best certifications for higher education professionals

best certifications for higher education professionals

Exploring the Best Certifications for Higher Education Professionals

1. Introduction to Higher Education Professional Certifications

In recent years, the credentialing of academic institutions’ staff members has come to take on an expanded emphasis. Paglis and Green note that credentialing is a type of career development that focuses on stacked postsecondary degrees and certificates. Within higher education, Briod, Jones & Bronner note there is a drive to provide our students with meaningful experiences. It is important then that professional staff in higher education institutions have the training and experience to develop and provide these experiences. Townsend is also calling attention to the fascination of micro-credentialing in the greater higher education landscape, beyond just those involved with residence halls and rooms. Who’s Camus adds that earning certifications can open up career advancement opportunities. It is in these explanations that professional certifications, training, and credentials come into play and help institutional professionals achieve those university objectives. Specifically, institutional success may result from the way staff admissions, thus showing that an institution’s staff has the working knowledge and the opportunities to further build their professional. Additionally, certification makes a statement to others that an individual is comfortable working with certain populations. It is a form of greater networking and provides an easier opportunity to reach out to a colleague. Higher education professionals that provide professional development in their daily work also see the need to develop themselves through training for certifications to improve their own credibility.

Members of the higher education community work in collaboration with academic leaders and campus citizens from departments across their institutions and organizations to achieve success. This could be behind-the-scenes work in supporting the successful conversion of students to alumni, helping in the process of growing the campus through beautiful campus development and programming, or creating and offering workshops to educate others in the field. In any of these examples, members of a campus community are contributing to the success of the institution.

2. Benefits of Obtaining Certifications in Higher Education

The meaning of demonstration of expertise aims at creating value and to see improvement across the Quality of Education through higher scores, which would help individuals gain jobs with higher salaries.

Certified professionals in the area of higher education have a considerable advantage over their non-certified counterparts. A certification exhibits that the professional in a particular academic setting has a well-rounded knowledge in their respective area. Professionals in the area of higher education typically have three to four main job functions, even though each role has specific duties. Many professionals do not cross-train in the area to assure that the separate area is addressed in a consistent manner. When a person has a certification, they lead the applicant pool over someone who is not and has thus gained credibility and an expert status within a given area. A certification demonstrates expertise.

Another excellent benefit of having a professional certification is that they are required to keep up with the continuing education of the certification. Most higher education certifications require continuing education credits every 2-3 years, which allow professionals to continuously improve their skill set and evolve with their respective area.

Certification is an official recognition or accreditation awarded to an individual by a professional organization based on their standard of knowledge, skills, education, and ethical behavior within a particular professional field. With the advanced growth and rapid changes within technology and computer software, professionals are seeing quite the benefit in obtaining certifications. Employers are more likely to promote employees with a certification as the certification ensures that a certain level of proficiency within a particular job role, or set of job roles, has been validated by a thorough testing process.

Years ago, obtaining a certification in the area of higher education was seen as optional; however, that has since changed. In recent years, across colleges and universities, obtaining a certification has become one of the top options for higher education professionals looking to improve their current job performance and gain knowledge within certain areas that were not focused on during their respective Master or Doctor degree programs.

3. Top Certifications for Higher Education Professionals

To earn this specific certification, students are assessed on the following seven professional standards: advising and helping; assessment, evaluation, and research; equity, diversity, and inclusion; history knowledge; law, policy, and governance; organizational and human resources; and, student learning and development. Well respected in the student affairs and higher education area, this certification is available online or at a testing center for any analog exam, but only a Pearson Vue Center can give a student the chance to complete a non-standard exam. Required readings to prepare for the test for this certification will take any candidate into depths about student affairs. As the oldest of the certifications mentioned in the paper, the ACPA CAE is the most well-known certification amongst higher education professionals. If an advisor is talking about advising in advising centers in education, it is almost a misnomer if the advisor does not have at least one overview of the first advising curriculum ever written concerning college students, The Master Advisor, by Wes Habley.

