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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

Tough to do this within the constraints of academic freedom; if an institution wants to offer a new course and they need to get certification by an authority and find externals to mark it... well could stall things by years?

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You already see this with courses around nursing and healthcare which need to be QA'd by external bodies like the local commissioning authorities. It does delay it, but not by as much as some of the internal processes that need to happen.

There might be more enterprising universities that launch courses quickly (and would probably still reserve the right to do it with things like masters courses), but most undergrad courses take years to develop and deploy anyway, so an external body reviewing the content and assessment criteria wouldn't hold things up much in comparison.

For an entire degree program I agree, I've seen lots of agonising about these and many roadblocks. But for a module many universities are pretty agile right now - much to the student's benefit.

As I said there are downsides. I will say though that the courses on offer to my children when they went to university looked very similar. I'm not sure this would be a huge problem.

Offer a course without a certification. Then, those students who are only in uni for the grades will not take it, but students who actually value knowledge will opt in for the course.

Most people value both though; when I was in university I loved what I did and wanted to continue doing it somewhere excellent afterwards. For that I need to be armed both with the knowledge and the qualifications necessary.

Which then will be penalised by mainstream employers, because there's no certification - automated CV scanners will dump your application as it's "not a proper degree".

Which, in turn, will reward no mainstream employers. After 11 years of design/engineering career without a degree, I don't think it's such a big issue.

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