Insurgent Credentials II: What Is Sociologically Significant About Digital Badges?*

Michael R. OlneckUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

olneck@education.wisc.edu

DRAFT

I. INTRODUCTION

If I were here today to talk about MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses), you would

immediately know what I am referring to, and you might even hold strong opinions about

whether they are good or bad. Even though “digital badges” have been reported on since 2011 in

the Chronicle, Inside Higher Education, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes,

and numerous other outlets, my guess is that many of you have never heard about digital badges

until now, or, if you have, you are uncertain about what they are. And, even if you do know a fair

bit about badges, you might wonder why they warrant the attention of sociologists of education

or others who are concerned about education opportunity. Certainly, they are not the objects of

contention that MOOCs are.

My purpose today is to acquaint you with what digital badges are, and to persuade you

that sociologists of education and others concerned with education opportunity should pay them

scholarly heed.

Digital badges are digitized records of an individual’s achievements, skills, abilities,

knowledge, competencies, and know-how. They can be presented visually as icons on the

*Paper prepared for presentation at the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity,

University of Notre Dame, March 3, 2014. For comments only. Please do not reproduce,circulate, or cite without author’s permission.

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computer screen, hence the name “badges.” Since some people laugh when they first hear about

“badges,” some badge issuers use, instead, the term “micro-credentials.” Digital badges are

distinct from other representations of achievements, skills, et cetera, for example, course grades

or college degrees, in that they contain layers of meta-data which describe the precise criteria for

the badge having been earned, offer demonstrations from the badge earner’s work, akin to what

you would find in e-portfolios, to verify the badges validity, and include information about the

badge issuer.

The idea of badges as credentials or as markers of learning apparently was cooked up one

evening at a Barcelona bar by some folks attending the 2010 Mozilla Foundation’s Drumbeat

Festival: Learning, Freedom, and the Web. Badges roots lie in gaming. What followed after the

Barcelona meeting was a MacArthur Foundation-funded competition in 2011 for proposals to

develop badge systems that could be used for employment purposes, and in education and other

learning contexts. The competition was administered by the Humanities, Arts, Science, and

Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, housed at Duke University. Thirty winners were named,

and development and conversation among the winners, and others whose projects were not

funded, has continued. Indeed, a badge “summit,” sponsored by “Reconnect Learning,” a

consortium of Mozilla, HASTAC, and the MacArthur Foundation, was held on Silicon Valley

during the third week of February, with over three hundred people in attendance. MacArthur also

funded Mozilla to build an open-badge s platform through which badges could be electronically

managed. That is now in operation.

Notable examples of current badge projects include the Sustaining Agriculture and Food

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Systems major at UC-Davis, the National Manufacturing Badge System, sponsored by the

National Manufacturing Institute, Peer 2 Peer University’s badges, and Badges Work for Vets. In

addition to faculty in the UC-Davis program, faculty at, for example, Purdue University, Indiana

University, Pennsylvania State University, are using badges in their courses.

Many of those who promote badges are passionate; some even refer to themselves as

“badge evangelists.” Badge proponents claim that our long-institutionalized ways of representing

learning, e.g., grades, credit hours, diplomas, degrees, and certificates, carry very little

information, and fail to capture and recognize the full range of what people know and can do,

much of which is acquired out of school and informally. Badges are lauded for capturing and

communicating learning, knowledge, and know-how at a much more granular level than

conventional credentials or marks of achievement, and for ensuring credibility based on direct

evidence of accomplishment. Employers, badge advocates argue, want to know what people can

do, and, often, are interested in discrete skills, so the more granular the measurement, the better.

Advocates see badges as a way to increase access to learning opportunities, and, in part, by

allowing badge earners to “stack” or combine badges earned from numerous issuers at various

times, to challenge the costly monopoly formal education institutions hold on credentialing.

Badges, their proponents argue are more relevant than traditional credentials in the “frictionless,

collaborative, free-agent economy unfolding worldwide” (Maney, 2012). Several commentators

go as far as to foresee an “entire [new] ecosystem for teaching and crediting human knowledge

and skill (e.g., Carey, May 15, 2011).

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Questions about what badges are?

What I want to do in the next two sections of my presentation is, first, argue that badges

are a phenomenon that are well worth the attention of sociologists of education, as well as others

concerned with education opportunity. Then I want to advance some claims about the possible

consequences of badges for education, the workplace, and society more generally. Lastly, during

the Q & A period, I want to invite your questions and thoughts about my claims that badges are

sufficiently significant to warrant our attention, and on the plausibility of my claims about the

consequences of badges. I hope that I will be sufficiently persuasive as to inspire some of you to

undertake research into digital badging.

II. WHY ARE DIGITAL BADGES SOCIOLOGICALLY SIGNIFICANT?

Context and Potential Crisis in Credentialing Regime

Badge proposals, models, and projects have not arisen in a vacuum. Conventional

education, including higher education, has been under sustained public criticism for over twenty

years. Ever rising costs are making college attendance more and more difficult. Student loans are

a drag on the economy, as well an onerous burden to students and families. Students are said to

be “academically adrift,” disengaged and learning little. Rhetoric about “skills gaps” is prevalent,

and the lack of preparedness of students for a “knowledge economy,” said to be dependent upon

“21st-Century” skills, is assumed. “Disruptive innovation” is the reigning buzzword, MOOCs the

flavor of the day. Demands for accountability proliferate as the “audit culture” expands.

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Advocacy for badges draws upon, and contributes to, these developments.

At the same time, conventional wisdom assumes that the middle ranges of the

occupational structure are being “hollowed out.” Neo-liberal marketization and intensified

competition among nations, regions, companies, and individuals, is said to make “precarious”

employment the new normal.

In these circumstances, we may be approaching a “crisis of credentialing regime” (Brown

& Bills, 2011). On the one hand, employers are increasingly distrustful of traditional education

credentials (Bills, 2003), and claim a greater interest in “skill sets” than in degrees.1 On the other

hand, jobs increasingly require higher formal credentials (Collins, 2002a). In Randall Collins’

judgement, “[w]e are at one of those periodic stress points where there are too many credentialed

job-seekers for the jobs available; there is rush to get more schooling; but the costs of the

credential-producing system are too high for many people... So now there are efforts to adjust,

trying out various new arrangements. Such experimenting seems normal; the structural issue is

which kinds of arrangements will wash out, and which ones will stay and develop. That is what

current research should figure out, although this is hard to tell before the passage of time (10

years? 3?)” (Collins, 2012). I see research on digital badges as contributing to the research for

1 Despite such claims, UK employers apparently ignore vocationally relevant informationavailable in League Tables from post-secondary institutions, and continue to rely upon olderimpressions and institutional reputations in selecting for positions (Morley & Ansley, 2007). Onthe other hand, if it is true, as Wilk and Cappelli (2003 ) claim, that, in order to have morereliable and trustworthy assessments of employees, “[a]s work demands increase, as representedin increasing skill requirements, training, and pay, organizations consistently rely on testingmethods in the selection process,” then employers might find the granular information carried bybadges to be valuable (Wilk & Cappelli, 2003, 117-118).

