degreed

Kevin Carey recently wrote of the need for better data to improve student outcomes and to promote lifelong learning. "People don't stop learning the day they graduate from college. Their credentials of learning shouldn't stop, either. [...] Degreed, a technology company based in San Francisco, uses algorithms to standardize and score different kinds of higher-education information, including where people went to college and their degree programs."

The Harvard College Tech Review recently featured Degreed Founder David Blake in an interview on the future of education. "Degreed allows you to build on the foundation of your Harvard diploma–to signal better detail around your Harvard experience, capture the things you learned outside of your formal experience, and to continue having your learning validated once you graduate."

Techcrunch writer Rip Empson recently wrote "One new San Francisco startup, Degreed, is on a mission to “jailbreak the degree” and give learners a new form of academic credentialing. The startup’s free service scores and validates a host of different learning inputs, whether they be from formal institutions, like the University of California, or informal platforms like Khan, Lynda.com, iTunesU, Coursera and so on."

Gigaom recently featured Degreed's "Jailbreaking the Degree" campaign and wrote, "Degreed provides an online service that tracks, scores and validates all of a user’s educational experiences — from formal degree programs at universities like Harvard to non-accredited courses from online sources like iTunesU and Coursera. On Thursday, the company launched a crowd-funding campaign on its site to raise $100,000 by mid-December and by the end of the first day it had already reached $15,000."

EducationDive: The death of degrees? 9 alternative credentialing approaches

EducationDive writes, "If you’ve taken a few courses at a traditional university, but you also have a few MOOCs under your belt, Degreed will provide you with an overall score, as well as scores for each academic discipline, based on your total academic experience."

Degreed Co-founder, David Blake, published in TechCrunch on 'Jailbreaking the Degree': "Education isn’t all-or-nothing. College and its primary credential, the degree, needn’t be either. The benefit of modern, online education is that the burden of logistics and infrastructure are greatly reduced, allowing for the potential of a fluid, lifelong education model. The problem, to date, is that formal, online education is still being packaged in all-or-nothing degree programs.'"

Degreed has been chosen as a $150,000 grant winner of the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Competition supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Degreed has partnered with The Manufacturing Institute, Brigham Young University, SkillsUSA and Project Lead the Way, to build the National Manufacturing Badges System, designed to recognize and credential critical manufacturing skills learned outside of educational institutions.

Columbia's New Learning Times recently featured Degreed when they wrote, "Degreed is an online service that tallies up learning, whether through traditional schools or online courses, and gives the user a full breakdown of what they have learned from wherever they've learned it. Degreed's mission is to allow users to get validation for all of their learning experiences, online or offline, so that users can have more professional and educational opportunities."

EdTech writer Audrey Waters documents her first hand experience as a degreed beta tester working to "jailbreak her transcript". She states, "Degreed is addressing a particularly important issue at a particularly important time: the cost of obtaining a college degree is skyrocketing just as having a college degree become more important. [...] Degreed wants to offer a different way to get “credit” for what you’ve learned."

Business Insider recently featured Degreed in an article about the future of education and the diminishing returns to a traditional college education. "We have now reached a tipping point. The ROI of education has diminished for all and become negative for many. We have lost the ubiquitous positive financial return on education... With the advent of new ways to learn, a new form of credentialing is emerging."

Edutopia highlights Degreed's entry in the Department of Education's Why Open Education Matters video competition. "Education is fundamentally about sharing. OER are so critically important because they unlock the full technological power of the internet. Everything the internet enables, OER allows. With OER, for the first time in history mankind has the potential to truly democratize access to education."

The Huffington Post recently featured an article by Degreed Co-founder, David Blake, about the maturation of online education into a mainstream option for even the most academically qualified individuals. "The most eligible bachelors are making their way online. Harvard and MITx recently announced edX, a joint venture to bring their courses online. And education credentials are evolving to keep pace with this burgeoning world of open, online education."

Degree has been chosen as a finalist at the 2012 Milken-PennGSE Education Business Plan Competition: "Judged by a panel of industry leaders, the competition finals will be held June 19th on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, and will feature the best and most promising new ventures our field has to offer. Competing against over 200 applicants from more than 20 different countries, these eleven finalists have risen to the top.

Degreed Co-founder, David Wiley, featured in the New York Times on the future of the degree: “What’s so special about a diploma…the race is on for alternative forms of certification that would be widely accepted by employers. ‘Employers look at degrees because it’s a quick way to evaluate all 300 people who apply for a job. But as soon as there’s some other mechanism that can play that role as well as a degree, the jig is up on the monopoly of degrees.’”

The Oracle iTalent Competition is part of the HRO Today Forum & Workforce Congress in Washington, D.C. in cooperation with StartUp America. It focuses on HR, recruiting and talent management technology startups that are creating job growth and helping businesses recruit, hire and develop employees. Degreed was chosen as one of five startups to compete.

Michael Horn, Co-founder of the Innosight Institute, linked to Degreed in Forbes. "The disruption of higher education may come from completely outside our current system and obliterate the notion of a 'degree' as we have known it altogether. [I]f edX and others like it create a new ecosystem that, for many, renders a 'degree' as we’ve known it irrelevant, they may end up solving the spiraling costs of higher education better than those efforts that take direct aim at the problem"

Degreed Co-founder, David Wiley, featured in MindShift on the informal learning and credentials. From the article, “Having some way to highlight other skills, competencies, and experiences is important in setting one potential hire apart from another… As informal learning opportunities grow, gaining employers’ recognition and acceptance may well be one of the most important challenges of the coming years.”

Inside Higher Ed highlights Degreed as the venture with the greatest potential to disrupt higher ed: "Things are moving quickly in higher ed. Ideas that seemed impossible in January are suddenly possible – making it exciting to think about which of today’s "impossibilities" might exist in the near future. [...] I wonder which new businesses might have the greatest potential for higher ed disruption? From that perspective, one caught my eye, Degreed."