Industry-based IT Certifications in Higher Education Institutions: A Stakeholder Perspective

Industry-based certifications (IBC) are one way to provide credentials to learners in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) with product-specific skills (e.g., Low-Code development) that can complement academic degrees (e.g., Business Informatics). To understand the ecosystem of industry-based certifications in the context of HEI, we first visualize stakeholders using the influence and affected features of a rainbow diagram. In this opinion paper, we draw on our personal experiences to understand the opportunities and challenges stakeholders face through the lens of Curriculum Theory to determine that IBC is a recognized way of learning IT skills in a Higher Education Institution. By applying a case study in an Australian university, we explore the challenges and potential of IBC to create value (social, functional, and emotional) to stakeholders in the ecosystem. We will discuss how we integrated the Low-Code development content in an undergraduate and postgraduate course at a mid-sized university. We make several recommendations that could be adopted by stakeholders to drive strategic decision-making.