[germinalphrase]

I am sympathetic, but an obvious hurdle is that our employment system is largely biased toward that traditional pipeline. High school GPA/ACT Scores > Various Tiers of High Education > Standardized Credentials for Employment.

I'm not sure how you would resolve the two (without, of course, cracking the nut on a neutral, true-ability assessment system).

[jpereira]

I think the latter is possible, but even without there are options.

There's a long-tail of credential consumers beyond traditional employers that holds a ton of value. Community level organizations, digital social networks, even open-source communities.

There's also a decent set of skills that can't currently be measured or conveyed by traditional standardized credentials.

Both of these represent an opportunity for a new academic/assessment paradigm to step in and create real value today.

That being said there's definitely going to be huge hurdles in getting to traditional employers, their logic is not necessarily based on best placement or best skill set, but often times on bureaucracy/ass-covering/good-enough mindset. Not to say that isn't valuable at very large scale organizations.