The Need to Recognize Military Training Now

Here's a problem that isn't getting the attention it deserves. A staff sergeant with 10 years of service, separates from the military and interviews for her first post-military job. She's built and led teams under pressure, and managed million-dollar equipment, but she doesn't have an undergraduate degree. What she has presented to the prospective employer is a professional transcript listed rigorous technical training and professional education courses. To the staff sergeant, she's captured completely the skills, competencies and knowledge she's developed during her time in service. To the prospective employer, she's presented a list of course titles and acronyms that don't map to the job description. 

The problem here is translating military technical training and professional military education (PME) into something that makes sense to civilian employers. The vast majority of employers understand that the military invests enormously in developing its people. PME schools like NCO academies, Command and Staff Colleges, and War Colleges produce genuinely sophisticated leaders and technical specialists. The problem is that most of this training exists in a credentialing ecosystem that civilians don't recognize, can't read, and haven't bothered to figure out.

So imagine if a progressive university were to develop a model for verifying a service member's completed PME, award stackable credentials (digital badges) that represent that learning, and combine those badges with a small amount of targeted coursework to earn a university-recognized certificate. This isn't hard or complicated, we just have to have someone do it. 

The broader opportunity here for the first-mover university is found in the millions of prior service members cycling through the civilian workforce every year carrying knowledge, skills, and competencies they can't easily articulate. There's no shortage of civilian frameworks for this, but higher education's willingness to do the mapping work has been abysmally slow, inconsistent, and confined to a handful of public universities. This is where private universities need to step up. The workforce transition problem for veterans isn't getting smaller. And frankly, private universities that figure this out first are going to attract a highly motivated, experienced student population that's chronically underserved.

The model can be readily implemented with the right unit (ideally a PCE/O school or college). The institution simply needs to demonstrate a commitment to evaluating existing military training on its merits, implementing a stable and scalable digital badging infrastructure, and identifying a set of bridging courses. Really, it's that simple.