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which Collins calls.

I said earlier that badges have not arisen in a vacuum. Significantly, badges are not just

concomitant with other innovations, but are directly linked with them. Some MOOCs offer

badges (Casilli & Knight, 2012), and badges are issued for attainment of competencies. Deborah

Everhart of Blackboard envisions a tightly aligned system between competence-based education,

occupational skills, badges, credentials, and employment (Blackboard Collaborate, 2014). In

mid-February, 2014, at the Badges Summit, EdX pledged “to work with its open-source

community, Open edX, and Mozilla to implement a badges system for the approximately 2

million edX students to showcase their completion of edX classes” (see

https://twitter.com/Badges4Learning). The debates and activities around MOOCs, online-

education competency-based education, and badges should be investigated in tandem.

New Networks of Governance

Badges, like many reforms in contemporary education, involve the support, participation,

and activity of actors from diverse sectors, both public and private. Examples of those involved

in badges include firms like Blackboard, Inc., from the educational technology sector, the

National Manufacturers Institute, which is a research and education arm of the National

Manufacturers Association, the Gates and the MacArthur Foundations, the United States

Department of Education, on-campus research institutes like Indiana University’s Center for

Research on Learning and Technology, private education “providers” like Pearson, and

Universities including Purdue and UC-Davis.

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Stephen Ball (2008, 2012a, 2012b) has called attention to new “networks of governance”

in education in the UK. These networks include individuals, organizations, and agencies from

philanthropy, business, quasi-governmental bodies, and non-governmental agencies. The new

networks constitute new policy communities, and shift governance away from a unitary state.

“These new policy communities,” Ball writes, “ bring new kinds of actors into the policy process,

validate new policy discourses and enable new forms of policy influence and enactment, and in

some respects disable or disenfranchise established actors and agencies” (2008, 747). The

significance of such networks is not merely that they allow the fox into the chicken coop, so to

speak, or that they subject education to coercion by outsiders. Rather, networks are important

because they are sites for the construction and diffusion of new “cognitive frames” bearing on

“the normative and functional implications of institutions” (Beckert, 2010, 619). Badges offer an

opportunity to study the consequences, and the continued growth and elaboration, of comparable

networks in the United States.2

Intersection of sociology of education, labor markets, and work, and the mechanisms linkingeducation and jobs

The sociology of education, the sociology of labor markets, and the sociology of work are

distinct subfields which are insufficiently in conversation with one another. Study of badges will

need to draw from all of these subfields. Examining if, and, if so, how, badges become

2 In addition to involving new kinds of actors in education policy, badges offer anopportunity for those from historically less powerful sectors in education to, perhaps, improvetheir standing and influence. These would include those engaged in promoting and providingvocational education, adult education, non-credit programs, lifelong learning, recognition of priorlearning, and experiential learning.

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credentials which employers weigh will provide new insight into how education, broadly defined,

becomes linked to employment. This is not just a matter of how individuals’ educations connect

them to jobs. It is a matter of how societal-level conceptions of skills, knowledge, work, and

qualification, which may be contested and changing, are incorporated into organizational

processes of hiring, job assignments, and task definitions, and how these processes entail

education credentials. Hefler & Markowitsch (2012) contend that “particular social relations

enacted in the organization of work provides the basis for the institutional effects of formal adult

education, strengthening its position in some countries and limiting its impact in others” (ibid.,

163). Their contention can be extended in two ways. One, is that social relations of work provide

the basis for the effects of education, however defined. The other is that how a society educates

and credentials individuals can influence how work is organized (Meyer, 1977; Baker, 2009).

One might wonder, for example, if badges will be conducive to thinking of workers as possessing

bundles of discrete skills that can be precisely matched with particular job tasks, and, thus,

strengthen the ties among, education, training, and occupation.

A relatively undifferentiated system of schooling, such as we have in the United States,

enables the use of education attainment, defined ordinally, to construct job queues according to

education levels. But to arrange queues according to education levels requires that education

credentials be commensurate, and reflect a “clear order of merit” (Hudson, 2006, 435). Badges,

however, will be differentiated horizontally, according to the competencies they index.3 It will be

3This adds to the complexity already introduced by horizontal stratification inconventional schooling along the lines of institutional selectivity, major, student composition,and governance auspices. See Gerber & Cheung (2008).

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difficult to rank different collections of badges and, moreover, what ranks higher will depend

upon the needs of specific kinds of firms. The implications of this for the role of education

credentials, insofar as these are represented by badges, in establishing and legitimating

inequalities within the workplace hierarchy (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) are difficult to predict.

Those effects very likely turn on whether badges would supplement traditional education

credentials, or substitute for them. If the latter, one could imagine badges contributing to flatter

workplace hierarchies.4

Badges and a new “credentials ecosystem”5

Proponents envision new credential ecosystems in which badges will play a large part.

Indiana University’s Dan Hickey commented that ““What many of us are so excited about is the

possibility of entirely new ecosystems emerging around badges that transcend existing

credentialing systems” (Hickey, 8/9/12). Yet, badges are being introduced into contexts where

there are already an abundance of differentiated credentials. There are degrees and diplomas

awarded by academic institutions, which are themselves differentiated by levels, prestige, cost,

mission, governance, student composition, and areas of study. There are equivalency diplomas,

awarded for passing the GED or other tests, as well as equivalency credits, for example those

determined for clients by the American Council of Education (Fain, 2012), There are, as well,

4 Flatter workplace hierarchies do not necessarily entail greater workplace democracy orlessened control of workers by employers. As noted below, there are ways in which utilization ofbadges might intensify worker insecurity and susceptibility to employer power.

5 My thanks to Mitchell Stevens for suggesting that I adopt this terminology.

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certificates and certifications.6

Rawlings and Bourgeois (2004), in their important analysis of “niches” within American

higher education, observe that academic credentials are “relationally meaningful institutional

categories that reinforce important symbolic boundaries and status distinctions.” (ibid., 412).

Their observation is ever more salient when we consider a credential ecosystem, or field,7 that

includes credentials earned and awarded by organizations outside recognizably “academic”

institutions. (I was tempted to write “by ‘non-academic’ organizations,” but that might obscure a

point I want to make explicit, which is that credentials gain their meaning only in relation to one

another. One way to establish a hierarchy of credential relations is to define some credentials as

the nullity of another.)

There is more here than the question of what status in the already existing credentials

field badges will hold, and what rewards they will garner for their holders. Badges are a new

social practice, although by no means altogether novel. As such, they will draw upon, elaborate

6 “‘Certificates’ are recognition of completion of a course of study based on a specificfield, usually associated with a limited set of occupations. Certificates differ from other kinds oflabor market credentials such as industry-based certifications and licenses, which typicallyinvolve passing an examination to prove a specific competency, completing an apprenticeship orattending company or government training programs. Certificate programs take place in theclassroom, mainly in public, two-year schools or private, for-profit, non-degree grantingbusiness, vocation, technical, and trade schools” (Carnevale, Rose, & Hanson, 2012, 3).Certificates may also be awarded through successfully passing tests like ACT’s WorkKeys test,which leads to the ACT National Career Readiness Certificate (http://www.act.org/ products/workforce-act-national-career-readiness-certificate/).

