The readings for this unit were quite a fun and sometimes an alarming read similar to episodes of the show Black Mirror. All scenarios presented were in the realm of possibility and brought positive and negative aspects to that reality. The combination of readings and seeing many badge/credential posts on LinkedIn, my potential future idea was that of badges, microcredentials and internal accreditation swallow and control a large portion of ed-tech.

In this potential future, large FAAMG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google) corporations have seized more educational “market share” by creating corporate specific education aimed at creating a productive and specifically skilled workforce. The internal education somewhat constrains you into this work environment as it’s only used in that institution or any competitors are too small to realistically compete. The term “golden handcuffs” can be used in that these large corporations have the control, knowledge and capital to keep you locked into their ecosystem (and we as an individual might be happy with that!).

This is a somewhat pessimistic future that assumes the continued dominance and growth of large tech firms. Given the COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly sparked numerous discussions across all institutions, the training and hiring/retaining a productive workforce is being carefully formulated. For some perspective, a good yearly turn overrate would be anything below 10%. For Google at ~140,000 employees that is 14,000 new hires needed yearly in a good case scenario before including any expansion. With continued year over year growth it is in their interest to retain talent and train efficiently when recruiting. By internally training credentials directly they control quality and get the learners ready to create value for their corporation.

Although we would view this as potentially detrimental to post-secondary institutions, as mentioned above many individuals would likely praise this change.  Given the prestige and incentives generally associated with these large corporations it’s a potential challenge ahead to maintain broad education availability that is wanted by employers and society.