84. Micro-credentials-oriented Education—Current State of the New Norm in India

Disruption is not new for humankind, and the education sector is recently experiencing it. Now short courses as part of lifelong learning are becoming the new norm. It is being offered by hundreds of educational institutes for learners to intellectually stay engaged and remain relevant in the current world. These short courses get credibility through micro-credential. This non-formal learning is evolving as a solution to democratizing education. It has the potential to scale and increase, the reach of education by dismantling the barriers of location, religion, gender, and socio-economic conditions. Developing countries like India are facing a disparity between the number of aspirants for quality education and the number of admissions to desired academic institutes. In the industry also, rapid upskilling is required, and it has emerged that the formal education system is unlikely to cope with multifold demands. Ever-increasing cost is also one of the barriers to democratizing education. The evaluation of the current micro-credential system and the demand helped to understand the research gap. The various aspects such as credibility, security, ecosystem, and the need for standards emerged through this research. We triangulated our findings with the inputs from key stakeholders in universities: faculty and students. This paper elaborates on the various aspects required for micro-credentials, what are the current barriers to proliferating and how the Indian current education ecosystem can leverage this opportunity to ‘go digital’ and ‘go global.’