7 I am using “field” here in Bourdieu’s sense that a “field” is a system of differences,differential deviations, allow[ing] the most fundamental social differences to be expressed’(Bourdieu, 1984: 226; cited in Rawlings & Bourgeois, 2004, 412).

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upon, and, conceivably, alter the very categories of practice and identities through which

meaning is enacted and power exercised within the existing field of credentials. That is, they will

not merely “take” a position in the field of credentials; they may define new positions, and, in the

process, change how the positions of other kinds of credentials are defined and located. This

would be part of a larger process, which I hope to follow over time, in which the field of

“education” might, itself, be transformed, as might the very institution of “education.”

Viewed more broadly, the study of badges offers the potential opportunity to study

processes of institutionalization (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991), deinstitutionalization (Oliver,

1992), and the dynamics of fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), including processes by which

new categories of persons, skills and knowledge, organizations, and positions in relations of

production may be created, spread, legitimated. Alternatively, badges may provide the

opportunity to study processes by which institutional change is deflected and blunted.

III. PLAUSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF BADGES

I foresee a number of plausible consequences of badges, some of which I will comment

on briefly. These are: (1) Badges will further advance the conceptualization of learning and

knowing as the acquisition and accumulation of discrete “skills” and “competencies;” (2)

Badges will not supplant conventional academic credentials; (3) They could, however, advance

processes by which the education field is increasingly subordinated to the field of economic

power; (4) Badges will further diffuse neo-liberal consciousness and subjectivity, as well as

possibly deepen employer control over workers; and (5) Badges will be unlikely to diminish

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stratification and inequalities of opportunity.

Badges will further advance the conceptualization of learning and knowing as the acquisitionand accumulation of skills and competencies.

In principle, competencies may be identified with broad capacities and dispositions

associated with liberal education.8 And, some of the leading proponents of badges envision

badges as “certifying complex processes or skills that are not comprehended in our traditional

grading systems” (Davidson, 2011) Davidson continues, “[a]ccording to most employers, the

skills we do not grade are often the ones most important to future success in the work place.

What we do not grade--interpersonal skills, collaborative skills, imagination, innovative,

initiative, independence--are most of the things employers most want in future employees. At

present, education, including higher education, doesn't have a system for measuring or counting

those things. That's why a number of us have begun to investigate badging” (ibid.). But, the

emphasis by many badge advocates on the importance of granular measurement of learning

outcomes suggests to me that badges will be awarded for competencies defined rather narrowly.

So, too, does the perception by some that the value of badges lies in their capacity to index

“hyper-specialized” or “micro-based” competencies that align with employers’ putatively

increasing emphasis on well-defined competencies when they hire (Crotty, 2012).9 Crotty

8 For example, the competencies listed under the set of “Intellectual Skills” in the LuminaFoundation’s Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) are analytical inquiry, use of informationresources, engaging diverse perspectives, quantitative fluency, and communications fluency(Ewell, 2013).

9 Manley (2012), for example, claims that “[e]mployers care what you can do; they carerelatively little about what you study, except as an indicator of what you can probably do. Badgesare likely to reflect specific skills (“architecting social media databases” or “PHP”). Some may

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(2012), for example, claims that “[b]adge proponents hope that, as employers emphasize more

precise competencies in their hiring calculus, human and machine scanners will deemphasize

generic diplomas in favor of the rarefied skills an employer actually seeks.”

A virtue attributed to badges, associated with the feature that badges can index learning

irrespective of where it is acquired, is that they can be combined or “chunked” and “stacked.”

While badge proponents view this as an opportunity for individuals to craft their own learning

paths in ways that yield customized, coherent and integrated learning, the imagery of “an

education” being “assembled” from diverse sources suggests the accumulation of discrete

blocks.10 To the extent that acquisition of any one “competency” is institutionalized as a binary of

“not completed / completed,” an image of “pieces” of knowledge and know-how, bounded off

from one another is constructed.11

complement licensure (“palliative care nursing”) others may document skills in areas where littlecertification is available today (“Thai cooking” or “cloud-based SQL database administration”).When employers favor providing support for current employees to pursue post-secondaryeducation, “[f]ew...favor[ ] fields of study[that] reflect the kinds of skills that are typicallydeemed the cutting-edge sorts of capacities needed for the information-based global economythat has emerged. Rather, employers most often back the kinds of skills that are the mostamenable to being taught in traditional vocational programs, specifically protective services andmechanics/repairers (Bills & Wacker, 2003, 183). However, the assumption that employers areseeking more precise competencies when they hire is contradicted by numerous employersurveys. In these, employers stress the importance of such things as critical thinking, oral andwritten communicative capabilities, creativity, ability to collaborate well (see e.g., ConferenceBoard, 2006; Hart Research Associates, 2006; 2008; 2013) Nevertheless, we can wonder if theavailability of badges might not influence how employers think about employees’ qualifications.

10 Of course, any notion that a conventionally acquired education is coherent andintegrated may well be illusory, mythical, and ideological..

11 These considerations suggest that analyzing badges from the perspective of BasilBernstein’s code theory, with its attendant concepts of classification and framing, would prove

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An important question to ask about a model of learning as the accumulation of discrete

competencies acquired from diverse “learning providers” is what socially recognized identities

will be constructed in the process? A system of credentials institutionalized in hierarchically

ranked degrees classifies people. The institutions which the current system comprises “charter”

identities (Meyer, 1969) “consecrate” elites (Bourdieu, 1996 [1989]), “incubate” social ties and

acquisition of cultural capital (Stevens et al., 2008), and establish recognized boundaries between

individuals that are based on institutions attended and degrees attained (Bourdieu, 1996

[1989]).12 A system that comprises a myriad of badges signifying the acquisition of discrete

competencies will not produce “graduates,” or, importantly, non-graduates.13 Because badges

will not be readily commensurate with one another, they will not readily serve as a universal

“cultural currency” in status competition (Collins, 1979).14 These are among several reasons that

I anticipate that badges will not likely supplant conventional degrees as credentials.

Badges will not supplant conventional academic credentials.

Despite the ballyhoo around badges breaking the credentials monopoly on higher

education (Carey, March 13, 2012; Young, January 8, 2012; Crotty, 2012; Maney, 2012), those

fruitful (Bernstein, 1977, 1990, 2000).

12 Consider, for example, the construction of the “college man” in early 20th-centuryUnited States (Clark, 2010).

13 Although, some proponents of badges do envision different levels of badges, and theaggregation of multiple badges into “meta badges” (Mozilla Open Badges; see alsohttp://www.khanacademy.org/about).

14On processes of “commensuration,” see Espeland & Stevens, 1998.

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centrally involved with badge development do not anticipate badges as supplanting conventional

academic credentials in the near future, if ever (Knight, 2013a,b). Badge pioneers recognize that

acceptance of badges within higher education will be made easier if badges are not placed into

competition with conventional credentials (Fain, 2014). Nor, even if this were their aspiration,

would success be likely.

