There is a common narrative that higher education is slow to respond—to changes in the marketplace and the workforce, to societal shifts and to different types of learners. The assumption in this narrative is that institutions struggle to change because they’re slow, resistant or sometimes even blind. But higher education isn’t slow to change because we lack ideas or effort. We can be slow to change because we need to do more work to build systems of trust that create agility. The goal is not simply to move faster. We can move at an incredible pace, though sometimes in the wrong direction, with ease. The goal is to respond to emerging opportunities quickly but without compromising the integrity of the learner record or the credibility of the institution.
Imagine that a continuing education unit develops a new workforce certificate with a healthcare partner. Before the first learner enrolls, questions emerge—or they should. Will the credential appear on a transcript? What evidence demonstrates mastery? How should proficiency be documented? Who makes these decisions? If a learner later applies for academic credit, what standards will be used to evaluate equivalency? None of these questions pose earth-shattering administrative obstacles. They can all be ironed out with a few meetings with the right people in the room, but what if the people in the room don’t trust each other?
At this year’s UPCEA/AACRAO conference on credential innovation, Convergence, we wanted to explore how a deeply trusting relationship between continuing education and the registrar can build institutional capacity and trust, leading to greater agility around credentials and the systems we put in place to document that learning.
The Registrar’s Role in Educational Trust
When a continuing education unit proposes a new badge, workforce credential, microcredential, credit for prior learning pathway or partnership, we’re not merely proposing a new program. We’re making a statement about learning, and this is where we need our partner, the registrar, to be involved in that conversation, so we can determine whether that learning belongs on a university transcript or some other form of documentation. We want to demonstrate that learners achieved something, that the learning has value, the assessment was meaningful and the credential deserves recognition. And those are all important questions about the learner record that require our registrar’s input.
The registrar can be the foundation of the institution’s most important trust infrastructure. The integrity of the learner record is paramount, and we should all want it to be. That’s the most critical currency our institution has in establishing and maintaining trust among our learners, their employers, other institutions and beyond. What about the argument above concerning a new program and the resulting type of learning? The registrar is the expert in evaluating that educational story and determining how it should be recognized, documented and preserved within the learner record. The registrar operationalizes educational trust, and that trust operates at multiple levels: between colleagues, within internal processes and from external stakeholders who rely on the learner record as evidence of achievement.
Connecting Responsiveness with Credibility
When we think about higher education and agility, we think about rapid change at the pace of innovation, but really, agility is the ability to make high-quality decisions quickly because trusted processes and people evaluate which learning opportunities are valid. When that trust is built before the decisions need to be made quickly, then those decisions become easier and happen faster.
Continuing education units are in our communities doing vital work in market sensing, partnership building and experimentation, while the registrar is focused on consistency, documentation and credibility. Continuing education informs institutions where learning needs are changing. Registrars help institutions determine how that learning can be credibly recognized and documented. We need both of those worlds to intersect and create an architecture of institutional trust that allows us to move quickly and respond to the evolving landscape.
Building Relationships Before Projects
If agility depends on trust, and trust depends on strong processes for evaluating educational claims, then the relationship between continuing education and the registrar becomes a strategic asset rather than an operational necessity (or in some unfortunate circumstances, a massive headache). Strong partnerships don’t emerge from workflow charts and process documentation. They grow organically from repeated opportunities built on mutual understanding and confidence in one another’s judgment.
How do we build trust between continuing education and the registrar? We focus on relationships before projects. We need to understand each other’s worlds, pain points, timelines, incentives and goals, and that understanding doesn’t happen in a single meeting. It takes time. We involve each other early and often. We tell each other everything we’re working on and tell it early, even if it doesn’t feel relevant. We assume positive intent on each side. We are both trying to accomplish the same thing, and we don’t ever assume our partners are acting in bad faith. And sometimes we share food together. It becomes much harder to demonize people you’ve broken bread with.
Turning Shared Trust into Institutional Agility
Higher education will continue to face pressure to create new pathways, new credentials and new forms of learning. The institutions that respond most effectively will not necessarily be those that move the fastest. They will be the institutions that have already built the relationships, processes and shared standards needed to evaluate new educational claims with confidence. Agility is not the absence of governance. It is the ability to turn evidence into action because trust already exists. Registrars and continuing education leaders play different roles in that work, but together they create the trust architecture that allows institutions to respond to change without compromising credibility.
Photo caption: Facing growing pressures to evolve at a rapid pace, the institutions that will respond successfully will be those that establish models grounded in proactivity and trust.