Archived Information

**A Parallel Postsecondary Universe:**

**The Certification System in Information Technology**

Clifford Adelman

Senior Research Analyst

## Office of Educational Research and Improvement

**U.S. Department of Education**

**U.S. Department of Education**

Richard W. Riley

*Secretary*

**Office of Educational Research and Improvement**

C. Kent McGuire

*Assistant Secretary*

**National Institute on Postsecondary Education,**

### Libraries, and Lifelong Learning

Sandra Garcia

*Acting Director*

**Media and Information Services**

Cynthia Hearn Dorfman

*Director*

October 2000

The findings, conclusions, and opinions in this monograph are those of
the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the
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**Contents**

Executive Summary v

Introduction: Breaking Predictable Boundaries 1

"Secular" Realities 2

Why We Should Care 3

First Signs and Traces 4

IT Certifications: the Basic Universe 7

Playing by the Numbers 9

The Providers 11

What it Costs 16

Certification Agents: the Testing Companies 18

The Assessments: Think You Can Pass? 19

Beyond the Vendor: Generic IT Certifications 23

Quality Assurance: Standards and Accreditation 24

Coming Soon to a Campus Near You? 26

Building a Pipeline 29

Summary: the New Global Guild 30

Information Needs for National Planning Everywhere 32

References and Sources 33

Appendix A: Three Interacting Platforms 40

Appendix B: Two Indicators of Global Reach 43

**A Parallel Postsecondary Universe:**

**the Certification System in Information Technology**

# Executive Summary

This report describes a new system of credentialing that has arisen in
the information technology and telecommunications industries over the
past decade. It compares this system to traditional higher education,
identifying both similarities and dissimilarities, and points to some
cases in which the two interact. Among its findings:

General

-   Both corporate vendors and industry/professional associations have
    created over 300 discrete certifications since the first such
    credential (Certified Novell Engineer, or CNE) was issued in 1989.

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-   Approximately 1.6 million individuals worldwide earned approximately
    2.4 million information technology certifications by early 2000.
    Most of the certifications have been earned since 1997.

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-   About half of those who earned certification did so outside the
    United States, but we know very little else about the backgrounds
    and demographic characteristics of those certified. Indirect
    evidence, however, suggests that the age distribution of this group
    is dropping and that the proportion without bachelor's degrees is
    rising.

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-   About one out of eight job advertisements in information technology
    now mention the certifications, not as requirements for hiring,
    rather as a "plus" for applicants. In contrast, one out of five
    advertisements indicate that degrees are required.

Examinations

-   Information technology certifications are earned by passing
    examinations administered by third parties. Three corporations
    administered over 3 million examinations in 140 countries in 1999.

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-   A large industry has arisen to prepare candidates for these
    examinations. This industry includes organizations (including some
    traditional colleges and universities) that provide course work, Web
    sites that offer tutorials and practice examinations, and a mass of
    self-study books and CD-ROMs.

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-   Examinations are constantly updated to reflect the current state of
    knowledge and practice, and to maintain certification, individuals
    must take the new examinations and engage in continuing professional
    education.

Course Work and its Providers

-   While formal course work is not required to prepare for
    certification, the volume of offerings and providers worldwide is
    considerable.

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-   Most providers are not part of the universe that reports data on
    enrollments, credentials awarded, faculty and staff, etc. in the
    annual postsecondary data collection of the U.S. Department of
    Education.

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-   Some higher education institutions have been active participants in
    the certification programs, with models of collaboration ranging
    from linking "challenge examinations" to credits, incorporating
    multiple certifications into bachelor's degrees, and awarding their
    own certifications based on curricular packages purchased from
    for-profit developers.

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-   The entities that provide the course work are authorized to do so by
    the sponsor of the certification, which ensures that course content
    and quality of instruction meet the sponsor's standards.

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-   Instructors who lead the course work must themselves be certified
    both in content areas and in teaching and assessment practice.

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-   The industry has established a Council on Computing Certification to
    develop standards for accrediting certification programs.

Costs of Certification

-   Costs vary by certification program and the extent to which
    candidates take formal course work from different types of
    providers. Examination fees range from \$50 to \$1,000 (the latter
    for hands-on laboratory performance exams), and some certifications
    require five or more examinations.

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-   The limited information we possess suggests that employers cover the
    costs of certification for over half of the candidates.

Summary

The summary section of this report emphasizes the major themes of the
certification system and its relationship to higher education:

-   The system is global and operates in many languages.

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-   The student, not the institution, is at the center of the system.

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-   The system has brought competency-based education and performance
    assessment to a status they have never enjoyed within traditional
    higher education.

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-   Certifications replace neither experience nor degrees, and the IT
    system does not pretend to be higher education.

The summary also indicates the critical need for more information on
certification candidates and providers of course work, since the new
system is now large enough to play a role in state and national planning
for postsecondary education.

**Introduction: Breaking Predictable Boundaries**\*

While hardly any of us who work in the traditional system of higher
education noticed, a new, parallel universe of postsecondary credentials
sprung up in the 1990s. One can see it now in job advertisements, on the
Web, and in the financial markets: an educational and training
enterprise that is transnational and competency-based, confers
certifications not degrees, and exists beyond governments' notice or
control. And it is much bigger than we imagine.

\*\*1. In matters of post-compulsory schooling, we grew up and work in a
world of traditional and predictable boundaries. We have universities,
colleges, community colleges, and trade schools, all accredited by one
recognized association or another, all granting credit hours and
traditional degrees or certificates, all participating in the Federal
student financial aid system, all reporting data on enrollments,
degrees, staffing, salaries, and so forth to the U.S. Department of
Education through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
(IPEDS). Even if these institutions offer virtual instruction,
credit-by-examination, and other variations on the delivery of
knowledge, they are still recognizable parts of the American
postsecondary system.

2\. The for-profit University of Phoenix is part of our comfortable
world. So is the virtual Western Governors University. University
College of the University of Maryland, with outposts in a dozen
countries and distance delivery that reaches two dozen more, is one of
us. Programs carried out by higher education institutions in concert
with corporations that provide content (e.g. Novell), corporations that
provide virtual delivery systems (e.g. Caliber Learning Network), and
corporations that provide both (e.g. IBM), are *our* programs (Marchese,
1998). In all these cases, course work and credits as we historically
have understood them are at the center of the transaction between
student and program, and one party in the provision of learning offers
the standard currency of higher education.

3\. When national policies on post-compulsory schooling are formulated,
the unit of analysis has been---and still is---the government-recognized
college. From the 1960s through the 1990s, most countries assumed that
these institutions would bear principal responsibility for developing
new programs and new delivery systems that would serve the greater
numbers of students coming forward for tertiary-level education. These
policies were built on economic models of what could, would, or should
happen given changes in demand.

**\* [Note:]{.underline} A shorter version of this monograph, with the
title, "A Parallel Universe: Certification in the Information Technology
Guild," appeared in *Change*, vol. 32 , no. 3 (May/June, 2000), pp.
20-29.**

**\*\* [Note:]{.underline} Paragraphs/sections are numbered to
facilitate citations. See "References and Sources."**

4\. Since 1972, when the Higher Education Amendments changed the fulcrum
of funding in the United States from the institution to the student, the
growth and change of our colleges, community colleges, and trade schools
has been driven principally by demographics, and, to a lesser extent, by
adjustments in financial aid formulas and practices**.** These are
technical---and not fundamental---engines. They can be plugged into
economic models**.** Indeed, the literature on access to higher
education is full of such modeling.

5\. Quite suddenly, all this seems old-industry, old-think**.** A new
class of postsecondary providers has come on the
scene---boundary-breaking and border-crossing every step of the way---to
scramble institutional and governmental assumptions about the
future**.** In higher education's fascination with the likes of
for-profit degree-granting institutions such as the University of
Phoenix or DeVry Institute, and with virtual degree delivery, it has
been looking for challenges in the wrong direction**.** In a real sense,
the operative economic models have been superceded by a "secular"
development.

# "Secular" Realities

6\. When economists speak of a "secular" trend, they refer to changes
that occur for reasons that lie outside classic economic models**.** The
"secular bull market" in equities that we have witnessed since the
mid-1990s occurred not because stocks were oversold and the models
called for a technical upswing**.** Rather, the market gained momentum
because the managers of a majority of equity mutual funds acknowledged a
reordering of the engines of economic growth, a burst in productivity as
a by-product of technological advances, and a change in the very metrics
and range of valuation.

7\. Simultaneously (and not coincidentally) worldwide secular economic
developments changed the context for post-compulsory schooling and its
interactions with the labor market (Stacey *et al*, 1999)**.** Foremost
among these developments was the emerging dominance of information
technology and telecommunications as the engines of knowledge
itself---let alone commerce**.** These two interlocking industries
required a borderless system of protocols that could increase
productivity in all participating economies**.** They also required a
labor force to create, advance, and administer those protocols across
national boundaries, a labor force with loyalties to occupations more
than to specific organizations (Zabusky, 1997)**.** This labor force had
to meet standards of knowledge and the skillful application of knowledge
that could apply in all countries and a dozen major languages**.** Thus
a new international guild was born.

8\. Thus, too, was a secular, competency-based system of certification
of individuals established within this information technology guild**.**
The student, not the institution, is the nucleus. Around that student
the guild formed a network of standard setting organizations, *de facto*
accrediting procedures, schools and other knowledge distribution
entities, a learning support industry, and corporate agents devoted to
assessment (including assessment of faculty for the schools)**.**
Weaving that net is a workforce of curriculum developers, testing
specialists, academic advisors, review panels, and designers of distance
education delivery.

9\. Unlike traditional degrees in the U.S. (but very much like degrees
in most European countries), the industry standard certifications in
information technology are awarded by third party examination, with the
principal examining agents operating at 5,000 sites in 140 countries and
administering an estimated 3 million assessments in 25 languages in
1999**.** There are general field certifications, sub-field specialty
certifications, requirements and electives, hierarchies of credentials
analogous to the associate's, bachelors, and master's levels, and the
equivalent of academic societies with their annual conventions matched
to each**.** There are even pre-collegiate junior certifications, acting
as gateways to the equivalent of college majors**.** As of January,
2000, the end of the first decade of its existence, this system had
awarded at least 1.8 million credentials. Six months later, the count
was over 1.9 million.

10\. Are there "institutions" in this world of information technology
(IT) certification? Yes**.** But few are among the 9,632 found in our
national *Directory of Postsecondary Institutions* (Barbett and Lin,
1998). The majority are secular, too**.** They have arisen outside our
usual model of postsecondary education.

# Why We Should Care

From one perspective, the new world described here seems confined to the
realms of continuing education and workplace training**.** It seems to
have little to do with those of us who play instructional,
administrative, custodial, policy, or analytic roles in higher
education**.** Why should we care?

11.1 First, because our economy exhibits a voracious demand for IT
workers in a wide range of occupational categories (U.S. Department of
Labor, 1997), and, it is claimed, the U.S. system of education isn't
producing them (ITAA, 1998)**.** Beyond those earning formal degrees
earned in IT fields, though, U.S. college students have considerable
potential to fill part of the gap (Adelman, 1997), but the industry
looks to the global labor market to fill its needs**.** That strategy
has built-in limits, given public policy concerns about trade,
immigration, and intellectual property.

11.2 Second, an industry in need of workers can and will offer
incentives, including the reduced opportunity costs of earning
credentials other than college degrees---and in a much shorter period of
time than that required by degrees---that lead quickly to high starting
salaries**.** If the certification of competence in information
technology and telecommunications assumes a status like that of degrees
in the global economy, students *will* respond.

11.3 Third, the emerging system of learning opportunities, assessment,
and certification is now of sufficient magnitude that we cannot ignore
it in institutional, state or system planning**.** The demographic
"tidal wave" we anticipate rushing at our traditional institutions may
turn into little more than a splash if students increasingly opt to
participate in a system beyond our ken, and partake of higher education
in patterns of attendance that elude our tracking systems (Adelman,
1999).

11.4 Lastly, some colleges and community colleges are buying into and
participating in this parallel universe, mixing certifications with
degree offerings and serving as agents of both vendor-specific and
industry-generic IT preparation**.** In so doing, they are importing
cultures of performance assessment and quality assurance that up to now
have been foreign to most collegiate faculties**.** Comfortable ways of
doing business may inevitably be challenged from within.