First, formal schooling institutionalizes not only the organizational categories and

practices that we recognize as “Real School” (Metz, 1989; see also Meyer & Rowan, 1978), it

institutionalizes belief in what we recognize as “academic intelligence” (Baker, 2009). Academic

intelligence comprises, for example, “analytical” or “effortful” thinking, “synthetic reasoning,”

and “new problem solving,” qualities associated with “fluid IQ” (Baker, 2009, 179).15 These,

Baker (2011a, 15) regards as the “basic ideas, beliefs, and human capabilities underpinning early

21st-century society,” which have resulted in formal education having become “fully accepted

worldwide as the one appropriate, legitimate playing-field on which to compete for merit”

(Baker, 2011b, 27).16 It is not an accident that recognition of “prior learning,” “informal

15 That schooling institutionalize belief in academic intelligence can be seen in the useand interpretation, since the 1920s, of IQ and other standardized tests to organize students forinstruction. See Berger, 1978, and Fass, 1980.

16 Meyer et al. (2005, 24) make the same point in highlighting that universities support,and mass general education undergirds the core societal cultural assumptions of “universalisticvalues, human empowerment, scientific knowledge, and rationality...” Elsewhere, Baker (2011b,10) writes “[n]on-educational credentials decline while educational ones increase becauseeducation as an institution transforms reigning theories of personnel, the nature of work,increased formal organization of society, and valued human capabilities (Baker, 2011b, 10;original emphasis). Importantly, the legitimacy of education credentials does not derive fromtheir functional utility to production, but from the “effects of education as an institution” (Meyer,1977). In Baker’s formulation,“education as an institution provides the logic by which

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learning,” “lifelong learning,” and “experiential learning” require translation into academic

“credit” in order to be “counted” toward being “qualified.”17 While badges awarded in courses or

in other academic program experiences might augment course credits, the two will be unlikely to

become susceptible to mutual translation.18

Dislodging schooling from its position in the field of credentials would require either

replacing faith held by those beyond the academy in “academic intelligence” with belief in

discrete “competencies” as the measure of merit, or linking badges with our established ideas

about academic intelligence.19 But the latter is most likely impossible without associating badges

educational credentialing becomes evermore legitimate, more so than forces outside theinstitution itself such as the economy and labor market demand” (Baker, 2011b, 5; myemphasis). The implication of this for badges is that for badges to replace diplomas and degreesas credentials would require extensive delegitimization of formal academic institutions,something which does not appear to be in the immediate offing.

17 For example, “Learning Counts” (www.learningcounts.org;) offers “[c]ollege credit forwhat you already know ®,” and so maintains the significance of collegiate certification, even as itembraces non-traditional learning. See Glenn, 2011.

18 The problem of lack of mutual translation as an impediment to institutional reform isillustrated by the fate of efforts in the 1960s to substitute written evaluations for grades. Theseefforts faltered when graduate and professional schools refused to accept written evaluations aspart of applications (Zucker, 1988). Anyone who has struggled with evaluating an applicant fromEvergreen College can appreciate this point. This example raises another point germane tobadges: Is it plausible that employers or other gatekeepers will have the patience to examine themeta-data for which badges are lauded?

19 The first is a condition that Meyer et al. (2005) acknowledge, but find unlikely. Theywrite that only if “actual role training” were to gain in stature, might we expect “the university[to] indeed weaken and fragment, and more efficient competitors [to] win out” (25). Of course,“actual role training” may possibly “grow in stature” as public officials disparage non-appliedfields of study, and colleges and universities are compelled to assess their “value added” and“return on investment.”

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with “academic” institutions. Thus, I anticipate that to become generally useful as credentials, as

distinct from assuming the limited position now filled by occupationally-specific certificates,

badges will have to be issued by schools, colleges, and universities to supplement diplomas and

degrees.20 To the extent that employers will trust badges only if they have been issued by entities

enjoying “accreditation,” this imperative will be strengthened.

A further reason to anticipate that badges will not displace academic credentials is, as

noted above, employers, despite their complaints about the shortcomings of college and high

school graduates, apparently are content to rely on traditional academic credentials, and the

reputations of the institutions from which these are issued (Morley & Ansley, 2007; Tomlinson,

2008). Moreover, if the UK experience is any guide, even when credentials that are explicitly

linked to vocational skills and employment are on offer, they are eschewed in favor of

conventional academic credentials, partly for the prestige they hold and the perceived advantages

they confer, as well as because of the identities they confer (Wolf, 2002).

Put more formally, conventional higher education, despite the assaults and critiques to

which is presently exposed, apparently continues to possess the legitimacy that is characteristic

20 A more nuanced argument than I am offering here would not speak so generally about“employers.” Rather, it would distinguish among employers and fields of activity according tothe degree of institutionalization, i.e. strength of normative, regulative, and cognitive frameworks(Scott, 2008) and strength of technical base, i.e the extent to which production is based on knownand necessary organizational arrangements of materials and time, and behaviors of workers. Iwould expect badges to be most readily adopted in areas of activity which are weaklyinstitutionalized, but are characterized by a strong technical base. Information Technology is onesuch field. At the recent Badge Summit, Michael Strautmanis, who worked in the ObamaAdministration, and is now Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at Disney, identified the“low hanging fruit” for those who wanted to promote badges as being “industries that are beingdisrupted, anxious to find ways to change and be relevant” (Bull, 2014).

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of highly institutionalized organizational fields. There remain differentiated labor markets, for

which “legitimate practitioners” must be identified; universities claims to provide expertise that

is of unique value remain credible; universities’ claims to product differentiation, such that their

products “are different from products and services elsewhere available (for example that

universities can supply different kinds of knowledge than apprenticeships...) appear accepted

(DiMagio, 1988, 15; my emphasis beginning “universities can...”); and demand remains high

(DiMaggio, 1988). It is, of course, that legitimacy which is being challenged by badge

proponents who may be viewed as “institutional entrepreneurs” advancing a new “public theory”

(DiMaggiio, 1988) according to which badges would fulfill the requirements for labor market

differentiation, expertise, product differentiation, and demand characteristic of successfully

institutionalized innovations.21

While I am far from able to predict the success of that effort, I am prepared to say that to

the extent that badges issued from outside of formal academic education institutions make

headway, it will be to the extent that their issuers share features with recognizably “educational

institutions.”22 Their products will be nominally standardized to ensure credibility and

21 While the attacks on higher education from multiple sources may be interpreted as anassault of on the legitimacy of the organizations which the field comprises, the opposite may wellbe the case. As Kraatz & Block (2008) observe, “the very fact that different institutional actorscare enough about an organization to levy multiple demands upon it may be the more tellingindicator of its actual legitimacy” (Kraatz & Block, 2008, 38).Under this interpretation, the"attacks" on schools, colleges, and universities may be less attacks on their legitimacy than a signthat these are so legitimate, and so important, they must be rescued from their wayward paths.

