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Granting credentials instead of degrees and replacing grades with competency-based evaluations are necessary for higher education to support individuality, but they are not sufficient.
We can accomplish this by building on the competency-based credentialing foundation and focusing on two additional features of the higher education system. First, students should have more educational options to choose from than the ones offered by any single university. Second, the credentialing process should be independent of any particular institution, so that students have the ability to stack their credentials, no matter how or where they earned them.
Though I won’t disagree that a nineteen-year-old is more apt to make a foolish mistake than a forty-year-old, I am also skeptical of any system that tells us we cannot trust people to make decisions for themselves. Indeed, the notion that we should take away individuals’ abilities to make decisions and allow the system to decide is quintessential Taylorism—the kind of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place.
These three concepts—granting credentials, not diplomas; replacing grades with competency; and letting students determine their educational pathways—can help transform higher education from a system modeled after Taylorist factories that values top-down hierarchy and standardization, to a dynamic ecosystem where each student can pursue the education that suits her or him best.
During the Age of Average we have defined opportunity as “equal access”—as ensuring that everyone has access to the same experiences.12 Of course, equal access is undoubtedly preferable to older alternatives such as nepotism, cronyism, racism, misogyny, and classism. And there is no doubt that equal access has improved society immensely, creating a society that is more tolerant, respectful, and inclusive.13 But equal access suffers from one major shortcoming: it aims to maximize individual opportunity on average by ensuring that everyone has access to the same standardized system, whether or
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Only equal fit creates equal opportunity.14
Equal fit may seem like a novel idea, but it is ultimately the same view of opportunity expressed by Abraham Lincoln, when he declared that government’s “leading object is to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.”15 Equal fit is an ideal that can bring our institutions into closer alignment with our values, and give each of us the chance to become the very best we can be, and to pursue a life of excellence, as we define it.
We continue to enforce a curriculum that defines not only what students learn, but also how, when, at what pace, and in what order they learn it. In other words, whatever else we may say, traditional public education systems violate the principles of individuality.
James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America, which he published in the depths of the Great Depression. Adams argued for a view of the American dream that ran counter to the materialism of his time: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”17
The original formulation of the American dream was not about becoming rich or famous; it was about having the opportunity to live your life to its fullest potential, and being appreciated for who you are as an individual, not because of your type or rank. Though America was one of the first places where this was a possibility for many of its citizens, the dream is not limited to any one country or peoples; it is a universal dream that we all share. And this dream has been corrupted by averagarianism.
The ideal that we call the American dream is one we all share—the dream of becoming the best we can be, on our own terms, of living a life of excellence, as we define it. It’s a dream worth striving for.