# First Signs and Traces

12\. This report on industry certification emerged indirectly from an
exploration of community college/labor market interactions through
posted criteria for hiring in entry and mid-level information technology
jobs**.** The early phase of this study involved a content analysis of
IT job ads in the Sunday "Technology Employment" classified section of
*The Washington Post***.** The *Post* is an extremely rich source,
particularly as the Washington, DC metropolitan area now ranks in the
top 10 as a market for high tech workers, though precisely *where* in
the top 10 depends on who conducted the survey and how the universe of
"high tech workers" was defined (Behr, 1999)**.** Classified ads are
good unobtrusive data, the kind loved by historians, biologists, and
anthropologists everywhere! They are the footprints on the forest floor,
far more reliable than surveys**.** Between April of 1998 and April of
1999, I read over 3,500 discrete job postings covering an estimated
20,000 technical positions *other than* those specifying senior status
or more than five years of experience**.** To determine the reliability
of these observations of the language used in the *Post* advertisements,
another 350 job postings in the *San Jose Mercury News* (serving Silicon
Valley) between February and April of 1999 were subjected to the same
analysis**.** To determine the durability of these observations,
approximately 300 job ads in *The Washington Post* during March, 2000
were also examined.

12.1 The content of the advertisements was sorted into five category
bins: degrees/ credentials, amount/types of experience (including job
tasks and industry), specific software, programming, and operating
systems expertise, general technical skills, and non-technical
skills**.** The language of each content area was scanned for dominant
and distinctive features.

12.2 As table 1 demonstrates, only 21 percent of these advertisements
mentioned a formal degree as a criterion of employment. A small number
of entries cited specific course work (but not degrees) in computer
graphics, physics, and "higher math," implying that course work can be a
proxy for competence**.** Some notable entries went out of their way to
diminish the importance of a traditional credential with such phrases as
"4 years technical experience in lieu of degree," "BS preferred but
experience counts more," and "2+ years of programming experience
preferred *but* \[emphasis added\] college grads considered." As a
recruiter at a high tech career fair held in Chantilly, Va. in July 2000
remarked: "I am not going to take a \$50,000 risk on some dropout
tinkering with motherboards in a garage who my boss says is a genius:
the degree diminishes the risk somewhat, but experience reduces it
immensely because experience generates evidence of what you can do in an
organization."

> **Table 1.---Education Specified in Postings for Entry and Mid-Level
> IT Positions, "Technology Employment" Section, Sunday *Washington
> Post*, April 1998 through April 1999**
>
> **[Number]{.underline} [Percent]{.underline}**
>
> Master's Degree 13 0.4%
>
> Master's Preferred 27 0.8
>
> BS in CS/MIS/EE/CE 206 5.8
>
> BS + Industry Certification 17 0.5
>
> BA/BS Required 98 2.8
>
> BS Preferred 47 1.3
>
> BA or Equivalent Experience 73 2.1
>
> Associate's in IT-Related Field 37 1.0
>
> Sub-Baccalaureate Certificate 43 1.2
>
> "Degree" (unspecified) 184 5.2
>
> No Degree Mentioned 2799 78.9

13**.** For a position requiring fluency in HTML, Java, Perl, C++, and
UNIX the applicant was asked to "Forward URLs of prior design work," and
nary a word about degrees appeared. This is a true performance
assessment. No resume. Send us your URL. We'll log on and observe your
communications skills, your technical skills, your knowledge, your
artistic sensibilities. If we are good assessors of performance, we may
even make some measured inferences about your ability to discover
contexts for and to solve unstructured problems.

"Multi-threaded development" was a common demonstrable competence
required of these jobs: the creation of a software stage for
interactions where some actors must wait, others must be notified, and
the players don't all talk at the same time (see Brogden, 1999, p. 173).
When one thinks carefully about it, the criteria for creating both
workable URLs and the mini-dramas of programming involve some of the
same kind of reasoning skills higher education says its seeks to develop
regardless of major. And designing transactions in client/server
environments is very much like identifying logically-related events
(with no extraneous material) in many other disciplines. In fact, when
degrees were mentioned in the job advertisements, the fields were not
confined to computer science, management information systems, and
computer/ electrical engineering. Others mentioned included music,
linguistics, history, physical sciences, mathematics, museology,
journalism and English (for technical writing positions). The masters of
the information technology universe understand a great deal about where
intellectual muscles can be developed.

14\. A basic competence-matrix, one that combines "years of experience"
with knowledge of both generic and specific systems and software,
dominates the presentation of jobs in the classified ads. This
competence-matrix, as we will see, is also embedded in the course
offerings of the new secular providers, where the notion of
"prerequisites" is as likely to include prior *experience* as prior
coursework. The "degree structure" of some industry certifications
follows a similar routine: to progress from "Associate" to "Master" (in
Cisco's certification system, the levels are labeled "Associate,"
"Professional," and "Expert") requires years of experience in addition
to passing examinations in discrete knowledge areas. When the
International Webmasters Association's "Standards of Practice" defines
"knowledge" as "informed understanding of the subject matter of a
member's field of practice or employment, based on education and
experience," and "technical competence" as "knowledge and the skillful
application of knowledge," it makes explicit what we see in the job
postings. The data of table 2, drawn from analyses of the job
advertisements, puts these dimensions of competence together in the area
of programming languages.

#### Table 2.---The Competence Matrix in IT Job Postings for Entry and Mid-Level Positions: of 3,500 Ads, the Number Specifying Programming Languages

Years of Experience

[1 to 2]{.underline} [3 to 4]{.underline} [5]{.underline}
[Open]{.underline} **[Total]{.underline}**

Programming Languages/Software

> C++ 33 20 40 158 251
>
> Visual C++ 10 7 5 66 88
>
> Java, Java Script 38 20 19 197 274
>
> SQL 36 20 6 114 176
>
> PERL 8 9 0 76 93
>
> HTML 10 7 12 56 85
>
> Cold Fusion 7 15 4 27 53
>
> Other & Combinations 135 200 86 525 946
>
> Totals: 277 298 162 1219 1966
>
> [Note]{.underline}: SQL=Structured Query Language, a standardized
> language for requesting information from a data base.
>
> PERL=Practical Extraction and Report Language, an interpretive text
>
> processing language.
>
> HTML=Hypertext Markup Language, the current standard authoring
> language for creating documents on the World Wide Web.

15\. In about 40 percent of the posted jobs for early career positions,
then, what the industry wants to know is not merely whether you can
write Java and Java Script, but how long you have been practicing. The
combination is a sign to an employer that you are ready for the next
step, whether in programming, operating systems, servers, networks, or
Web development. The next step is the certification of competence, the
moment at which your acquired knowledge and skills are benchmarked.

16\. Beyond the type of requirements reflected in the competence matrix,
the ads often cited what to me, at the time, were strange abbreviations

> "You must . . . hold (or be actively seeking) CCDA \[Certified Cisco
> Design Associate\] certification."
>
> "You should possess (or be able to achieve) CCNA \[Cisco Certified
> Network Associate\] certification with a strong desire for CCIE
> \[Cisco Certified InterNetworking Expert\]."

"CNE \[Certified Novell Engineer\] a big plus."

While the language seems a bit hesitant, as if it were reflecting an
emerging phenomenon, these are instances of the IT industry's formal
certifications of competence. Some people who hold these certifications
are not so hesitant, however. The signatures on more than one of the
communications received in the course of researching this topic were in
the form,

"John Doe

MCSE, Master ASE \[Compaq\]"

The acronyms are not puffery. They are evolving into professional
markers, a reflection of the way in which the occupants of technical
positions increasingly see their "expertise and contribution to the work
process . . . within the professional division of labor" (Nelson and
Barley, 1994, p. 22).

# IT Certifications: the Basic Universe

17\. As Microsoft's home page for certification notes, the difference
between a certificate and the courses you might take lies in the
former's attestation to benchmarking. Table 3 reflects the presence of
IT certifications in job postings:

> **Table 3.---Count of Desired Industry Certifications Specified in the
> Portfolio of 3,500 Information Technology Job Advertisements, April
> 1998-April 1999**
>
> MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) 96
>
> ODBA (Oracle Database Administrator) 95
>
> CNA (Certified Novell Administrator) 77
>
> CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) 64
>
> Cisco Certifications 28
>
> Other Certifications 100

Among the "other" certifications mentioned?

> ASE Accredited Systems Engineer (Compaq)
>
> PSS Certified Professional Server Specialist (IBM)
>
> RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer
>
> CLP Certified Lotus Professional Application Developer
>
> MCSD Microsoft Certified Solution Developer
>
> MNS Master of Network Science (3Com), with 5 specializations
>
> A+ (PC support service) Computer Technology Industry Association

and dozens more. There are certifications in programming, network
management, training, and telecommunications, certifications from
specific vendors and generic certifications from industry associations.
Christianson and Fajen's helpful 1999 guide to certifications describes
nearly 300 of them (a decade earlier, then was only one, the CNE), and
this universe was dated by the time Christianson and Fajen went to
press! Brainbuzz.com (a site for assisting people preparing for
certification examinations) listed over 350 certifications by mid-2000,
and the "Certification Watch" for June 2000, marked 11 new
certifications. The woods of certification are coming to resemble the
forest of bachelor's and associate's degrees delivered in over 1,000
fields by over 3,000 institutions of higher education and in which (as
notices in *The Chronicle of Higher Education* attest) a half-dozen
trees are planted weekly.

18\. Across the roughly 3,500 job advertisements, one out of eight
mentioned an IT industry certification as a preferred background for
employment. To garner a preliminary indicator of change, I returned to
the *Washington Post* Sunday "Technology Employment" sections in March
2000, and found roughly one out of seven. Within a few years, perhaps
one out of five will do so--the same ratio as we currently find for
formal postsecondary credentials (though formal degrees are usually
*requirements*, not enhancements).

19\. This growth will come from the supply side. As Christianson and
Fajen document, more than 50 major corporate vendors, IT industry
associations, and large intermediary "training partners" such as
Learning Tree (which reports serving 113,000 IT students) have formally
established criterion-referenced standards for what it takes to perform
at an optimal level in various parts of the information technology and
telecommunications worlds. Another 7,500 corporate vendors with global
workforces recognize these standards. When you hang out a
criterion-referenced sign, you are providing a public set of educational
objectives and a supply-side opportunity. In a learning society such as
ours, people reach for those objectives, and employers feel free to
encourage a proxy for attainment.

Some certifications thus function like degrees. Other certifications
function like licenses in that they require renewal. For example, after
one receives the mantel of Certified Internet Webmaster one must work at
the role for two years and complete 30 hours of continuing education to
qualify for *re*certification. In all Microsoft Certified Professional
programs, as exams are retired and replaced, one is required to take the
new assessments to remain certified. Novell adds examinations as the
state of knowledge changes, and in unmistakably uncompromising language:
"All CNE certified individuals are required to pass the exam for either
course 529 \[Netware5 Update\] or 570 \[Netware5 Advanced
Administration\] by August 31, 2000. Failure to do so will result in
loss of CNE status."

# Playing by the Numbers

20\. How many IT certifications have been issued? Initially, it was hard
to come by the numbers because there is no central registry; and the
data one can extract from various press releases, examination
preparation books, and Web sites do not yield unduplicated headcounts.
Most (though not all) vendors and industry associations, however, are
pleased to provide the information when asked directly. Table 4
summarizes what one can obtain from them (only Microsoft provides other
than rounded numbers); it *excludes* the kind of certifications offered
to end-user office workers who demonstrate proficiency in software
packages. The Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) certification, in
three levels (general, expert, and master), is the best illustration of
what is excluded.

# Table 4. Headcounts of Information Technology Certifications as of 2000

> [Headcount]{.underline} [Date or Source]{.underline}

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) 521,639 June 14, 2000

Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) 27,427 June 14, 2000

Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) 279,745 June 14, 2000

Other Microsoft Certified Professional Programs 218,841 June 14, 2000

Certified Cisco Design Associate (CCDA) 4,000\* C&F, 1999, p. 24

Certified Cisco Internetworking Expert (CCIE) 4,996 July 31, 2000

Other Cisco Certifications 26,000\* Late 1999

Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) 175,000 Late 1999

Certified Novell Administrator (CNA) 370,000 Late 1999

Other Novell Certifications 18,300 Late 1999

Oracle (all certifications) 24,000\* Late 1999

Certified Info Systems Security Professional (CISSP) 1,500 C&F, 1999, p.
46

Citrix Certified Associate (CCA) 8,000 August 1999

A+ (Computer Technology Industry Association) 150,000 November 1999

Other Computer Technology Industry Assoc Certifications 15,600\* June
2000

Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals 50,000 July 2000

Natl. Assoc. of Communic Systems Engineers (all Certifs) 18,000 February
2000

Others (Baan, Sybase, SAP, Adobe, etc.) 43,778 Martinez, 1999

TOTAL: 1,936,826

[**Note**:]{.underline} C&F = Christianson and Fajan; 1999;
\*=unduplicated headcount estimate.