22 Thus, my argument does not contradict, but, rather, supports David Bills’ (2004) claimsthat the boundaries between what is readily recognized as “school” or “school-based” and whatis “skill enhancement” in “non-school based” settings like job training, adult education, and

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interpretability, and to promote and sustain a “logic of confidence” of the sort Myer and Rowan

(1978) associated with schools.23 Their issuers will require accreditation. And, the categories

institutionalized in formal schooling, i.e. student - teacher, subject matter (qua “competencies”),

and instruction will be in evidence. Under this interpretation, while they challenge the

credentialing monopoly of conventional higher education institutions, badges expand, rather

than contract, the “school forms” about which Davies and Mehta write (2011). Instead of

contesting and supplanting the instutionalization of “recognizable instructor and student roles,

curricula, and certification” (ibid., 3), they would bring more people, more activities, and more

kinds of learning, doing, and being within the embrace of formal, albeit micro-divided,

certification. This suggests that interpenetration of schooling (broadly defined) and society can

expand even as the autonomy of higher education, and whatever symbolic power to define

legitimate knowledge may have issued from its privileged position (Bourdieu and Passeron,

1977; Stevens et al., 2008), are diminishing.

Badges could further the subordination of the field of education to the field of economicpower.

apprenticeship, are getting fuzzier, and that “the link between education [i.e. formal schooling]and work may or may not continue to intensify, but the linkage between credentials and workwill” (ibid., 204; original emphasis). I am simply adding the supposition that any proliferation ofcredentials issued from outside traditional academic institutions will take on forms mimickingthe features of formal schooling.

23 Standardization, as well as conformity to recognized principles or accepted rules andstandards, promotes socio-political legitimacy in organizational innovations (Aldrich & Fiol,1994). Standardization will prove a disappointment to badge advocates who aspire to an opensystem of diverse communities of practice, which permit, as it were, a thousand flowers tobloom.

20

Having argued that badges will not supplant academic credentials as necessary labor

market credentials, I want, nevertheless, to argue that adoption of badges by universities, e.g., in

courses, in degree programs, and by career offices, could further subordinate the education field

to the field of economic power. By “subordinate” I mean that market logic will increasingly

infuse discourse, practices, meanings, and identities within education organizations. This, I

argue, is independent of the intentions of the advocates and adopters of badges within higher

education. And, it is true even though the origins of and advocacy for badges lie largely outside

strictly economic fields. As noted above, the origins of badges lie in gaming. The badges project

was initiated by foundations and campus-based institutes and centers. The project is pursued by

those interested in “learning systems,” and “instructional design.” Employers are an audience to

be convinced to adopt badges, not the institutional entrepreneurs promoting them.

But, subordination does not necessarily come by the direct subjection of one field to

control by another. It comes by the importation of “logics of action” (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008;

Thornton, Ocasio, & Loundsbury, 2012) from one field into another. The importation of initially

alien logics of action across institutional boundaries into “academic” institutions can arise from

imperatives to acquire resources from sources external to the institution, for example, funding

from legislatures and donors, from private companies for research, or from government agencies

newly insistent on demonstrations of potential commercial utility arising from funded projects.

External resource providers can condition their further support on adherence to demands for

accountability, and submission to the “audit culture” (Shore & Wright, 2000; Shore, 2008). It can

come in response to client demand and competitive pressures, as when some liberal arts colleges

21

added business courses to the curriculum (Kraatz & Zajac, 1996). It can come through

organizational adaptation to new internal policies, as when liberal arts colleges adopted

enrollment management practices in ways which applied market logic to financial aid (Kraatz,

Ventresca, & Deng, 2010). It can come when new relationships are formed across institutional

boundaries, as in the case of “business-university” partnerships. Such partnerships involve actors

from each field not only interacting with one another, but taking on roles within the institution

with which they are newly interacting, an aspect of the phenomenon labeled “academic

capitalism” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). Finally, “changes in the larger environment may

encourage the growth and spread of practices based on a nondominant logic, helping to

strengthen that logic within a specific field” (Berman, 2012, 264-265).

Higher education is distinctively vulnerable to the importation of conflicting logics, in a

way, say, that the military is not. Conflicts between “practical” and “academic” logics have been

endemic to the system at least since mid-nineteenth century when Land Grant colleges were

established with the charge of adding agriculture, science, military science and engineering to the

curriculum. In recent years, shifts from a liberal arts and science core in the undergraduate

curriculum to an occupational and professional core have been pronounced (Brint et al., 2005),

occasioning laments about the “decline of the humanities” (e.g., Nussbaum, 2010) and efforts to

fashion a “21st-Century Liberal Education,” based on “Essential Learning Outcomes.” 24 From the

24 See the American Association of Colleges and University’s project “Liberal Educationand America's Promise (LEAP).” https://www.aacu.org/leap/. For the point I am trying to make,the subtitle of one of the organization’s publications, “The Leap Vision for Learning,” is telling:“Outcomes, Practices, Impact, and Employers Views (http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/leap_vision_summary.pdf;emphasis added).

22

perspective of institutional theory, higher education is internally a “pluralistic field,” having “the

potential for fragmentation, incoherence, conflict, goal-ambiguity, and organizational instability”

(Kraatz & Block, 2008, 4 [Page numbers from manuscript draft]).

I see the key mechanism by which badges will further infuse market logic into the

practices of higher education as being that the identification of “competencies” for which to

award badges will provide a means to make “learning outcomes” and “job requirements”

commensurate and mutually translatable. Morley & Ansley (2007) claim that “[w]hile employers

might want to know more about what graduates bring to their new jobs, they want this

information classified within their own discourses, rather than in those of higher education”

(Morley & Ansley, 2007, 237). Badges awarded for competencies can provide the bridge

between academic and business or market discourse.

This will be obvious when badges are awarded in explicitly vocational programs. For

example, competencies assessed in the General Nutrition course of Madison College’s Dietary

Managers Program include, among others, “Compare the Nutrition Needs of the Life Cycle,”

“Identify Functions of Vitamins,” and “Describe the Process of Digestion.” It will be obvious, as

well, in programs that are not occupationally-specific, but are motivated by forging a closer link

between curriculum and employers’ needs. College for America, an enterprise25 of the University

of Southern New Hampshire, which offers degrees intended for working adults, identifies a set

25 I choose my terminology here deliberately. The head of the College for America is itsChief Academic Officer, who also serves as the college’s Chief Assessment Officer. Otherpositions include Executive Director, Product Manager, and Chief Learning Architect. SeeKazin, 2012.

23

of competency areas that includes “Personal Effectiveness,” “Teamwork and Collaboration,”

“Communication Skills,” and “Business Essentials” (College for America, n.d.).26 While this

program does not offer badges at present, USNH’s president has written favorably about badges

(Le Blanc, 2013).

