Policy Advisors

Parchment News

Empowering the Employer: Parchment Summit 2017

With March here, many people start thinking about spring, St. Patrick’s Day and March Madness. But for those of us in the credentialing world, we worked hard to make sure March means one thing: The Parchment Summit on Innovating Academic Credentials. This year’s event, held Wednesday, March 1st in Washington DC, focused on bridging the gap between employers and credentialing institutions. We were joined by journalists, leaders in higher education and employers like JetBlue Airways with the common thread amongst the group being a shared interest in ensuring we have a qualified, engaged workforce. In year two of the Parchment...

Parchment News

Wake-Up Call: The Non-Traditional Students Aren’t the Ones You Think

History and common wisdom says that college students tend to come from a suburban upbringing, and head straight to university after high school. The data tells a very different story. A majority of today’s students—the traditional students—would have been considered non-traditional only a few years ago. They’re taking gap years, starting businesses and families, and generally getting a highly tailored post-secondary education when they need it. Demographics are shifting in many ways. For example, according to the Lumina Foundation, enrollment among African Americans rose 72 percent from the mid-1990s through 2012, while Hispanic enrollment tripled over the same period. Even...

Parchment News

Turning Credentials Into Opportunities: A Vision for Parchment

To our school and university members, employees and partners, Parchment’s mission is to help turn credentials into opportunities, and we take this mission seriously. More than a slogan, it’s why most of us at Parchment joined the company and why so many schools, colleges and universities are members of the Parchment network.   We include the qualifier “help” intentionally because it reminds us that our role is one of enabling. Our school and university members are the central players when it comes to making academic credentials a more effective and meaningful currency for pursuing opportunities for further education or in...

Parchment News

UPDATE: ITT Tech Student Credential Orders

Last month, we shared a blog post about how Parchment had begun taking what at the time were advanced credential orders for ITT Tech students.  Soon after, we began processing those orders as records became available and we are now pleased to report that as of Friday, October 14, the backlog of ITT Tech credential orders is at zero!  It is a great relief to know that ITT Tech students are no longer constrained by access to their records to pursue their education and career plans. Of course, at any one time there may be several hundred requests being processed,...

Parchment News

How to Use Lifetime Learning to Climb the Ladder

Thanks to technology, it’s never been easier to adopt a lifelong learning habit. Some of us have one and don’t even know it. Consider the customer service rep who scours the Internet to find old manuals that hold the answers for customers who call in with difficult questions. Every piece of gathered data improves her chances of serving well, which, in turn, increases her value. Every industry has this version of the stereotypical go-getter. Journalists who master new research databases are learners. Machinists who figure out how to retool an assembly line are learners. And schoolteachers who spend summers digging...

Parchment News

Parchment is Now Taking Advance Credential Orders for ITT students

At the center of  the closing of ITT Educational Services, Inc are the students and alumni who were pursuing their postsecondary education and now face the challenge of earning their degree  elsewhere.  Will other colleges accept their ITT credits?  When will they gain access to their transcripts to begin the process of transfer?  In many ways these questions reveal the broader issue of transferring course credits in the U.S. and the lack of a Transfer Student Bill of Rights.  But they are especially urgent and real for those who attended ITT and are now facing the involuntary need to change...

Parchment News

Top Companies and Places That Need Transcripts and How They Use Them

Whether you’re counseling students still in high school or plotting strategy with thirty-somethings on the way to finishing graduate school, transcripts will follow them to the next stage of their academic and professional careers. You can help them by better understanding how schools, employers, and government agencies use transcripts to make decisions. Below is a closer look at the general consumption habits of these groups, as well as the top receivers of Parchment transcripts in each. Educational Institutions Aside from letters of recommendation, the academic transcript is the most important document that crosses an administrator’s desk. Executive Director for Enrollment...

Parchment News

Why Students, Employers and Schools Need to Move Faster To Make Stackable Credentials Available to All

While there’s no disputing the value of a college degree when it comes to earning potential, nearly three-quarters of grads end up working in a field that’s unrelated to what they studied in school. Liberty Street Economics made that forecast after studying Census Data from 2010.1 Academics have spent the years since discussing ways to connect the dots between learning and professional achievement, leading many — including us here at Parchment — to advocate for what are known as stackable credentials. Forming a Career Path, One Credential at a Time Simply defined, stackable credentials are a series of earned milestones....