21\. The 1.9 million certifications (not people, but certifications) we
know about is probably two-thirds of the iceberg, particularly as some
major U.S. players (Sun, IBM, Compaq) are not accounted for. This is a
global industry, these are worldwide figures, and if Microsoft's data on
MCSE's and Cisco's data on CCIE's are any indication, about half of the
major certifications are awarded to individuals *outside* the United
States. As for growth, consider: there were 35,000 MCSE's awarded by the
fall of 1997 and 280,000 by June of 2000. For the more rarified MCSD
(Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer), the numbers rose from 3,000
to over 27,000 in the same period. And during the same period, too, the
number of discrete certifications available from all sponsors increased
by 200 (a veritable doubling of options).

22\. Is there any way of estimating an unduplicated headcount? Microsoft
reported an unduplicated headcount of its own certifications at 719,129
in February 2000, or 81 percent of its total number as of that month.
But that figure seems oddly high in light of surveys (Microsoft's
included) that show 50 to 60 percent of the candidates walking into
examination rooms already hold at least one IT certification (sometimes
from another vendor). In a 1997 Gartner Group survey of 7,000
certification candidates cited by Martinez (1999), the proportion
seeking their first certification had dropped to 31 percent (from 56
percent in 1994). The percentage might seem extreme, but the trend is
credible.

Allow some license in light of these varying estimates: I will ballpark
worldwide certifications at 2.5 million and unduplicated headcount at 65
percent of that, or more than a year's production of bachelor's and
associate's degrees in the U.S.

23\. More global and unobtrusive ways to reckon growth in *potential*
certifications lie in examining the volume of offerings of courses that
prepare individuals for certification---or, when available, indirect
indications of actual enrollments. Even those very oblique methods
underestimate activity in a field full of autodidacts and self-study
materials (the Library of Congress holds 233 exam preparation books and
study guides for the MCSE alone), and in certification specifications in
which coursework may be recommended, but usually not required because
the industry knows how much can be learned by experience and self-study.
In Microsoft's 1997 salary survey of a sample of its certificate
holders, 98 percent indicated self-study as a preparation method, with
91 percent using books. And in a 1998 study by the Gartner Group (cited
by Martinez, 1999) 43 percent of 6,000 certification candidates
indicated self-study as their primary preparation method. College course
work was last on the Gartner list, but other classroom training (from
the vendors themselves) was ranked much higher.

24\. In an attempt to access course enrollments as a potential indicator
of future certifications, I entered a query at the Cisco Web site for
all course offerings by either Cisco or its training partners in the
year 2000 that were part of the certification preparation sequences. The
answer: "3,822. Please narrow your search!" If only five people show up
to each class, these 3,822 offerings could prompt nearly 20,000 cases of
course taking.

25\. In a more finite illustration, consider the offerings for a
five-day (40 hour) course in Advanced Cisco Router Configuration, *one*
of the core courses leading into CCNA (Cisco Certified Network
Associate) certification. During the two-week period Jan. 23-Feb. 3,
2000, this course was offered at 75 locations in 20 countries on four
continents and in ten languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, German,
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Turkish)---and in all
cases by providers *other than* traditional institutions of
postsecondary education**.** The introductory CCNA course, a 40-hour
Web-based production, is delivered continuously in English from 12
servers in the U.S., UK, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Brazil, and by
Cisco "training partners" Global Knowledge, Ascolta Training, Getronics
UK, Mentor Technologies Group, Azlan Limited, Multireded Informatica,
Sequoia Networks, and others. None of these partners was in the
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) as of 1998.
Because these training partners exist outside government reporting
systems, we have no idea how many people actually attended these course
offerings.

26\. Oracle provides a rare window into enrollment volume. When one
clicks on the registration page for an Oracle course offered directly by
Oracle, and indicates preferred geographic region and time period, the
response is a listing of sites, dates, and number of seats still open.
For example, in the month beginning February 21, 2000, and for the
five-day foundations course, Introduction to Oracle: SQL \[Structured
Query Language\], 75 classes were offered in the continental United
States. As of February 17, eight of those classes were sold out, and
another 19 had five or fewer seats open. Assuming a mean class size of
20 and subtracting the listed open seats, 780 people were enrolled for
that one course during that one month period. Annualized enrollment:
9,360. Would all these people pass the Oracle SQL test and proceed on
toward certification? No. But the numbers give us an idea of demand for
this knowledge.

Some of Cisco's training partners in countries outside the U.S. present
the same type of window. Between May and August of 2000, the Softnet
Learning Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina offered 30 courses on 11
Cisco topics with a capacity of 12-16 students per course. As of May 24,
172 seats had been filled and two courses (both given in May) were
closed**.** Latin America is now the fastest growing Internet market,
and requires a home-grown workforce to serve the infrastructure. Seats
such as these will be claimed.

# The Providers

27\. Who provides preparation for industry certifications? And what are
the quality assurance mechanisms? These are critical questions for the
fastest growing information economies worldwide. The certifications are
portable, and the providers must be recognized across borders by common
standards.

28\. Last year, an enterprising reporter for the *Washington Post
Magazine* toured traditional postsecondary institutions in the
Washington, DC metropolitan area to see who was providing programs that
*might* lead to the various IT certifications (Taylor, 1999). She found
that the community colleges and the less-than-4-year proprietary schools
carried the largest proportion of *potential* certificate candidates,
though these institutions were not very likely to deliver instruction
over the Internet. At the same time, the public 4-year extensions
(dominated by the University of Maryland's University College)
registered the highest number or both degree candidates (in Computer and
Information Sciences) and on-line offerings. But without course content
analyses we can only guess who, among those attending traditional
postsecondary institutions, might be preparing for industry
certification.

29\. Beyond the list of institutions the *Post* reporter presented,
though, I found another 12 regional commercial providers through
advertisements, 10 on-line providers and international technology
training firms such as Global Knowledge, and eight education divisions
of major vendors that offered classroom instruction in the Washington
area. Collectively, the added group presented *explicit* preparatory
curricula for no less than 37 vendor and industry association IT
certifications. Without them, the count of providers has not even begun.

These "secular" providers are distinguished from colleges, universities,
community colleges and trade schools by:

29.1 *Operating outside Title IV of the Higher Education Amendments and
the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)*. To repeat:
they do not participate in the federal student financial aid and
reporting systems. We thus know little about their students.
Furthermore, the type of background information they collect from
students is not the type one finds in IPEDS-derived tables in the annual
*Digest of Education Statistics.*

As a new student to Sun Microsystems Education Services, for example,
you are asked only for name, social security/passport number, address,
phone numbers, employer, and profession. If you fill out Sun's
personalized training needs survey, you add job title, job description,
prior certifications, desired certifications, a self assessment of your
strengths and weaknesses in information technology, and a set of ratings
on what you believe to be most important to you and your organization's
success. No race, sex, age, prior schooling, or any similar questions we
ask under the IPEDS roof. The international IT guild cares most about
personal and organizational competence. The registration form is the
same in every country, every language.

29.2 *Operating outside the formal postsecondary education accreditation
system*. They are a-accredited. Up to this point, accreditation has not
been in their mission or concept of quality assurance. Instead, the
primary vendors (Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, Novell, and so forth) or
industry associations (International Information Systems Security
Consortium, the National Association of Communications System Engineers)
establish standards, and themselves act as *de facto* accrediting bodies
when they authorize other entities to serve as "training partners" or
"authorized education centers." In August 1998, for example, Sun
Microsystems entered into an agreement with New Horizons Computer
Learning Centers under which 25 New Horizons

locations offered Sun-developed Java courseware from its certification
curriculum, and, critically, agreed that New Horizons instructors would
train for, receive, and maintain certification by Sun (an arrangement
illustrating the centrality of teaching quality in the IT certification
world). In July of 2000, 24 of those locations were still
Sun-authorized.

When the IT certification system turns to something resembling
accreditation, it will be carried out within its own borders. This
development is already underway, with the establishment of a Council on
Computing Certification in May 2000 (see sections 62 and 63 below).

29.3 *Operating with a faculty judged solely on the quality of its
teaching ("quality" including currency and depth of subject matter
knowledge).* Instructors at these "training partners" are certified as
knowledgeable in the curriculum and as skilled in instruction in ways
that no traditional accrediting body would demand*.* The Chauncey Group,
a subsidiary of ETS, provides the principal generic certification of
technical instructors, the CTT (Certified Technical Trainer), through
both a computer-based examination and a performance assessment
video-tape; and there is a growing business in workshops and boot camps
to prepare candidates for the CTT*.* The major vendors also offer
separate certifications for instructors, with an expectation that the
instructor must first hold one or more of the content certifications
offered by the vendor (in 1998, for example, 55 percent of the Microsoft
Certified Trainers \[MCT\] also held the MCSE)*.* The evaluation of
these individuals does not include research activities, community
service, or participation in institutional governance*.* Teaching is
everything.

29.4 *Operating under different criteria for "admission" than
traditional postsecondary institutions.* These criteria range widely,
but none of them involve the ritual presentation of high school records
and test scores required (even if they are not used) by colleges,
community colleges, universities and proprietary degree-granting
institutions*.* Unless participation is restricted to employees of an
organization or agency, the secular world is largely an open door
world*.* There are exceptions, of course.

If one wishes to work toward a UNIX certification (UNIX system
certifications come under many guises) and takes the preparatory program
at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "Graduate School," one begins
with a 5-day (7 hours per day) Introduction to UNIX System V*.* The
prerequisite? "Familiarity and confidence with computer hardware and
software concepts." Period! In contrast, CyberLearning offers an 80-hour
fast-track MCSE program restricted to "experienced networking
professionals and university IT and Engineering seniors and graduates
only" and a 172-hour MCSE program for which "college degree \[is\]
desirable."

If one starts out on the path toward the generic Certified Internet
Webmaster (CIW) designation through prosofttraining.com, and wishes to
skip the 5-day Foundations course and move directly into the coursework
for CIW specialist certifications such as those for Site Designer or
Enterprise

Developer, one can present a passing score on CompTIA's i-NET
examination instead*.* In other words, concrete evidence of one level of
competence becomes the generic form of prerequisite in this guild, and
the equivalent of "credit by examination," at least at the introductory
course level, is becoming a more common practice.

30\. Some of the seculars are for-profit; some are divisions of
corporations and public agencies that charge tuition and are
expected---at a minimum---to break even. What kinds of organizations
fall under the umbrella of these "seculars"?

31\. Public Agencies: I have taken courses at two of these: the Center
for Information Technology of the National Institutes of Health and the
USDA Graduate School*.* The former restricts enrollment to the NIH
"computing community" (federal employees, contractors, guest workers,
visiting scientists, research collaborators and their staffs)*.*
"Admission" is by recommendation and support of the student's employing
agency, i.e. one does not need a degree (or even a high school diploma)
to study mainframe or statistical package programming at NIH*.* In 1998,
there were approximately 11,000 applications, 10,000 acceptances, and
6,200 actual registrations for CIT courses*.* The seat time for these
courses lasts anywhere from 2 hours (Introduction to Disaster Recovery)
to 35 hours (the basic C programming course)*.* If you sought to master
the SAS statistical program, you would be in the computer lab classroom
for four courses and 42 hours, plus 3-4 hours of practice for every
classroom hour*.* Despite the demands of course work---and the quality
of instruction from a staff that is largely volunteer---CIT has no
relationship to the formal higher education sector*.* None of the
curriculum is submitted to the American Council on Education's College
Credit Recommendation Service for college credits or Continuing
Education Unit (CEU) equivalency.

32\. The USDA Graduate School has been around for a long time, and its
presence in delivering preparation for industry certification in
information technology fields is not insignificant: in 1998, its Center
for Applied Technology clocked 12,644 registrations (again, not an
unduplicated headcount, and of which 2,061 were in courses that prepare
one for IT certifications), including those of employees of federal
agencies, states, cities, federal contractors, international
organizations, other countries---and walk-ins from everywhere, including
high school and college students. While the USDA Graduate School offers
its own certificate programs in business, computer and information
systems management, and languages other than English, students can
enroll for individual courses without committing to a program*.* CEUs
are awarded on request, and college credit arrangements are brokered by
ACE's College Credit Recommendation Service.

33\. Primary Vendors: These are the Microsofts, Oracles, Novells, and
Ciscos*.* In addition to designing the curricula and writing the
examination specifications, they are all in the direct-provision
business*.* Sun Microsystems, for example, does a lot more than deliver
on-line ergonomics instruction to its employees through its Intranet Sun
Microsystems University*.* Its Sun Educational Services division offers
over 200 courses in classroom, Web-based, and CD modes, and with no
restrictions on who can register*.* Pick your country! A Chinese menu
pops up, or a listing of *las fechas y horarios* for the course,
"*Desarrollo de componentes* JavaBeans" in Mexico City*.* France?
Register by December 1 and "*un coffret de 3 bouteilles de Champagne
Cuvée An 2000 vous sera remis!*" In Beijing, Buenos Aires, or Boston
there is a Sun office with trained and certified employees who serve as
instructors at either the office itself or rented locations.

34\. Training-Partners*.* This universe includes large multi-national
for-profits such as Global Knowledge, Azlan and New Horizons, and local
for-profits in other countries, e.g. Suntek Information Systems in Korea
and Dr. Materna in Germany*.* None of these are subject to regulation
under the Higher Education Amendments, and given their global
operations, they obviously prefer to stay that way*.* Some of them are
not in the direct provision trade, rather specialize in reconfiguring
curriculum for on-line or CD-based instruction*.* They thus function as
intermediary vendors.

35\. As an example of intermediary reconfiguration, NETg provides 700
on-line modules for IT training programs at the National Institutes of
Health, including eight devoted to the background curriculum for
Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) certification, 28 that
will set you up for Cisco certification exams, over 100 co-developed
with Oracle Education (the majority devoted to database administration),
and an "Internet Masters Series" (HTML, TCP/IP, JavaScript, web site
security and administration) developed with Netscape. NIH bought 600
licenses for this collection, augmented by a circulating library of
self-study guides, a measure of expected volume of use.

36\. SmartForce, another "e-learning" secular, takes the concept several
steps further by adding on-line mentors to its on-line courses, a
library of laboratory simulations, threaded discussion forums on
particular vendor products or generic developments in the IT industry,
and the chance to interact with guest speakers on a pay-per-view basis.

37\. Some training partners have developed their own certification
programs, but the certificates awarded, like those of community colleges
and colleges, do not hold the same status as those granted by vendors
and industry associations*.* Learning Tree International, for example,
will dub one a "certified professional" in Cisco Router or Oracle7
Database Administrator on completion of course work (minimum of 22 days
and \$4,500 for Cisco; 19--24 days and \$4500 for Oracle) and passing
allied examinations (Learning Tree, 1999)*.* These certifications are
recommended for 10 college credits by ACE's College Credit
Recommendation Service, but they do not mean either that a successful
candidate is certified by Cisco or Oracle or that a particular college
will award 10 credits.

38\. "Secondary" vendors*.* "Secondary" does not imply a small
corporation, rather a limited presence in the IT certification world*.*
Citrix Systems, a major producer of software for server-based computing,
grants the Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) with two tracks*.*
Preparatory course work is available through "Citrix Authorized Learning
Centers" (CALCs), e.g., the secular Emergent Online, of Reston, Va.,
will prepare students for the MetaFrame Administration track in a 4-day
course offered 13 times between October 1999 and June of 2000, for
\$1,895*.* New Horizons will perform a similar service in Atlanta,
Boston, Charlotte, New York City, San Antonio, San Francisco, and St.
Louis. As of August 1999, approximately 8,000 CCAs had been awarded (see
table 4).

39\. The secondary vendors seem to be more subject to rationalization in
the industry than the major vendors*.* For example, Christianson and
Fajan indicate that Open Market, an e-business application software
developer, offered a certification called "Folio 4 Certified Infobase
Engineer." A search of Open Market's website in January of 2000 yielded
no reference to this certification, let alone to Folio*.* A trip around
the Web revealed that by the time Christianson and Fajan published,
Folio software products had been acquired by a specialist in Internet
publishing technology called NextPage, and that NextPage also assumed
control of Open Market's "LivePublish" software*.* While training
courses in the use of all these products were offered, the certification
had disappeared from the radar screen.

Banyan Worldwide (formerly Banyan Systems) had issued approximately 900
certifications in network administration and design by the end of 1998,
and less than two years later, discontinued its network operations*.* No
doubt those certified will seek other credentials in the networking
field. This is an industry that doesn't sit still long enough to be
measured*.* It is also an industry in which technical professionals
don't sit still, either.

40\. Corporate Universities: By the most recent count of their informal
association, the Corporate University Xchange, there are over 1,000 such
entities, all but a handful (for example, the Tennessee Valley Authority
University) private*.* Unless they are IT principles themselves, e.g.
Sun Microsystems, they are not in our universe, principally because (a)
most of them outsource their IT training, and (b) that training appears
to be limited to end office user software*.* Even Motorola University
does not directly offer preparation for IT certifications.

Data on curriculum, enrollments, and other traditional measures are very
generalized in the corporate university world*.* We get lots of
information on structure, philosophy, development, and organizational
processes (Meister, 1998), but very little on anything else*.* We get
pert-charts, not syllabi or sample examinations such as those offered by
IT "training providers" and primary certification vendors at their Web
sites. In its IT certification role, the education and training service
division of IBM, for example, sets out 17 certification "road maps"
similar to curricular advisories in highly structured college majors,
along with detailed course outlines and sample examination questions.
The typical corporate university seems to regard such information as
proprietary.

# What It Costs

41\. Where there is a market, there is a business, and industry
certification in IT is no exception*.* It doesn't come free, and the
costs of preparation for certification vary widely by the source and
delivery method of training, and the country in which the training takes
place. Table 5 indicates the typical range of both advertised (by the
for-profits) and computed (from catalogs) tuition for instructor-led
preparation programs in the Washington, DC metropolitan area*.* The
ranges exclude out-lyers (for example, there is one secular provider
that offers different forms of MCSE preparation with prices from \$3,950
to \$7,950 depending on a student's background and sponsorship).

> **Table 5.---Range of Advertised and Computed Tuition for Selected IT
> Certification Preparation Programs at Both Traditional Postsecondary
> and Secular Providers in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, 1999**
>
> Advertised\* Computed\*\*
>
> [Certification]{.underline} [Tuition Range]{.underline} [Tuition
> Range]{.underline}
>
> A+ \$500-700 \$800-1200
>
> MCSE 1400-2700 1600-6500
>
> CCNA 1000-1750 1600-6500
>
> ODBA 1300-1600 1500-4000
>
> Web Developer 1500-2500 1800-4500
>
> \* In the Sunday *Washington Post* "Technology Employment" section.

\*\* Capped at 10 credits for any certification preparation program,
since 10 seems to be the standard recommendation for IT certification
packages by ACE's Credit Recommendation Service.

42\. These estimates are considerably lower than what it would cost you,
starting from scratch, to acquire the requisite knowledge and skills
prior to a special certification preparation program*.* A 10-day
instructor-led first course in Java, direct from the source (Sun
Microsystems), is priced at \$1,600; a 5-day Java2 course for those who
have either passed the introductory course or who can write basic
programs in C or C++ is priced at \$2,000 in instructor-led format or
\$1,000 on a self-paced CD-ROM*.* There are three more courses in the
foundation Java sequence when you take it through Sun*.* The bottom line
is about \$7,500 (and that's cheap compared with Martinez' high-end
estimate of *tabula rasa*-to-Certified Internet Webmaster at \$20,330,
including examination fees, self-study manuals and CDs).

43\. In contrast, the Ziff-Davis on-line ZD University/SmartPlanet
offers 23 self-study Java modules for a total of \$658.90; the on-line
SmartForce offers 15 Java modules (that it estimates take four hours
each to complete) for a total of \$1,875; and at Learning Tree one can
apply a \$4,995 four-course training packet to a 17-day instructor-lead
Java sequence that can be worth nine college credits through ACE's
service.

Do you get what you pay for? Unlike such questions in higher education,
the variables one would array in an evaluation include job experience,
the nature and intensity of self-study, prior formal course work, and
the usual intangibles involved in determining the worth of a class-based

experience*.* There is no clear answer because the populations are
inaccessible (one cannot conduct research or evaluations in the Parallel
Universe in the same ways as are available in the traditional higher
education sector).

44\. Financial aid in the IT certification preparation world is
available principally in two forms*.* First and foremost, by employer
sponsorship. In 1999, Novell surveyed 135 North American companies that
employed Novell-certified staff and found mean per head direct
sponsorship costs (training classes, travel, testing) of \$3,121 and
indirect costs (lost employee time) of \$1,933. Microsoft's 1997 salary
survey of its professional certificate holders revealed that employers
picked up the full preparation tab for 57 percent of the survey
respondents (but a third of the respondents had footed the whole bill
themselves)*.* Despite year-to-year volatility in this survey's reported
mean costs of certification (instruction, examination fees, books,
tutorial CDs, etc.), the proportion of respondents reporting "full-boat
support" from employers has been consistently in the 50-60 percent
range*.* But these are limited hints: no one is tracking the full
universe of certification preparation in terms of tuition reimbursement
or contract learning paid directly by employers to providers*.* Since
employers in other countries are included among the sponsors, and since
some of the certifications originate in other countries (SAP in Germany;
Baan in the Netherlands), estimates are even more elusive*.* The
National Center for Education Statistics' National Household Education
Survey is insufficiently detailed to get at this information for U.S.
citizens.

The second potential source of support, in the U.S., lies in the new
Hope and Lifetime Learning tax credits, but it will be some years before
we know precisely who has used these tax credits and for what.

# Certification Agents: the Testing Companies

45\. The international guild system of information technology requires
intermediary agents for certification*.* There are three testing
companies that play major roles: Prometric (recently acquired from
Sylvan Learning Systems by Thomson Corporation of Canada for \$775
million), CatGlobal (a division of Houghton-Mifflin), and Virtual
University Enterprises (VUE, a division of National Computer Systems).
They are in the business of testing competence from everything from
PowerPoint to C++ to the elements of the Citrix CCA and those of the
major industry-certifications (MCSE, ODBA, etc.).

46\. The global accessibility of these companies is stunning*.*
Prometric operates about 2,500 testing centers in 140 countries*.* VUE
has nearly 1500 locations, including 20 in Mexico, 28 in Russia, 23 in
Brazil, 19 in South Africa, 50 in China, and others in Senegal, Kenya,
Oman, Namibia, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Angola, Albania, and
Honduras---among other places*.* CatGlobal offers wholly on-line
computer-based testing from servers in 16 countries, and takes mobile
testing centers to vendor expositions (in 1999, it administered 2,600
certification exams for Lotus at European expositions alone)*.* Some of
these testing "centers" are located at the sites of "training partners,"
presumably for convenience, and some are free-standing.

Because most of the assessments are delivered by computer on a daily
basis, and because the candidate encounters a randomized selection of
prompts from an item pool, test security standards meet the requirements
of any client (vendor or industry association). An organization that
wishes to establish itself as an authorized testing center for any of
these corporations must undergo comprehensive and rigorous evaluation,
particularly on test security and proctoring issues.

47\. These organizations are key to any would-be accounting system of
industry certification*.* Nobody else has as comprehensive knowledge of
how many students attempt to pass which certifications, how many
actually pass, and the distribution of attempts and successes by country
in which the testing takes place and the national origin of the
test-takers*.* But because the universe of testing companies is an
oligopoly, they all regard this type of information as proprietary.

48\. The testing, of course, is not free*.* A given certification may
require as many as eight or nine examinations, the fees for each of
which range from \$50 to \$250 (lower if the examinations come from an
industry association and you are a member of that association). In
CompTIA's pricing scheme, the fee to an employer falls with the volume
of employees taking the examination*.* Pricing of examinations outside
the U.S. varies widely by world region and vendor*.* For performance
assessments with hands-on laboratories and simulations, the prospective
examinee should count on \$1,000*.* If one completes assessments on any
three tracks of the Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert program, each
of which requires both a paper examination and a laboratory performance,
the total examination fee bill comes to \$3,300.

# The Assessments: Think You Can Pass?

49\. What kind of examinations are these? First, they all have
cut-scores*.* Similar to licensure rules in law, medicine, architecture,
and nursing, this is a "no pass/no play" world, though "no play" in this
case means only that one does not have access to the higher salaries and
the support services of the guild that certification brings*.* Like the
Bar exams, too, one may retake the certification tests, with an
appropriate wait between test administrations.

Second, the formats of the examinations range from 45--120 minute
restricted response (multiple-choice, identification, one *best* correct
answer, 2/3/4 correct answers), to restricted-response adaptive modes
(that stop the testing process at the point in the adaptive curve at
which a passing score could be predicted at a 95 percent confidence
level), constructed response (e.g. drag and drop), and "essays" (e.g.
"Write a program in X to do Y" or "Write a technical report/press
release explaining M to audience N), to three-hour simulations,
scenarios with "select-and-place" items, and case studies involving
performance benchmarks.

Even within restricted response formats, some examinations are very
creative*.* Cisco's Certified Design Associate (CCDA) examination, for
example, presents stories about organizations that require a wide area
network (WAN), and a combination of drag-and-drop, identification, and
one best answer questions require the candidate to apply design
knowledge in the context of the stories.

50\. The Red Hat Certified Engineer Exam is a six-hour laboratory
affair, including two and one-half hours performing an installation and
configuration of a system, and two and one-half hours debugging system
problems*.* A core Linux operating system firm, Red Hat was the only
vendor-certifier I found that indicated passing rates on examinations:
60 percent for the performance-based Red Hat Certified Engineer exam, on
which the cut-score is 80*.* As table 6 demonstrates, 80 is at the high
end of passing scores on IT certification examinations.

> Table 6.---Passing (cut) scores on a sample of certification
> examinations in information technology
>
> Red Hat Certified Engineer 80
>
> Certified UNIX System Administrator 80
>
> Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert, Lab Exam 80
>
> Certified Internet Webmaster 75
>
> Sun Certified Architect 75
>
> Disaster Recovery Institute International Certifications 75
>
> BAAN Basic and Advanced 75
>
> Master of Network Science (3Com) 70
>
> Certified Information Systems Security Professional 70
>
> Sun Network Administrator 70
>
> Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert, Paper Exam 65

[Sources]{.underline}: Christianson & Fajen, 1999; Martinez, 1999

51\. The most demanding certification is probably the Cisco Certified
Internetworking Expert (CCIE) assessment which, in addition to a
two-hour written exam, requires a two-*day* lab exam that "pits the
candidate against difficult build, break, and restore scenarios." Those
in higher education who talk glibly about performance assessment don't
really know what it means until they are up against the CCIE. On the Web
site for current and prospective Cisco certified experts, one student
advised others to work through the Internetwork Troubleshooting and
Internetwork Design examinations before "attacking the real monster, the
CCIE."

52\. As in the case of high-stakes gateway examinations in the
traditional higher education system, a considerable industry has arisen
to assist prospective IT certification holders prepare for the
examinations. Exclusive of the coursework provided by the vendors,
industry associations, training-partners, and postsecondary
institutions, a massive amount of printed exam preparation manuals,
self-study CDs, and dedicated Web sites (certifyexpress.com,
selftrain.com,

exampractice.com, gocertify.com, cramsession.com, IT2002.com,
netcraftonline,com, and others) form the core of support*.* The user
should verify the credentials of the site*.* An on-line service that
sells flowers and health advice in addition to certification preparation
is probably one to avoid.

Unlike the competitive environment for access to elite undergraduate
institutions or to "top" law and medical schools, the spirit of the IT
certification industry involves cooperation and sharing*.* The most
revealing indication of this phenomenon is the "braindump," a Web site
at which prospective examinees seek---and others provide---sample
questions and problems that will help them prepare*.* Here are two
typical exchanges:

> ? I am preparing for the Sun Certified Programmer. Please send
> questions as many as you have . . .also tell me about recommended
> reading material.

-   What will happen if you compile/run the following code?

> 1: public class Q21 2: {3: int maxElements; 4: 5: void Q21() 6:
> {7:maxElements=100; 8:System.out.printIn (maxElements); 9: } 10:11:
> Q21(int i) 12: {13: maxElements=i; 14:
> System.out,printIn(maxElements); 15: } 16: 17: public static void
> main(String\[\] args) 18: {19:Q21 a=new Q21(); 20: Q21(999); 21: } 22:
> }

Think about initialization \[of variables\], compilation errors, print
output.

> ? Hi friends. I plan to write the Sun Java2 Certification. Please send
> brain dumps, related web sites, question papers. . .

-   What will be the output \[of the following\]?

> public class Test {public static void main(String args\[\] {
> StringBuffer a=new StringBuffer("One"); StringBuffer b= new
> StringBuffer("Two"); Test.swap(a,b); System.out.printIn("a is
> "+a="\\nb is "+b);}static void swap (StringBuffer a, StringBufferb)
> {a.append("more"); b=a; } }

Check this site: www.software.u-net.com/javaexam/

The answers to the questions are not the point: rather both the sense of
community implicit in the sharing, and the instructional talents of the
respondents, who posed their questions as unrestricted response
(open-ended) prompts*.* To be sure, sharing may be a form of
self-interest, because the more people who acquire the level of
competence required for certification the better the communication
across the industry*.* The people involved in these exchanges may wind
up on the same design team.

53. With very minimal knowledge and study, I have taken practice
    pre-tests on-line for the A+ certification, the MCSE, and Web
    Developer, and, with correspondingly little difficulty, managed to
    flunk all of them*.* The experience drove home the most basic
    principle of IT industry certification: content counts! One cannot
    get by on interpreting verbal clues in prompts*.* You either know
    the "stuff" or you don't*.* And you must study---hard. Responses to
    Microsoft's 1998 salary survey revealed that those who earned the
    MCSE in the previous year spent an average of 216 hours preparing
    for their certification exams*.* The Microsoft Certified Trainers
    (MCTs), who must be recertified annually, spent an average of 222
    hours preparing.

54\. Given the global reach of IT certification, some examinations are
available in languages other than English, but that depends on subject
matter*.* Java, for example, is not written in Japanese, Spanish, or
Russian*.* One might prompt an examinee to solve a Java problem using a
language other than English, but without a modicum of English, the
examinee cannot read or write the Java text*.* On the other hand, for
example, the field of document imaging is symbol-dependent, not
language-dependent, and CompTIA's examination for Document Imaging
Architect is available in some languages other than English (and when it
is not available in a local language, candidates have an extra 30
minutes to complete the test)*.* In between are simulations which, as
Microsoft notes, "are used more often in English exams," but can be
incorporated into exams in "selected languages." When languages are
"selected," they tend to be major*.* CompTIA's exams, for example, are
offered in Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and
both simplified and "traditional" \[Mandarin\] Chinese.

A global guild is sensitive to linguistic diversity, even when the
technological supradialect of English is the language of its
superstructure*.* From the perspective of traditional higher education,
this awareness and concern with language environments should be one of
the most attractive features of the information technology guild*.* It's
not that certification requires bilingualism (though in many cases, it
does), rather that the learning and assessment processes are
linguistically inclusive. In the last half of the year 2000, Cisco's
training partners, for example, are offering preparatory coursework for
technical certifications in 19 languages other than English (see
Appendix B).

55\. The testing firms do *not* award the formal certifications*.*
Rather, they report examination results to the vendors or industry
associations that issue the documents of certification, and both vendors
and industry associations may have requirements for certification beyond
those of examination*.* Nor do the testing firms write the examinations
or determine test content and specifications*.* The Computing Technology
Industry Association (CompTIA), for example, maintains a board of
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who write test objectives, new test items,
and regularly conduct what's known in the psychometric trade as "content
representativeness studies" to ensure that certification examinations
are current with the state of knowledge and practice. Certification
tests in the IT world are constantly being retired and replaced to meet
the current state of vendor products and industry knowledge*.* As of
January 2000, Microsoft had

announced the retirement and replacement of 27 of its certification
examinations. Compared to modal behavior in the world of higher
education (the Graduate Record Examination Board's subject field test in
Computer Science has not undergone a major content representativeness
study since 1982!), these standards are rigorous.

56. I found a few exceptions to the firewall on test volume data, one of
    them perhaps inadvertent: a Prometric press release of March 10,
    1999 indicating that, since the inception of the first IT industry
    certification a decade earlier, Prometric had delivered more than
    2.1 million examinations for Novell alone*.* When a representative
    of Virtual University Enterprises estimated worldwide test volume
    for the entire industry in 1999 as 3 million (half outside the
    U.S.), the Prometric press release number did not appear outlandish.

57\. Another exception came from the 8,500-member National Association
of Communication Systems Engineers (NACSE)*.* NACSE offers four generic
certifications (two for technicians and two for "network specialists").
Its examinations, monitored by a board of standards, are delivered
on-line by a small testing service firm called Web University, and
administered by partner institutions (including colleges) which provide
the computer labs and the proctors*.* As a non-profit organization,
NASCE does not regard test volume data as proprietary information. Bob
Kile, its Director, reported 1999 test volume in four "disciplines" as
follows:

> Network & Data Communications 6,400
>
> Telecommunications 950
>
> Web Issues 4,600
>
> Programming 425

This distribution reflects larger industry patterns: networking
certifications are more important than others as labor market entry and
advancement points, and Web-related certifications provide entre to
positions in a wide array of both commercial and non-profit
organizations.

# Beyond the Vendor: Generic IT Certifications

58\. NACSE does not stand alone in the accounting of IT certifications
other than those issued by vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco or Novell*.*
The Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) and the Institute
for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP) are notable
certifiers who have nothing to sell*.* As Christianson and Fajan note,
their "vendor-neutral" certifications, "cover many products and
concepts," are "developed by a wide range of experts in a particular
field," and "encompass a \[broad\] range of skills and abilities."(p.
528)

All vendor systems, for example, face the potential of crashes and
"disaster recovery." Disaster recovery is, to use a conscious oxymoron,
a generic specialization*.* Such specializations are similar to those in
academic fields*.* So it is not surprising that we have an industry
organization called the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) which has
developed three levels of international

certification in Business Continuity Planning*.* And with the increasing
sophistication of hackers and virus originators, it was inevitable that
the System Administration, Networking, and Security Institute (SANS)
would launch a security certification program (including Web-based
training), as it did in July 2000.

59\. Another example of vendor/association collaboration is Novell's
Certified Internet Professional (CIP), a credential developed in concert
with the International Webmasters Association (IWA), the Association of
Web Professionals, the Australian Web Developers, and the Association of
Internet Professionals*.* There are five "tracks" in the
program--Internet Business Strategist, Web Designer, Intranet Manager,
Web Developer, and Internet Architect*.* Eleven (11) core courses
support preparation on those tracks, and only one of the eleven,
"Netware 4.11 Administration," is truly vendor-dependent (Novell)*.*
Separately, the IWA offers a Certified Web Professional designation
available only to its 14,000 members (93 chapters in 31 countries, from
Cambodia to Venezuela)*.* In addition to examination in at least one of
seven "Web disciplines" (the list is slightly different from that of the
Novell CIP, in which IWA also participates), the CWP requires two years
of qualifying job experience.

60\. Beyond vendor/association collaboration lie joint vendor
certifications*.* The most notable of these is the new "Certification
Initiative for Enterprise Development," a cooperative undertaking of
IBM, Novell, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance*.*
This effort is described on Sun's Web site as "a multi-vendor Java
technology training and certification initiative," and illustrates how a
broad segment of the information technology industry recognizes and
codifies the ties that bind*.* The key tie, in this case, is Java.

61\. Increasingly, too, we find "cross-vendor recognized" examinations,
a development that underscores the rationalizing trends in the industry,
along with the competition for trained labor*.* Microsoft, for example,
waives its networking examination requirement for those who are already
certified by Novell, Banyan, or Sun as network engineers, specialists,
or administrators*.* Novell waives *its* networking technologies exam
requirement for those who already hold the MCSE (Microsoft) or Network+
(CompTIA) certifications. Intel exempts holders of CompTIA
certifications (A+, Network+,and i-Net+) from its Technology Essentials
examination (the relationship between the specific CompTIA certification
and exemption depends on the track of the Intel certification for which
one is a candidate). In the new Certification Initiative for Enterprise
Development, the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform
examination is recognized by all corporate participants*.* In a way,
these developments suggest that IT certifications ultimately prove to be
generic*.* They are like piano concertos: practice one well, and you can
learn the next one more easily.

Quality Assurance: Standards and the Accreditation of Certification
Programs

62\. The cross-vendor recognized examinations are a prelude to the
adoption of industry-wide certification standards and accreditation,
for, as one training Website noted, "certification has gone to new
heights in confusion." In a response to the rapid expansion in the
number of certifications, lack of uniform differentiation between levels
of certification, and the desire to ensure that the certification is a
meaningful credential, a Council on Computing Certification was formed
in May 2000, and has distributed draft guidelines for both industry
standards (including testing, currency of certification, continuing
education/experience requirements, and support for practitioners) and
accreditation of certification programs.

Unlike the construct of "program" in formal tertiary education, the IT
certification "program" does *not* necessarily include an instructional
provider*.* The proposed standards apply to the certifying agency,
whether that be a corporate vendor (e.g. Microsoft), a broad-based
industry association (e.g. CompTIA), an association of specialists (e.g.
the Disaster Recovery Institute), or an educational institution that
offers its own certifications (e.g. Learning Tree).

Under the proposed standards, all of these certifying organizations will
be required to submit evidence of "a clearly stated domain \[and
sub-domains\] of coverage" with identification of all subsumed issues,
tasks, and knowledge, as "developed by technically qualified
individuals," and with a name for the certification that "accurately
reflects this domain" (a kind of truth-in-labeling requirement)*.* The
certification itself must "require passing at least one exam" on which
"75 percent or more of the identified sub-domains must be reflected" (a
content-representativeness requirement)*.* Furthermore, the certifying
organization must review and update both the domain and examination
content on at least an annual basis, and have in place a method for
"assuring currency of skills." There are also requirements for support
of certification candidates, modes of disseminating information about
changes in requirements, and content of program materials. And under the
proposed standards, a program cannot require membership in a specific
organization as a prerequisite.

63\. The proposed accreditation requirements seek to validate these
standards for a "fully operational" program, and sort the certifications
into levels*.* This last requirement is a very important step because it
introduces an industry-wide "degree structure" that is currently
practiced by only a few certifying agencies (Cisco, Compaq, IBM)*.* The
draft specifications for the three proposed levels of accreditation are
worth quoting (in a slightly different format than presented by the
Council on Computing Certification) because they demonstrate an
alternative, performance-based way of thinking about a hierarchy of
credentials:

> **Level I.** The domain must be limited to a single technology or
> skill area, and the certification candidate should be able to:

-   accomplish basic tasks in the domain without assistance;

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```
-   solve common problems within the domain;

-   assist in more advanced tasks; and

-   Describe the technical structure of the domain.

> **Level II**. The domain must encompass either multiple
> technologies/skill areas or a complex single technology, and the
> certification candidate should be able to:

-   serve as a resource for others;

```{=html}
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```
-   solve moderately complex problems without assistance; and

-   perform advanced tasks within the domain.

> **Level III.** The domain must encompass multiple technologies or
> skill areas, and the certification candidate should be able to:

-   troubleshoot complex problems;

```{=html}
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```
-   confidently traverse the scope of the domain, from the most basic
    material to complex issues involving interfaces outside of the
    domain;

-   present "significance experience"; and

```{=html}
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```
-   complete a hands-on assessment/lab exam/project.

In a way, these levels translate into analogues of Associate's,
Bachelor's, and Master's degrees--at least in the context of one's major
field of study*.* At the least, they are distinct benchmarks on a
continuum of competence from novice to expert. But accreditation in the
traditional postsecondary sector is focused on the *institution*,
whereas these criteria derive from *student* learning and performance*.*
Would our colleges and community colleges be willing to adopt this type
of criterion in their accreditation procedures? As the IT certification
preparation universe moves into the traditional tertiary sector, we may
yet find out.

# Coming Soon to a Campus Near You?

64\. The traditional computer science major covers a number of topics
that students can use in the course of preparing for IT certification,
for example, Java programming, networks, and relational data bases*.*
What about students who are *not* computer science majors? The limited
background data available on certification-holders (only from Microsoft,
and through its annual salary surveys) offer two complementary,
common-sense trends that might guide traditional institutions of higher
education that contemplate entering the certification preparation market
in more comprehensive ways than fragmentary course offerings*.* First,
the age distribution of certificate holders has moved decidedly lower:
from 44 percent under the age of 35 in 1996 to 58 percent in 1998*.* The
second change is more dramatic: the proportion holding less than a
bachelor's degree jumped from 19 to 37 percent in the same period. The
potential for helping 20-something students complete both degrees and
certification is obvious---provided that institutions of higher
education are willing to place certification in the same category as any
other program of credit-by-examination, and to adjust residency
requirements accordingly.

65\. Where and how has the IT certification package been translated into
the standard currency of the credit system with or without the
intervention of ACE's Credit Service? Our evidence is anecdotal, but the
large-scale anecdotes such as Pima Community College District's
arrangement with Novell, Microsoft and other vendors illustrates what
can transpire*.* Pima has become a *de facto* accreditation agency for
170 sites (including its own) at which preparatory instruction for
certification is delivered*.* Called the ITCAP (Information Technology
College Accreditation Program) network, and existing as a separate
corporation, it offers students at approved centers the opportunity to
turn certification preparation into degree-additive credits through
challenge examinations*.* These examinations were developed by Pima
faculty and are scored by Pima faculty*.* They are not Novell exams or
Microsoft exams, but they will get you college credit*.* Between the
late fall of 1997 and May 2000, and excluding desktop applications, over
12,000 challenge examinations had been taken under the ITCAP program*.*
Tellingly, though, and in the words of a Pima administrator, "to the
best of our knowledge, no student has continued to degree
\[Associate's\] completion."

66\. A different version of this type of arrangement is the integration
of multiple certifications into a bachelor's degree program*.* Regents
College of Albany, NY, a non-profit specializing in distance education
degree programs and with a current enrollment of about 17,000, has
teamed with Microsoft, CompTIA, and Prometric to offer a BS in Computer
Information Science with credit-by-certification-exams (vendor and
vendor-neutral) at the core. The program is open only to those who
either hold an associate's degree or have previously earned 60 college
credits*.* This is a very promising mechanism both to facilitate
transfer and to encourage long-term non-completers (who have accounted
for eight percent of recent cohorts of traditional-age college entrants)
to finish their degrees.

67\. A third version involves colleges and community colleges purchasing
complete packages of on-line curricula from commercial developers, and
placing the stamp of their own certifications on completion of the
package*.* The University of Colorado at Denver, for example, chose to
take clusters of network-oriented courses developed and delivered by
WestNet, and offer its students a "Certificate in Networking." This is a
convenient type of relationship for many institutions of higher
education faced with enrollment pressures that build at certain joints
of the organization: it allows the leveraging of instructional power,
accommodation of greater numbers, and flexibility in place and time of
course delivery.

68\. Lastly, some four-year institutions, both in the United States and
other countries, have become formal training-partners of the major
vendors, offering course work through continuing education and special
divisions*.* Both Louisiana State University and the University of
Akron, for example, are Novell partners, as is the École Normale
Supérieure de Lyon in France*.* And a special unit of the prestigious
computer science department at Moscow State University, REDlab, offers
both Cisco and Sun certification course work. One finds these cases only
on the web sites of the vendors*.* Whether these instructional
activities will move from organizational peripheries to the mainstream
of curricular offerings is an open question, one worth tracking.

69\. The complex cross-currents of certification preparation course work
in the traditional postsecondary universe are revealed in Microsoft's
Authorized Academic Training Provider (AATP) program*.* Microsoft
distinguishes between its Certified Technical Education Centers,
commercial firms such as Global Knowledge or Azlan, and accredited
educational institutions, both high schools (see section #73 below) and
postsecondary providers*.* To become an AATP, an accredited school or
college must agree to deliver Microsoft-approved courseware with
instructors who have passed Microsoft Certified Professional
examinations on the topics of instruction, and with hardware and
facilities that meet Microsoft's requirements (and that are subject to
inspection)*.* In these dimensions of the relationship, the vendor, in
effect, is acting as a second accrediting agency.

But there are two other aspects of the dynamic that transcend
traditional accrediting standards: first, that the AATP "submit reports
on course attendance," and second, that the college or trade school or
high school agrees to cap at 12 per week the number of hours of
instruction for any certification preparation course*.* The reports on
course attendance may provide the kind of data on preparation for
certification that has been so elusive to date. The 12-hour cap is more
than a gesture of respect for the rest of the institution's curriculum:
it keeps the IT certification program at the margins*.* The cap also
fits neatly into the learning rhythms of continuing education
students*.* Under these conditions, who has signed on?

70\. Table 7, derived from a state-by-state listing on Microsoft's Web
site, indicates the number AATP agreements in effect in different
sectors of U.S. education as of August 2000*.* The comments are
mandatory.

> Table 7.---Distribution of Microsoft Authorized Academic Training
> Providers (AATPs), by Level and Control of Institution, Including
> Branch Campuses, August 2000
>
> [Category]{.underline} [Number]{.underline} [Comment]{.underline}

4-Year Public and Not for Profit 142 Approximately one-third are
continuing education units

4-Year For-Profit 42 Two-thirds are campuses of the University of
Phoenix

2-Year Public and Not for Profit 298 Includes multiple campuses of large
community college districts such as Houston and Allegheny (Pittsburgh)

2-Year For-Profit 103 Includes multiple campuses of Heald, Herzing, and
others

> Indeterminable Postsecondary Status 39 Not listed in Barbett and Lin
> (1998) nor otherwise located.
>
> High Schools 129 More than half are technical/ vocational high
> schools.

There is no doubt that the postsecondary universe of AATPs is dominated
by sub-baccalaureate institutions, at least in the United States (in
contrast, albeit in a smaller universe, eight of the ten AATPs in
Argentina are universities)*.* And while there are some distinguished
institutions in the 4-year collection, most of these are present only
through continuing or extended education units*.* This combination
suggests that most of the pre-certification courseware will remain at
the periphery of higher education*.* The potential for growth in
secondary education, however, is another story.

# Building a Pipeline

71\. Pre-collegiate and threshold certifications are a growing
phenomenon*.* Consider, for example, the NetPrep program: sponsored by
3Com, with a curriculum developed by WestNet Learning, and blessed with
certifications from the National Association of Communication Systems
Engineers (NACSE)*.* NetPrep offers four packages of courses, at
different levels, to both high schools and colleges, with accompanying
examinations for junior-type certifications*.* The threshold high school
courses on networking fundamentals and LANS will get you a NACSE Student
Technical Certificate of Achievement*.* Add courses in
Wide-Area-Networks (WANS) and Networking Architecture, pass the exams,
and you are dubbed a Student Network Technician*.* The college-level
packages are the same as those offered to NACSE member-candidates for
two levels of Network Specialist certification, Associate and Senior*.*
But in all these cases, school and college, students must join the
organization*.* This approach builds a pipeline to the guild.

72\. The Cisco Networking Academy, claiming nearly 3200 sites in 59
countries, is a four-semester program in which students can apply
credits toward the Cisco Certified Network Associate credential*.*
Contrary to a popular belief, the academies are not confined to
schools*.* Of 329 Academy locations in California, for example, seven
are at 4-year colleges, 56 are at community colleges, and eight are at
secular institutions. It is difficult to determine total enrollment and
retention in the Cisco Academy programs, but some of the sites profiled
on Cisco's website provide very indirect evidence: 50 students at
Madison Area Technical College in Wisconsin, 50 at Oakland (Calif.)
Technical High School*.* Even though this program is vendor-specific,
there is no question that students acquire generic industry knowledge of
such key elements of networks as protocols, configurations, filters, and
segmentation.

73\. We noted that the Microsoft AATP program included 129 high schools
as of August 2000 (see table 7)*.* Some of these high school programs
were not born yesterday*.* Wyoming started in 1995, and by 1998 had 250
students in eleven regular regional high schools enrolled in the likes
of generic Networking Essentials, Visual Basic programming, and
vendor-specific Windows NT Server software courses*.* A tech-prep
articulation program has been worked out with two of the state's
community colleges, and a dual-enrollment agreement can net the student
up to 21 college credits (including accounting and business mathematics
in addition to the IT certification preparation courses)*.* Math through
pre-calculus is required*.* There are no junior certifications here*.*
Instead, the student is given momentum on the path to certification*.*
What is more notable about the AATP high school program, though, is the
required teacher training and certification*.* When secondary school
teachers must pass IT subject examinations and are challenged to be
certified as IT trainers, guild knowledge becomes resident at a very
local level.

74\. The Wings-21 program in Nebraska illustrates a different type of
sponsorship and approach*.* It was developed by a nonprofit consortium
of business, government agencies, and schools to introduce students to
IT careers starting with a required Pathway-21 Course in grade nine*.*
Following this experience, 14 participating high schools teach Cisco
technology, and area businesses provide internships, for example,
working with teachers on U.S.West projects in application programming
and database development*.* There is no specific pre-certification here,
and the vendor role is secondary to opening up paths to programming,
multimedia, and business applications*.* The metaphor of the "pipeline"
is derived from fluid mechanics, and envisions a closed space and an
inevitable direction*.* The IT world doesn't always work in such
inexorable ways, so the options inherent in the "path" approach of
Wings-21are attractive.

# Summary: the New Global Guild

So what is it? What is it not? And having learned something about it,
can we say what it means for traditional higher education.

75\. *First and foremost, the IT certification universe is an
international guild that lies beyond the ken or control of governments.*
The medieval guild engaged in a form of licensure that was designed to
facilitate and control the *flow* of labor and the *level* of
knowledge/skills necessary to practice a particular trade at the same
time that it sought to protect its members from unwanted intrusions and
rivals (Le Goff, 1980; White, 1952)*.* In some contrast, IT Industry
certification is a form of guild behavior that seeks to *expand* the
labor pool as well as its flow*.* Its closest labor market analogue in
the licensure of allied health field specialties--licensure that is
largely borderless and competency-based.

Of course, certification is not a license*.* The practice of
"Webmaster," for example, does not affect human health or safety, so the
certificate for such employment is neither regulated nor monitored by
public authorities (as is the practice of nursing).

76\. *Second, because the guild lies beyond governmental oversight, we
have little idea of who is involved in certification and where.* There
are no unduplicated head-counts, there are no central registries, there
are no ledgers of providers or instructors*.* Even in the ITCAP program
run by a subsidiary corporation of the Pima Community College District
in Arizona, 47 percent of students enrolled in the fall semester, 1999
did not report race/ethnicity and 10 percent did not report gender (age
was another story: 75 percent were 30 or older). The closest we come to
an accounting is in the third-party testing centers, and because those
parties are in competition, whatever information they possess they
consider confidential*.* In fact, the third-party testing centers
collect very little data: in the words of a VUE representative:
"only\...what is necessary to register a candidate for an exam---name
and contact information."

77\. *Third, at the center of this transnational postsecondary system of
teaching, learning, and credentialing is not the local institution but
the global student.* We can call the system "postsecondary" because the
level of reading, reasoning, and communication skills necessary to
comprehend and apply its content assumes secondary level education in
most countries. It is the student who, on entering that system,
negotiates different sources and ways of learning without being bound to
an institution in a given place in a given country*.* The e-mail
addresses of inquirers and respondents in the examination preparation
chat-rooms of brainbuzz.com speak eloquently to a worldwide community
studying together. Indeed, what distinguishes this system most from the
academic world is that it operates the same way, with the same signals
to students, and with the same meanings---though in different
languages---in Montreal, Manaus, Munich, Mogadishu, Manila, Moscow, and
Milwaukee (see Appendix B).

78\. *Fourth, the IT guild has brought competency-based education and
performance assessment to a status they have never enjoyed within
traditional higher education.* The guild has implemented, in effect,
many of the reforms espoused within the academy in the 1970s and
1980s*.* In all countries now, this new system cares most about your
learning, your demonstrable competence, and your potential in the IT
workforce*.* It sets accessible criterion-referenced standards of
performance and is confident enough to turn the judgment of performance
over to competent third parties*.* Where you come from, what you look
like, where you went to school, how many credits and what degrees you
earned, your SAT or ACT scores ---these matters are not even on the
radar screen of the IT certification guild.

79\. *Fifth, the system is not higher education.* It is not in the
business of helping adolescents become adults, of providing
multidimensional education, or of teaching the literacy and numeracy
skills necessary to manipulate its own knowledge universe. It is a
two-dimensional system, and, for that reason, is not higher education
and does not pretend to be*.* To the extent that formal coursework is
part of its offerings, the IT guild's instructors are teachers, not
university faculty*.* They are a different kind of workforce.

Industry certifications, whether in information technology or other
fields, replace neither experience nor degrees*.* Nor do they pretend to
represent an assessment of the full range and depth of knowledge,
skills, or potential contribution to organizational productivity*.*
Instead, we might say, the certification serves to *augment* experience
and traditional credentials*.* For their part, employers do not
*require* certification, rather reward it*.* Microsoft's and Novell's
salary surveys consistently evidence a post-certification premium of
4-14 percent in the combination of base pay plus bonuses.

80\. Students know this*.* From their demand-side behavior, the search
for certifications other than academic degrees is seen as yielding
mobility in "work life." Unlike the period dominated by the guilds, let
alone most of the 20^th^ century, labor market experience is no longer
linear or unidimensional*.* People assemble valises of special knowledge
and skills, apply them in different work-organization contexts, and
modify them by (1) personal predilection, (2) personal perception of
potential "work life" paths, and (3) labor market change*.* With each of
these modifications or enhancements, we have come to realize, work life
mobility demands the transparent and portable evidence of a
certification*.* We may not be tracking the phenomena well, but the data
cited earlier in this monograph suggest that considerable numbers of
students are finding these certifications and the "secular" entities
that provide the preparation.

# Information Needs for National Planning Everywhere

This parallel universe has sufficient resources and momentum to go its
own way*.* To the extent to which there are occasional interactions
between its secular providers and the traditional postsecondary and
tertiary sectors in various countries, we will catch glimpses of its
scope and dynamics, and may be stimulated to adapt some of its
performance assessment processes*.* But there is no question that the
public interest in a 100 nations would be well served if we possessed at
least the same information about certification candidates and their
backgrounds, enrollments, and awards, and the same information about
providers (the "training partners") as we do for the universe we know*.*
As much as they are appreciated, we can not rely on surveys of
certificate recipients producing 20 percent response rates (from small
samples to begin with) from one major vendor (Microsoft) to tell us what
is transpiring and for whom. Nor can we rely on the country-distribution
of one highly-elite population, the roughly 5,000 Certified Cisco
Internetworking Experts (CCIEs) as of July 2000 (see Appendix B) to tell
us *where* it is happening*.* All nations must plan and budget for the
provision of postsecondary schooling*.* If a significant number of
individuals follow paths that use the parallel universe, their actions
affect planning and budgeting, and because the universe is transnational
its information is analogous to that necessary for international
trade*.* No one government can require or collect this information. The
effort might be coordinated through an international organization, and
with the voluntary cooperation of the IT guild, which might establish a
central registry of certified individuals, with enough information on
educational and demographic backgrounds to help policy-makers map the
full dynamics of global postsecondary education.

This information would have a considerable impact on our assumptions
concerning the capacity of the system of postcompulsory schooling, and
the way we plan for future enrollments*.* By national policy, and beyond
the increases that would occur naturally by demographic dynamics, the
United States has invited about two million new students into the higher
education sector. These people---and others---will go to school in very
different ways than was true as recently as 1990*.* Yet we have not
factored in multi-institutional attendance and the secular providers
into our calculations at all*.* We talk glibly about "tsunamis" for
which we are unprepared, rush to open branch campuses, put existing
campuses on 24/7 schedules, and flagellate ourselves when students
enroll for only a few courses and then disappear*.* We may turn around
some day to find that these students have "disappeared" into the world
of the secular providers*.* But until the parallel universe becomes part
of national accounting systems and until we learn to follow the
student---and not the institution---we'll never know.

**References and Sources: by Paragraph/Section Number**

2\. Marchese, T. "Not-So-Distant Competitors." *AAHE Bulletin*, vol. 15,
no. 9 (1998), pp. 3-7

3\. See, for example: United Nations Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). *Policy Paper for Change and Development in
Higher Education.* Paris: author, 1995; Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), *Alternatives to Universities*.
Paris: author, 1991. Goedegebuure, L. and Meek, V.L., "Restructuring
Higher Education: a Comparative Analysis Between Australia and the
Netherlands." *Comparative Education*, vol. 27, no.1 (1991), pp. 7-27.

4\. See, for example: Manski, C. F. and Wise, D., *College Choice in
America*. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983.; McPherson, M. and
Schapiro, M. , "Does Student Aid Affect College Enrollment? New Evidence
on a Persistent Controversy." *American Economic Review*, vol. 81
(1991), pp. 309-318; Gladieux, L.E. and Hauptman, A.M., *The College Aid
Quandry*. Washington, DC: the Brookings Institution, 1995.

7\. Stacey, N. (ed.) *Competence Without Credentials.* Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Education, 1999. Available free from EDPUBS at
877-433-7827 (toll free).

Zabusky, S.E., "Computers, Clients, and Expertise: Negotiating Technical
Identities in a Nontechnical World," in Barley, S.R. and Orr, J.E.
(eds.), *Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in U.S. Settings*.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997, pp. 129-153.

9\. For an example of required and elective tests, see *Novell Education
CNE Progress Chart*, the most recently updated version of which should
be found at education.novell.com

> prometric.com/clients/html/benefits.htm Received: 7/16/00

10\. Barbett, S. and Lin. A., *Directory of Postsecondary Institutions*,
2 vols. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 1998.

11.1 Information Technology Association of America.and Virginia
Polytechnic and State University. *Help Wanted 1998: a Call for
Collaborative Action for the New Millennium* Arlington and Blacksburg,
Va.: Authors, 1998.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. *Occupational
Outlook Handbook*. Washington, DC: Author, 1997.

Adelman, C. *Leading, Concurrent, or Lagging?: the Knowledge Content of
Computer Science in Higher Education and the Labor Market.* Washington,
DC: U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute for Science
Education, 1997. Available from the National Institute for Science
Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1025 W. Johnson St.,
Madison, Wisc. 53703.

11.3 Adelman, C. "Crosscurrents and Riptides: Asking About the Capacity
of the Higher Education System." *Change*, vol.31, no.1 (Jan/Feb, 1999),
pp. 21-27.

12.1 Behr, P. "By the Numbers: First in War, Peace, and High Tech; Area
Survey Finds 12,183 Technology Firms." *The Washington Post*, Dec. 27,
1999, p. F7. See also "Data Basics: Silicon Valley and the Also-Rans,"
*The Washington Post*, July 22, 1999, p. E08.

13\. Brodgen, B. *Java 2 Exam Cram*. Scottsdale, Ariz.: Coriolus Group,
1999.

14\. prosofttraining.com/certification/iwa.asp Received: 1/30/00

> iwanet.org/profdevel/ Received: 1/30/00
>
> iwanet.org/about/standards.html Received: 2/5/00

16\. Nelson, B.J and Barley, S.R. *Toward an Emic Understanding of
Professionalism Among Technical Workers.* Philadelphia: National Center
on the Educational Quality of the Workforce, 1994, p.22.

17\. 3com.com/support/mns/main/overview.html Received: 2/3/00

> microsoft.com/Train_Cert/Train_Cert/diff.htm Received: 2/14/00

Christianson, J. S. and Fajen, A. *Computer and Network Professional's
Certification Guide.* San Francisco: Network Press, 1999, p. 318.

> cramsession.brainbuzz.com/certifications/list.asp Received: 7/11/00
>
> gocertify.earthweb.com/news/certnews.html Received: 7/11/00

19\. comptia.org/certification/certification.htm Received: 2/3/00

> microsoft.com/mcp/certstep/mcsefaq.htm Received: 1/26/00
>
> research.web.aol.com/index.adp?sym=LTRE&item=5 Received: 3/24/00
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20\. <iccp2200@iccp.org> e-mail Received: 7/13/00

> comptia.org/certification/aplus/aplus.asp Received: 2/13/00
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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Production of U.S. Degrees in Information Technology Disciplines),
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Martinez, A. *Get Certified & Get Ahead*. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999,
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Martinez, 1999, p.320

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24\. cisco.com/warp/public/10/wwtraining/cust/classes/C-TRNW-

> CCNAE.html Received: 1/23/00

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28. Taylor, K. "Tech Ed: Forty-Three Places to Get Certified." *The
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29\. Examples include AJ Institute (Vienna, Va.), Gestalt Systems
(Vienna, Va.), NetCert Education Centers (Springfield, Va.),
Productivity Point International (Washington, DC), Stratford College
(Falls Church, Va.), and The Training Warehouse (Springfield, VA).

29.1 suned.sun.com/usa_admin.new_student.html Received: 1/25/00

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29.2 MSNBC Wire Service, "Agreement adds 25 New August 10, 1998

'Authorized Java(SM) Centers for Training'"

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29.3 chauncey.com/ctt.html Received: 1/30/00

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29.4 ciwcertified.com/certifications/foundations.htm Received: 1/30/00

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> 1/30/00
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Graduate School, USDA. *Computer Sciences Training Catalog*. Washington,
DC: Author, 1999, p. 68.

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31\. Center for Information Technology: National Institutes of Health.
*Computer Training*, *Fall 1999*. Bethesda, Md.: Author, 1999.

Interviews: Leslie Barden, Center for Information Technology, National
Institutes of Health, December, 1999

32\. Graduate School, USDA. *Computer Sciences Training Catalog*.
Washington, DC: Author, 1999.

Interviews: Robert Brown, U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate
School, December, 1999.

33\. sun.com.cn/services/education.html Received: 1/25/00

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35\. training.cit.nih.gov/fastrac/courses.htm Received: 12/21/99

Interviews: Leslie Barden, Center for Information Technology, NIH,
December, 1999

36\. smartforce.com/corp/marketing/power/E_029.elt.htm Received: 1/30/00

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37\. Learning Tree International. *Certification*. Reston, VA: Author,
1999.

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38\. go.eol.com/education/cert_tracks.htm Received: 1/31/00

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Martinez, 1999, pp. 439-441

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39\. new_website.openmarket.com/service/edu/schedule.cfm Received:
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openmarket.com/cgi-bin/gx\..../View&C=Article&cid=

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> 1/30/00
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All+Report+Types&R1=V1

Martinez, 1999, pp. 363-365

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40\. mu.motorola.com/asp/catalog.asp Received: 2/1/00

Driskill, J. "TVA University: Professional Certifications and Licenses,"
in *TVA University Conference Papers*. Knoxville, Tenn., 1999, pp.45-49.

Meister, J. C. *Corporate Universities: Lessons in Building a
World-Class Work Force.*

New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1998.

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41\. The catalogs used were those for 1999-2000 from George Washington
University, George Mason University, Strayer College, the Catholic
University of America, Montgomery College (Md.), and Northern Virginia
Community College.

42\. suned.sun.com/catalog/courses/SL-110-pm.html Received: 1/25/00

> suned.sun.com/catalog/courses/SL-275-html Received: 1/25/00
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Martinez, 1999, p. 345

43\. smartplanet.com/search.asp?search_type=course&search=

> &starting=221 Received: 1/23/00
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curriculum.jsp&BV_SessionID= . . . . . .

Learning Tree International, *Hands-On Training for IT Professionals:
Course Schedule, March-August, 2000*, pp. 146-151, 175.

44. education.novell.com/download/idc_cne_study/ Received: 2/14/00

mcpmag.com/members/98feb_old/fea1chart10.asp Received: 3/26/00

46\. "CAT Global Testing Network," downloaded from Received: 2/19/00

catinc.com/catglobal2.htm

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> prometric.com/clients/html/plc.htm Received: 7/16/00

48\. comptia.org/certification/cdia/fees.asp Received: 2/3/00

> catglobal.com/CATGlobal8/TestTaker/NewCand.asp Received: 1/23/00
>
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49\. certprep.com/TakeQuiz.asp Received: 1/30/00

> wwe.certification.net/mns/mgt/mgtho.html Received: 2/3/00
>
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db.globalknowledge.com/catalog/course.asp?course=6920 Received: 1/24/00

Chellis, J. et al. *MCSE Complete Core Requirements*. San Francisco:
SYBEX, Inc., 1999.

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Testing*, downloaded through microsoft.com/mcp/articles/adaptFAQ.htm
Received: 1/26/00

CompTIA, *Adaptive and Computer Based Testing*, downloaded through
comptia.org/certification Received: 6/26/00

> tcpmag.com/column.asp?id=EXAM&cid=2 Received: 7/11/00

50\. redhat.com/services.training/training_examprep.html Received:
2/20/00

51\. cisco.com/warp/public/625/ccie/ Received: 2/14/00

tcpmag.com/column.asp?id=EXAM&cid=29 Received: 7/11/00

52. braindumps.com/it/Sun/temp1.htm Received: 7/11/00

53\. mcpmag.com/members/98feb_old/fea1body.asp Received: 3/26/00

54\. comptia.org/certification/edia/fees.asp Received: 2/3/00

> microsoft.com/mcp/articles/IISFAQ.htm Received: 1/26/00
>
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55\. 209.0.85.150/certification/networkplus/SMEs.htm Received: 2/3/00

> microsoft.com/mcp/examinfo.retired.htm Received: 1/26/00

56\. prometric.com/html.pressreleases/mar10_99.htm Received: 1/3/00

57\. nacse.com/pages/Corp_Intro.html Received: 2/3/00

> webu.net Received: 2/3/00
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> info@wubu.net (Art Dyck) e-mail Received: 2/12/00

58\. dr.org/ADRP.html Received: 1/24/00

dr.org/educate.htm Received: 1/24/00

> GoCertify Express Newsletter@gocertify.com e-mail Received: 7/14/00

59\. iwanet.org/cgi-bin/cbw/display.cgi?cbw Received: 2/5/00

> iwanet.org/profdevel/ Received: 2/5/00

60\. java.sun.com/cert_initiative/index.html Received: 1/25/00

java.sun.com/cert_initiative/tracks.html Received: 1/25/00

> suned.sun.com/certification/faqprogrammer.html Received: 1/25/00

61\. Novell Education CNE Progress Chart, Updated 2/2/2000 Download:
2/13/00

2test.com/register/scripts/client.asp Received: 1/26/00

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62. cramsession.brainbuzz.com/certifications/default.asp Received:
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63\. certcouncil.org/documents/CCCaccreditation.htm Received: 7/11/00

64\. mcpmag.com/members/98feb-old/chart11.asp Received: 3/26/00

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65\. education.novell.com/notp/partners.html Received: 1/28/00

Christman, B., "Pima to Oversee Corporate Computer Training." *Arizona
Daily Star*, Oct. 20, 1997, Section B, p. 3.

Pima Community College. "Information Technology College Accreditation
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66\. prometric.com/html/pressreleases/oct7_99.htm Received: 1/3/00

Adelman, C. *The New College Course Map and Transcript Files: Changes in
Student Course-Taking and Achievement, 1972-1993*, 2^nd^ edition.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1999, p. 26. Available
free from EDPUBS. Call (toll free) 1-877-433-7827.

67\. education.novell.com/cna/cnahow.htm Received: 1/28/00

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68. novell.com/education/certinfo/ Received: 8/1/00

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69\. microsoft.com/aatp/guide.htm Received: 8/6/00

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70. microsoft.com/aatp/community\..../default.asp?cboLocale= Received:
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71\. nacse.com/pages/netprep_faq.html Received: 2/3/00

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72\. cisco.com/warp/public/779/edu/academy/overview.html Received:
2/19/00

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Cisco Networking Academies: Curriculum for Semester Received: 2/19/00

I through IV, downloaded through
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73. microsoft.com/aatp/wyoming.htm Received: 8/6/00

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74\. infoworld.com/cgi-bin/deleteframe.pl?story=/articles/ Received:
3/26/00

ca/xml/. . ./00327cafuture.xm

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Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980.

White, L., Jr. *Medieval Technology and Social Change*. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1962.

76\. kvictor@vue.com e-mail Received: 6/28/00

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79. education.novell.com/download/idc_cne-study/ Received: 2/14/00

> mcpmag.com/members/98Feb_old/fea1body.asp Received: 3/26/00

**Appendix A:**

Three Interacting Platforms

For readers who would like a very concise outline, let us aggregate the
observations made above, and put them in an order that reflects the
emergence of the IT industry certification guild. There is nothing
linear about the process. There are three distinct platforms in this
development that are constantly interacting.

Platform I: Establishing the Certification of Competence

-   *Vendors* (international corporations such as Microsoft, Novell,
    SAP, Sun, Oracle, Cisco and others) establish standards for
    performance with their product-systems. They ultimately determine
    whether an individual meets those standards.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Acting individually, each vendor constructs a set of examinations
    that signals a comprehensive competence. A certificate is to be
    awarded to individuals who pass the required examinations. Some
    certificates require performance assessments and industry experience
    in addition to the tests. The certificate is given a discrete
    vendor-based name, e.g. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Within fields covered by a certificate, vendors establish
    sub-specialty certificates, and some create hierarchies of
    certifications analogous to hierarchies of academic degrees.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Vendors recognize that their product-systems share a great deal,
    and, in practical circumstances, interact. Networks are a good
    example of a territory in which this commonality and interaction can
    be observed. Some standards for performance, then, become generic.
    Some vendors accept the examinations or certifications of other
    vendors as part of their own certification processes.

-   *Industry Associations*, often consisting of sub-field specialists,
    develop analogous standards, examinations, and procedures of
    certification. These are *not* vendor specific. Where there are a
    number of industry associations in the same sub-field,
    certifications may overlap. The various Webmaster certifications are
    a good example.

-   The vendors and the industry associations are the only recognized
    certifying authorities, and they insure a constant feedback loop
    from the instructional and testing platforms.

-   For the industry associations, vendors, and other employers of IT
    professionals, the values of the certification lie in (a) guaranteed
    currency of knowledge, (b) intellectual and skills leadership of
    certified employees, (c) less down-time and greater efficiency,
    particularly in a rapidly-changing technological environment,
    and (d) where applicable, staff interactions with other parts of the
    industry through the guild, hence, greater organizational knowledge.

Platform II: Providing Opportunity-to-Learn

-   The vendors recognize that anyone--in any nation--should have the
    opportunity to acquire the competence and knowledge required to pass
    their examinations and qualify for certification. They thus develop
    curricula and the materials/technology for delivery of those
    curricula--and in many languages. To be sure, providing these
    opportunities to learn also creates a skilled labor pool.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Some vendors function as schools themselves. They offer traditional
    classroom instruction at many locations around the world. They
    certify instructors, rent facilities, and charge tuition for the
    course work. They also provide courseware in CD-ROM format and
    on-line from strategically located servers. Tuition is charged for
    those modes of learning/instruction as well.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Most vendors, however, link with commercial and training companies.
    These "training partners" must first be reviewed and authorized by
    the vendor as knowledgeable in the curriculum, skilled in
    instructional delivery, and possessing appropriate capacity to
    accommodate various types and volumes of enrollments in their
    service area. Training partners can also include traditional higher
    education institutions and other non-profit entities, though these
    are more loosely-coupled to the vendor. Despite review and
    authorization, the quality of training may vary widely.

-   *Industry associations* follow suit, linking with "training
    partners" to provide the opportunity-to-learn.

-   Some training partners offer their own certifications in the same
    fields as those offered by the vendors, but in a more generic,
    vendor-neutral form. These generic forms, like those of the industry
    associations, resemble college majors. Network Administration is a
    good example.

-   On-line education providers that are *not* official "training
    partners" sell support tutorials and self-study materials on
    specific topics in the certification sequences, and others provide
    settings for learning exchanges between those studying for
    examinations and those who have already passed through the gates of
    certification. The industry recognizes that, in a world of lifetime
    learners, preparation for certification does not necessarily require
    formal course work.

Platform 3: Testing and the Award of Certifications

-   Both vendors and industry associations develop their own
    examinations for each portion of knowledge/competence required for a
    specific certification. Public statements of expected competencies,
    along with practice examinations, are available on-line.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   The examinations take many forms, and some are available in
    languages other than English. Some are computer-adaptive, some are
    based on case studies, some involve simulations, and some are Item
    Response Theory (IRT)-based multiple choice. Every vendor or
    industry association that develops these tests retains a staff of
    testing experts.

-   Examinations are under constant review for content. They are
    frequently "retired" and replaced so that they reflect contemporary
    knowledge demands.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   The vendor or industry association determines the passing (cut)
    score on the examinations.

```{=html}
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```
-   A minor industry has grown up around IT certification examinations:
    test-preparation manuals, special test-prep classes and CD-ROM based
    practice tests. These are signs of maturing credentials, but also
    expected in an industry that encourages existing employees to seek
    certification.

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```
-   The examinations are administered either by vendors themselves or by
    independent testing companies. There are at least three major global
    testing firms on which the information technology and
    telecommunications industries principally rely to conduct
    examinations. Collectively, these firms operate 5,000 testing
    centers in 140 countries.

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```
-   "Candidates" for certification submit examination scores and other
    requested material to the vendor or industry association, which then
    awards the certification.

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```
-   Most certifications must be either renewed or maintained by
    continuing education, seminars, and/or examination.

Appendix B:

Two Indicators of Global Reach in a Cisco Certification and in the
Languages of

Course Offerings by Cisco Training Partners

##### Worldwide Distribution of Certified Languages of Course Offerings by

**Cisco Internetworking Experts (CCIEs) Cisco Training Partners,**

**[as of July 31, 2000]{.underline} [July 1, 2000 through Dec. 31,
2000]{.underline}**

North America 2488 [Language]{.underline} **[Courses]{.underline}
[Offerings]{.underline}**

> U.S. 2299
>
> Canada 145 Croatian 1 2
>
> Mexico 44 Czech 3 5
>
> Danish 7 41

South America 67 Dutch 6 136

> Finnish 2 5

Europe 1571 French 13 238

> German 23 702
>
> Belgium 154 Greek 3 10
>
> France 126 Indonesian 5 6
>
> Germany 282 Italian 10 99
>
> Netherlands 76 Japanese 3 12
>
> Russia 48 Mandarin 7 12
>
> Spain 44 Norwegian 2 4
>
> Sweden 65 Polish 5 23
>
> U.K. 389 Portuguese 15 67
>
> Russian 5 17

Africa 83 Spanish 10 78

> Swedish 2 8

Middle East 20 Turkish 3 8

Pacific Rim 765

> Australia 184
>
> China 108
>
> Japan 224
>
> Singapore 55

Other: 2

TOTAL: 4,996

[Sources]{.underline}: cisco.com/warp/public/625/ccie Received: 8/16/00

> cisco.com/warp/public/10/wwtraining Received: 8/18/00