Badges as bridges between discourses may be less obvious in programs not explicitly

devoted to workforce development or specific occupations, but with an applied orientation. The

UC-Davis’ Sustaining Agriculture & Food Systems major, for example, awards badges for

“Strategic Management,” “Systems Thinking,” Experimentation,” “Interpersonal

Communication,” “Understanding Values,” and “Civic Engagement” (Normoyle Power Point

presentation). Excepting the last, these are all competencies that can readily map onto capabilities

sought by employers.27

A second mechanism infusing market logic into the practices of higher education will be

interest shown in badges by career counseling and placement offices. This interest is nascent

now, but may well grow. Career counseling and placement staff could well become “brokers”

between employers and institutions of higher education, who, in expressing the “needs” of

employers, will insert employers’ norms and discourse into conversation with students, faculty,

26 Responding to a request, the college shared only its competency areas, not the 120specific competencies that students must master in order to earn their degrees.

27 Similarly, the badges awarded by Bill Watson in his “Computer and Video GameDesign for Education” course at Purdue University includes “Educational Game Designer.” In his“Advanced Practices in Learning Systems Design” course, Watson awards badges for being an“Instructional Design Case Analyst and Problem Solver,” and a “Current Issues Commentator.”Each badge requires satisfactory meeting of a number of specific “challenges.”

24

and administrators.

A third mechanism by which badges will import market logic into academia will be the

involvement of private firms in badging. Pearson, for example, very recently announced that “is

offering academic institutions, professional associations and other high-stakes credentialing

programs an innovative new Open Badge platform called Acclaim” (Pearson, 2014).28 The

company regards its Acclaim Open Badges as a “game-changer in the way credentials will be

handled, by both employers interested in quickly verifying qualifications and learners who will

now be able to prove and showcase their achievements whenever and wherever they like” (ibid.).

Pearson will not merely be offering a “product” whose value education institutions will

have to calculate. Pearson’s view of the purposes of badges follows a strictly instrumental

calculus, linking learning in higher education directly to employers’ needs, and defining

knowledge in terms of applicable skills. Pearson views badges as en efficient means to “increase

transparency and establish trusted communication between employers, jobseekers and education

providers. By collecting skill-based badges, the record of achievement begun in secondary school

becomes the foundation upon which workers build their capabilities and tell their stories to

employers throughout their careers. Employers will use the verified information gleaned from

skill-based badges to identify qualified candidates and to communicate skill gaps to education

providers” (Pearson, 2013, 2). Pearson anticipates that once the “requirements of employers [are

aligned] with the offerings of educational institutions in a way that leads to learners becoming

28 Other firms announcing at the Badge Summit their intentions to adopt badges includeETS and Blackboard. See https://twitter.com/Badges4Learning.

25

competent entry-level professionals,” and that this is accomplished “ through a trusted ecosystem

built around clear communication of valuable skills and knowledge,” “higher education providers

can prove their case for the ROI of college tuition and employers will have more efficient access

to qualified workers and better transparency around job skill gaps with schools and training

providers” (Pearson, 2013, 6).

Pearson does not hide its intention to displace “precarious values” associated with

academia (Kraatz et al., 2010). It identifies as important “remaining considerations” the facts that

“[e]ducators and training providers must become more comfortable with unbundling diplomas

and embracing outcomes-driven learning design,” and “[c]ollege faculty will resist badges

initially. For some, the adaptation may be difficult because it requires–perhaps for the first

time–examining and defining the marketable job skills that students will develop in their

courses” (Pearson, 2013, 6). While Pearson and other companies cannot directly impose these

demands on faculty, outside pressures for colleges and universities to demonstrate their “value”

and return on investment, may create a welcome for them among administrators.

Badges will further diffuse neo-liberal consciousness and subjectivity, as well as possiblydeepen employer control over workers.

In a number of respects, badges are well-suited to constructing the ideal neo-liberal

subject. Badges fit well with processes of individuation, customization, and competition, and

with an orientation toward consumption, characteristic of neo-liberal societies (see e.g.,

Watkins, 2008; Collin, 2011b;). Badges will extend market logic in that they are “client-

friendly,” and are not a one-time acquisition, but can, and should, be “updated” as part of “life-

long learning.” Insofar as the links between education, training regime, and labor market in neo-

26

liberal societies are based in individual choice (Brown, Green & Lauder, 2001), the availability

of badges in a postsecondary education market of proliferating options, would prove a good fit.

Badges will advance the neo-liberal discourse of “employability.” Within this discourse,

individuals are responsible for continuously developing, maintaining, and communicating their

“employability” in the context of highly competitive job markets (Brown, Hesketh, & Williams,

2002; Brown & Hesketh, 2004). As Pearson Education, Inc. (2013, 5) observed “[t]he economic

disruptions of the last two decades have made workers responsible for managing their own career

development through learning that starts in secondary school and college but continues

throughout their careers.” “...[A]ccording to the new common-sense, workers do not simply

offer their social and cultural resources to capital: they actively sell themselves to potential

employers as workers uniquely positioned to leverage social and cultural resources for capitalist

enterprise” (Collin, 2011, 618; original emphasis). Badges are ideally suited to the requirement

that individuals “sell” themselves on the market. This is because they are, literally, for “display.”

Sunny Lee, of the Mozilla Foundation, characterized the Mozilla digital “backpack” as enabling

the learner to “curate and manage the image they want to represent to the rest of the world” (Ash,

2012). This, Kathleen Radionoff, pointed out, appeals to Millenials, Gen X, and later cohorts

“who like to post their accomplishments” (Radionoff interview).

Paradoxically, badges, if not accompanied by diplomas and degrees, may facilitate

deepening employer control over employees. I say paradoxically, because badges can be used to

dismantle visible workplace hierarchies with which conventional education credentials are

associated. Historically, education credentials have been used to allocate and legitimize

27

differentials in authority, autonomy, and reward, (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Wright, 1979). Indeed,

they have been used to help define workplace positions. Horizontally differentiated badges would

not have these properties. As noted earlier, this may result in flatter workplace hierarchies. But,

this does not necessarily imply diminished employer control over workers.

Vertically arranged formal categories of education credentials have served to

institutionally link education with career stages (Hefler & Markowitsch, 2012; my italics).

Horizontally differentiated badges will make easier the elimination of the idea, and, therefore,

employees’ expectations, of enjoying promotion through career stages. The elimination of

prescribed career stages is said to be characteristic of firms in the “new economy” or under the

“new capitalism”29 The elimination of career stages eliminates possibilities for organizationally

29 But see Doogan (2009) for skepticism that this and other features imputed to the “newcapitalism” are widespread, or growing rapidly. Moreover, the scenario I am sketching hereconflicts dramatically with the scenario advanced by Baker (2009). Baker writes “[m]aybe mostimportantly is that the system of credentials, in terms of degrees giving access to sets of activitiesand management responsibilities inside the organisation has become thoroughly blended with thehierarchy of the modern organisation ...The underlying belief in a schooled society is that theserationalised domains are to be trusted only to educationally credentialed individuals ineducationally created areas of expertise” (ibid., 173-174; original emphasis). Because heperceives that more and more positions are taking on managerial features, Baker (2009) doesanticipate a flatter hierarchy of workplace authority than presently obtains, although he appears toanticipate clear career ladders. However, the workplace he imagines is more professionalized,and even more grounded in formal education than in the past. Baker’s view is that “[w]idespreadeducation in a postindustrial society creates cultural ideas about new types of knowledge, newtypes of experts, new definitions of personal success and failure, a new workplace andconceptions of jobs, and new definitions of intelligence and human talent” (Baker, 2011a, 11). Baker is here speaking about formal, academic schooling. I am envisioning what workplaceswould be like if badges superseded academic credentials, even if badges did index higher-orderthinking, problem solving, collaborative skills, and the like, something about which I amskeptical based on my expectation that badges which take in labor markets will be those indexingnarrower and more specific skills than those to which Baker (2009, 2011a) is referring.

