![[Table of Contents]](/icons/up.gif){kind=icon}
[Why We Should Care]A Parallel Postsecondary Universe: The Certification System in Information Technology - October 2000
6. When economists speak of a "secular" trend, they refer to changes that occur for reasons that lie outside classic economic models. The "secular bull market" in equities that we have witnessed since the mid-1990s occurred not because stocks were oversold and the models called for a technical upswing. Rather, the market gained momentum because the managers of a majority of equity mutual funds acknowledged a reordering of the engines of economic growth, a burst in productivity as a by-product of technological advances, and a change in the very metrics and range of valuation.
7. Simultaneously (and not coincidentally) worldwide secular economic developments changed the context for post-compulsory schooling and its interactions with the labor market (Stacey et al, 1999). Foremost among these developments was the emerging dominance of information technology and telecommunications as the engines of knowledge itself--let alone commerce. These two interlocking industries required a borderless system of protocols that could increase productivity in all participating economies. They also required a labor force to create, advance, and administer those protocols across national boundaries, a labor force with loyalties to occupations more than to specific organizations (Zabusky, 1997). This labor force had to meet standards of knowledge and the skillful application of knowledge that could apply in all countries and a dozen major languages. Thus a new international guild was born.
8. Thus, too, was a secular, competency-based system of certification of individuals established within this information technology guild. The student, not the institution, is the nucleus. Around that student the guild formed a network of standard setting organizations, de facto accrediting procedures, schools and other knowledge distribution entities, a learning support industry, and corporate agents devoted to assessment (including assessment of faculty for the schools). Weaving that net is a workforce of curriculum developers, testing specialists, academic advisors, review panels, and designers of distance education delivery.
9. Unlike traditional degrees in the U.S. (but very much like degrees in most European countries), the industry standard certifications in information technology are awarded by third party examination, with the principal examining agents operating at 5,000 sites in 140 countries and administering an estimated 3 million assessments in 25 languages in 1999. There are general field certifications, sub-field specialty certifications, requirements and electives, hierarchies of credentials analogous to the associate's, bachelors, and master's levels, and the equivalent of academic societies with their annual conventions matched to each. There are even pre-collegiate junior certifications, acting as gateways to the equivalent of college majors. As of January, 2000, the end of the first decade of its existence, this system had awarded at least 1.8 million credentials. Six months later, the count was over 1.9 million.
10. Are there "institutions" in this world of information technology (IT) certification? Yes. But few are among the 9,632 found in our national Directory of Postsecondary Institutions (Barbett and Lin, 1998). The majority are secular, too. They have arisen outside our usual model of postsecondary education.