The Degree Qualifications Profile: What It Is and Why We Need It Now

There is no shortage of challenges facing postsecondary institutions in the US. One that cuts to the core of the enterprise is whether they are preparing their graduates to live productive, civically responsible lives in a dynamic global marketplace mapped onto diverse, yet increasingly interdependent, social and cultural systems. Much of the evidence presented in recent "Change" articles suggests that what undergraduate students know and are able to do falls well short of what employers, policymakers, and educational leaders say is needed. Whether one accepts the available evidence as sufficient to draw such a sweeping conclusion ultimately rests on resolving two non-trivial issues. First, key stakeholders--those mentioned above and others, including students--must agree on the constellation of knowledge, skills, competencies, and dispositions that need to be signaled by postsecondary degrees and credentials if they are to be attuned to the demands of the times. Second, what evidence do we have that students have achieved the desired levels of proficiency in the respective outcome areas? Countries throughout the world--in Europe, Australasia, and Central and South America--have made considerable progress in addressing these challenges by developing degree qualifications frameworks that articulate what outcomes graduates of their colleges and universities should have, along with behaviorally anchored indicators and other measures that mark the extent to which students have acquired them. A handful of institutions in the US--such as Alverno College, the military academies, and Western Governor's University--have done something akin to this. But it is only recently that concerted efforts have been mounted to bring greater clarity and more widespread agreement about what credentials and degrees should represent by more precisely defining what college students in this country need to know and be able to do and at what level of proficiency. This article is about the status and aspirations of one such effort, Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP).