Founded nation. Yep.
Alexander Sarlin:So interesting and how to tell a story by the founders of the moth. As always, we will put links to all of the resources in the show notes. For this episode. I've got to check those out, too. My family and I have been moth people for very long time. We've always loved the moth. So I didn't know there was a cookout that's really exciting. And of course, the credibly
Jonathan Finkelstein:website and have to say our content and thought leadership team does a lot of work to constantly feed both podcasts and case studies when it comes to credentialing. So you can check out the resources section on our website for links out to a whole range of great resources,
Alexander Sarlin:we will definitely put a link to that as well credibly is a fantastic site. I've actually just used it recently for my own online classes, giving it to give credentials for my classes, as well as to some of the guests on this podcast. So Jonathan Finkelstein, thank you so much. It's always been a pleasure. It's always a pleasure. And it's always been a pleasure to know you and see this credibly become the juggernaut of credentialing that it has become. Thank you for being here with me on a tech insiders.
Jonathan Finkelstein:Thanks, Alex. I
Alexander Sarlin:love chatting with you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ed Tech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com