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defined advancement, and, thus, standardized increases in rewards, authority, and autonomy. As

Brown et al. (2002) explain, “[t]he shift from bureaucratic to flexible paradigms of

organisational efficiency...has meant that it is no longer a question of gaining credentials in order

to climb bureaucratic career ladders, but of maintaining one’s employability, of keeping fit in

both the internal and external markets for jobs through the acquisition of externally validated

credentials, in-house training programmes, social contacts and networks” (23-24). Improvements

in position, in these circumstances, will be more individualized, customized, and timed solely

according to employers’ judgements of workers’ value to a firm’s immediate needs.

While some scholars have emphasized the utility of formal education credentials to

stratifying workplace positions, and rendering workers more vulnerable to control and

exploitation (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), for workers in managerial and professional position,

credentials have entitled them to claim expertise, and the concomitant status and rewards

associated with positions reserved for those appropriately credentialed. Formal academic

credentials provides a base of solidarity for advancing claims on the basis of professional

expertise (Brown, 2001), something which some badge advocates hope that badges will

supersede.30 But, badges, if standing alone, could help to produce a heterogeneous, atomized

workforce and labor pool, without providing employees bases on which to make claims of

30 Chaplin (2011) quotes one prominent advocate of badges as saying that “[t]he badgesystem could be seen as a great blow against The Expert, since there will no longer be amonopoly of academic institutions deciding what warrants achievement and bestowing thehonor.”

29

employers.31 This, of course, would be a perverse effect of an innovation intended to strengthen

the credentials of those whose access to conventional academic credentials has been limited.

Worker insecurity or “precarious employment” (Kalleberg, 2011) is a feature of neo-

liberal economies. Rather than provide long-term employment, firms are increasingly assembling

teams of workers according to the needs of temporary projects (Crouch, Feingold, & Sako,

1999). Insofar as badges index relatively narrow and specific competencies, they will facilitate

flexible, “just in time” assembling - and disassembling - of temporary teams of workers.

Badges will be unlikely to diminish stratification and inequalities of opportunity.

I have been discussing badges largely from macro-social and meso-organizational

perspectives. These perspectives are central to the collaborative project in which I am engaged

with Scott Davies, Jale Mehta, and others, entitled “Education in the New Society: Renewing the

Sociology of Education.” The dominant tradition in American sociology of education, however,

continues to be concerned with the distribution of life chances, and the role of schooling in

stratification processes (Brint, 2009; Olneck, 2012).32 Advocates regard badges as providing low-

cost, mass open access to learning opportunities now closed off to most. In their view, badges

31 The importance to claims by workers of sequenced classifications can be seen in theprecise training requirements and job specifications characteristic of unionized jobs.

32 This concern, while usually pursued with micro-level data represented as discretevariables, would be more fruitfully pursued if embedded into meso- and macro-level analyses.Recall Hefler & Markowitsch’s (2012) point, quoted earlier, that “particular social relationsenacted in the organization of work provides the basis for the institutional effects of formal adulteducation, strengthening its position in some countries and limiting its impact in others” (ibid.,163). The effects of individual-level variables derive from “cultural and organizational rules,whose implications and consequences affect individual life courses independent of the propertiesof the individuals involved” (Meyer et al., 2005, 34).

30

will democratize learning, and, as a consequence, broaden opportunities for employment. As

Mozilla’s White Paper claims, ““These projects provide paths to learning that are unbundled

from the financial, social, geographical and cultural barriers of formal education” (Mozilla

Foundation & Peer2Peer University, 4). And, as Crotty (2012) writes, ““[M]ost Americans,

especially in today’s rough economy, just need a low-cost way to obtain the skills that will get

them a fulfilling job or at least a better-paying one. Enter the badge” (ibid.). There is reason to

doubt that this happy outcome can be extended to secure “2 Million Better Futures.”33

First, as I argued above, to be valuable badges will likely have to be associated with

graduation from accredited academic institutions. This is further suggested by employers’ current

suspicions about online degrees and credits, and their insistence that such degrees and credits be

associated with conventional education institutions with established reputations (Adams &

DeFleur, 2006; Columbaro & Monaghan, n.d.).

Second, we know that there is a Matthew Effect34 in adult education, further training, and

other non-school-based learning opportunities. Those who already have the most training, get the

most further training (Bills, 2004), in part, because of “stratified incentives” (Rosenbaum, 2001)

33 “2 Million Better Futures” refers to the collaboration between the Clinton GlobalInitiative with the Mozilla Open Badge Project, HASTAC, and the MacArthur Foundation toinvolve learners in acquiring badges, and employers in utilizing badges to find and hire talentedworkers. See http://www.2mbetterfutures.org/.

34 The Matthew Effect, or the phenomenon accumulated advantages, was introduced intosociology by Robert K. Merton in his 1968 paper of that title. The name draws from Matthew25:29, King James Version. “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall haveabundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.” Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect.

31

that lead them to realize the greatest benefit from further training.35 We might expect that those

who will have the most information and ability to search out badge opportunities, to persevere in

accumulating badges, and have the most skill in assembling valuable combinations of badges

will be those who are already advantaged in their respective labor markets.

Third, the number of adequately skilled and credentialed workers already exceeds

opportunities for employment, a phenomenon Livingstone (2010), terms “underemployment” (in

contradistinction to “overeducation”) and “understilisation.”. The trend over the last thirty years

has been for polarization in the types of jobs which are growing, with little growth in the middle-

levels, and greater growth in the highest- and lowest-levels (Acemoglu & Autor, 2012).36 Even if

badges might help individuals compete for middle-level positions, they are unlikely to alter the

occupational structure in ways to create significantly greater numbers of such positions.37

Earlier I argued that badges fit well with the neo-liberal emphasis on “employability,” and

35 Though, see Livingstone (2010), on the large amount of adult education loweroccupation incumbents engage in. “...[O]ver 80% in all economic classes, are active in informaljob-related learning regardless of their formal educational attainment. This finding suggests thatthe continuing acquisition of skills among lower economic classes is more prevalent than oftenassumed” (ibid., 216). Badge proponents would no doubt argue that this unacknowledged skillacquisition should be recognized, and that badges would be an ideal mechanism by which toaccomplish this.

36 This does not mean that middle-level jobs are disappearing at the rate conveyed byimages of a “hollowed out” occupational structure. Holzer & Lerman (2007), for example,anticipate continuing robust demand in middle-level jobs, and see value in programs to enhanceworkers’ skills (see, also, Holzer, 2013). Skeptics question claims of a “skills gap” (e.g.,Cappelli, 2012). A more relevant question for us probably is whether badges will prove relevantto the cultivation and credentialing of high-level 21st-century skills of the sort discussed by Levy& Murnane (2004). These include “expert thinking” and “complex communication.”

