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[References and Sources]A Parallel Postsecondary Universe: The Certification System in Information Technology - October 2000
This parallel universe has sufficient resources and momentum to go its own way. To the extent to which there are occasional interactions between its secular providers and the traditional postsecondary and tertiary sectors in various countries, we will catch glimpses of its scope and dynamics, and may be stimulated to adapt some of its performance assessment processes. But there is no question that the public interest in a 100 nations would be well served if we possessed at least the same information about certification candidates and their backgrounds, enrollments, and awards, and the same information about providers (the "training partners") as we do for the universe we know. As much as they are appreciated, we can not rely on surveys of certificate recipients producing 20 percent response rates (from small samples to begin with) from one major vendor (Microsoft) to tell us what is transpiring and for whom. Nor can we rely on the country-distribution of one highly-elite population, the roughly 5,000 Certified Cisco Internetworking Experts (CCIEs) as of July 2000 (see Appendix B) to tell us where it is happening. All nations must plan and budget for the provision of postsecondary schooling. If a significant number of individuals follow paths that use the parallel universe, their actions affect planning and budgeting, and because the universe is transnational its information is analogous to that necessary for international trade. No one government can require or collect this information. The effort might be coordinated through an international organization, and with the voluntary cooperation of the IT guild, which might establish a central registry of certified individuals, with enough information on educational and demographic backgrounds to help policy-makers map the full dynamics of global postsecondary education.
This information would have a considerable impact on our assumptions concerning the capacity of the system of postcompulsory schooling, and the way we plan for future enrollments. By national policy, and beyond the increases that would occur naturally by demographic dynamics, the United States has invited about two million new students into the higher education sector. These people--and others--will go to school in very different ways than was true as recently as 1990. Yet we have not factored in multi-institutional attendance and the secular providers into our calculations at all. We talk glibly about "tsunamis" for which we are unprepared, rush to open branch campuses, put existing campuses on 24/7 schedules, and flagellate ourselves when students enroll for only a few courses and then disappear. We may turn around some day to find that these students have "disappeared" into the world of the secular providers. But until the parallel universe becomes part of national accounting systems and until we learn to follow the student--and not the institution--we'll never know.