If you are searching for the best certifications that would benefit a higher education professional in the job market, focus on the following three essentials. First, the name of the program. Although this may sound like common sense, the last thing you want to do is earn a non-recognized certification. Make sure you are targeting the top certifications. Just like a business professional might pursue the CPA, a student affairs higher education professional might pursue the ACPA CAE. Second, the criteria used to justify the selections of the top certifications. In no particular order, the criteria includes cost, length of time to complete each certification program, availability of testing locations, and some selling points that are not spelled out in the official program literature.

4. How to Choose the Right Certification Program

Once you figure out what it is that you want to do as well as what it is the supervisor will want you to have, then you should start looking at programs. As a professional, you will most likely not see what you want to do now as what you want to do 10 years down the road. So shoot for a program that can talk to what you want to do in 10 years but also have some overlap in what you want to do now in those 10 years. When searching, look for a program that has at least 70% of what you need. If you need to learn everything from scratch and a program only covers 20% of what you wish to know, now might not be a good time to apply and take that course. You want the program to be recognized as good in addition to being recognized and respected. You want to learn the latest theories and practices in your chosen focus.

One of the first things you will want to do is figure out what it is that you want to be doing in higher education. If you want to work in a former-majority-white institution but have only worked in HSIs, then you might want to consider a certification program that could potentially bridge that gap for you. It’s also good to look into what your institution requires. If your supervisor says they would like to hire only individuals with a doctorate, then a certificate in Student Affairs from the University of New Mexico won’t help you at the University of New Mexico because the culture of the institution is a Dr. Only culture.

5. Conclusion and Future Trends in Higher Education Certification

In conclusion, higher education certifications are a way to validate competencies of higher education practitioners and are used for recruitment positions in the field. Little research is available related to studying the area of professionals in the field with certifications or the impact that certifications have had on operations and services in the field. The marketplace area of certifications is available in this report. Each year, other trends and future research will be studied and reported in this area as new professionals enter the higher education workforce with certifications and institutional leaders desire to stay competitive in the area of compensation. Emerging trends include data about organizational culture, impacts, and cost benefits, as well as any differentiation in competencies, applications of the certs, or any return on investment of having a professional with a certification in a given area. In academic affairs, a new professional development area has recently emerged in regards to online programs. It may also be worthy of study to see who attends these programs and prepares for associated tests related to program competencies.

The CNNL report serves two purposes. One is to gather and share data on the area of higher education certifications and be one of only two or three in the marketplace to do so. The other is to continue to bring in resources, tools, and best practices that meet the needs of business and support service operations in higher education. This report uniquely provides a snapshot of several of the certifications recognized in one segment of higher education. This snapshot adds to the literature by exploring who has these certifications. The potential benefits and drawbacks of holding the certifications are discussed and how the certifications are used for organizational/institutional effectiveness is discussed. Practical applications in how certifications can be applied to the recruitment of positions, retention strategies, job description, and professional development for the profession are shared. Finally, reported costs for certification assessment and additional costs are included in the report. The costs to prepare for the exam are not included in the CNNL report. Future reports should gather job knowledge outline data, CEU/HR credits, certification exam preparation, cost and administration frequency. Market Analysis should be added to the list of data areas that are gathered for future reports as well. Considering the complexity and questions with migration data analysis, future research could include work on a summary of migration dates of IHEs collaborators and their institutions customized by states or regions to encourage more population.

The Certifications and Connections series should provide higher education professionals with insights into the marketplace surrounding certifications. We explored what organizations and consortia offer certifications in areas related to the business of higher education, who holds these certifications, and if and how they are used in institutional practices for the professional growth and development of employees. This report is organized as follows: The search and overview of the offerings of certifications is provided in section 1. Results of the practitioner survey accompany the overview of each major offering in the literature in section 2, 3, and 4. Section 5 offers some conclusions and trends.