37 Both Baker (2009) and Acemoglu & Autor (2012) posit that employers redesign jobs totake advantage of enhanced worker skills. Even if true, that does not mean they increase thenumber of jobs available.

32

the on-going construction of a curated “self” to present to employers. What that claim neglected,

however, is that employers for higher-level positions demand a narrative or story that depicts

individuals as integrated wholes who have something unique to contribute to a firm. This

involves integrating not only academic experiences, but also extracurricular activities (Rivera,

2011). Even graduates of elite universities cannot just tally up their activities and

accomplishments. These must “be packaged in ways that demonstrate the personal qualities that

meet the range of managerial competences (sic) organizations have benchmarked as indicative of

elite employability. The ‘economy of experience’ has to be packaged as a narrative of

employability that must be sold to employers” (Brown & Hesketh, 2004, 220; original emphasis).

I do not see badges which reward “competencies” as readily contributing to such narratives or

stories.

The single strongest constraint on badges markedly enhancing opportunity is that

education credentials, of any kind, are positional goods. Because they are used to make

distinctions among individuals, their value lies in their relative scarcity. The very characteristics

that make badges attractive - wide availabilty, low cost, relative ease of acquisition - will

diminish their value in credentials markets.38 A more plausible outcome than broadly extending

opportunity would be that badges would layer another level of competition onto those who have

degrees or diplomas. If it is true that credential inflation broadens criteria of selection, such that

an academic credential is necessary, but not sufficient for occupational attainment (Brown,

38 It is possible that badges, were they to become widely distributed, would, like highschool diplomas, serve as a “defensive necessity,” creating a boundary between badge holdersand those with no credentials at all. Their value would inhere not in the significant number ofopportunities they conferred, but in the utter lack of opportunity they prevented. See Olneck &Kim (1989) on high school graduation as a “defensive necessity.”

33

2003; Brown & Hesketh, 2004), then we can imagine badges as a “something else” you have to

acquire post-graduation. This would place pressure on individuals to perpetually acquire

badges, transforming “lifelong learning” into an extension over the lifecourse of what some have

labeled the “opportunity trap” (Brown, 2003). In this scenario, badges would be a terrain of

unceasing competition for further credentials in the context of insecure employment.

IV. CONCLUSION

I want to conclude with an introduction that I refrained from offering at the beginning of

this paper. I initially situated the paper in the context of challenges to conventional higher

education and the credentials it awards, the possibility of a crisis in our existing “credentials

regime,” and the possibility of a new “credentials ecosystem. I also referred to the emergence of

new networks of education governance. I broadened this context to include changes in the

organization of work and employment relations which bear on the markets for credentials.

I casually alluded to processes that sociologists study using concepts associated with neo-

institutional theory, such as institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, and fields. Later, in the

course of my discussion of the possible consequences of badges, I introduced another concept

associated with neo-institutional theory, namely, logics of action. But, I did not introduce the

study of badges within the context of an overarching, fundamental sociological problematic. I

want to do that now, albeit in the most sketchy fashion.

The problematic that I have in mind is most evident in my contentions that badges will

contribute to the redefinition of certified learning as discrete competencies, and that badges may

contribute to the development of a hyper-heterogeneous and atomized workforce in which

34

individuals are defined by packages of skills, knowledge, and know-how. The common theme

here is social division. Social division is encompassed by one of sociology’s founding concerns,

namely, the bases of social solidarity, and the connections between solidarity, one the one hand,

and competition and conflict, on the other.

I am only beginning to think this through, and am uncertain where the path may lead.

Will, for example, badges contribute to, or weaken, occupations as a locus of solidarity (see

Grusky & Galescu, 2005)? More precisely, will badges contribute to re-definitions of

“occupations,” with consequences for the loci and strength of solidarity? Will competency-based

education, recognized through the awarding of badges, entail changes in the “social organization”

of curricula (Young, 1971) and in the “classification” and “framing” of educational knowledge

(Bernstein, 1971), such that institutionally produced collective identities with which we are

familiar lose their meaning, and new, more diffuse, identities are constructed? If so, what will

that mean for processes of “social closure” (Murphy, 1988) by which education credentials

confer status and remuneration, and provide opportunities for upward mobility? If I am correct

that badges will be part of a process by which the autonomy of the education field is weakened,

and further subordinated to the economic field of power, will competition and conflict between

those within the academy with an affinity for market-logic and those who insist on purely

“academic” principles and criteria of evaluation fracture solidarity among university faculty?39

The historian, Daniel T. Rodgers (2012) has termed ours an “age of fracture.” He writes

of the post-Word War II period, “[s]trong metaphors of society were supplanted by weaker ones.

39 My formulation of this issue is based on my reading of Chad Goldberg’s (2013)discussion, in his “Struggle and solidarity: civic republican elements in Pierre Bourdieu’spolitical sociology,” of Bourdieu’s analyses of solidarity within and across fields.

35

Imagined collectivities shrank; notions of structure and power thinned out. Viewed by its acts of

mind, the last quarter of the century was an era of disaggregation, a great age of fracture” (Loc.

33, Kindle edition; my emphasis). A bit later, Rodgers writes that “[t]he terrain of this process

was the field of ideas and perception, not, in the first instance, society itself” (ibid., Loc. 65). My

intuition is that in actual social organization ours is an “age of fracture.” My intuition is, as well,

that power is being flattened and dispersed, but not in ways that are empowering to individuals.

Perhaps, I am - without having read Foucault to any serious degree - discovering my “inner

Foucault.” Or, more likely, I am being haunted by my reading, almost fifty-years ago, of

Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man. Finally, my intuition is that digital badges are important

because they are part of processes I am only dimly intuiting. Whether my intuitions will be

sustained by research remains to be seen.40

References

Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor. “What Does Human Capital Do?: A Review of Goldin andKatz’s The Race Between Education and Technology.” Masachusetts Institute ofTechnology, Department of Economics Working Paper 12-02, January 11, 2012.

Adams, Jonathan, Margaret H. DeFleur. “The Acceptability of Online Degrees Earned as aCredential for Obtaining Employment,” Communication Education, 55 (2006): 32-45.

Aldrich, Howard E., C. Marlene Fiol. “Fools Rush in? The Institutional Context of IndustryCreation.” The Academy of Management Review 19 (1994): 645-670.

40 Perhaps my unease will dissipate when I engage the burgeoning literature aboutlearning and education in the digital era. See e.g., Collins & Halverson (2009), Davidson &Goldberg (2010), McCluskey & Winter (2012).

36

Ash, Katie. “‘'Digital Badges’ Would Represent Students' Skill Acquisition.” Education Week,June 13, 2012. Available at http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/ 2012/06/13/03 badges.h05. html?tkn=VVTFxfZ mUnTrwnZw9gre Lk0bnLLzPz5qEvsj&cmp= ENL- EU-EWS1&intc=es&print=1. Downloaded August 8, 2012.

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