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What should a college graduate know and be able to do? There are as many views on that as there are colleges (thousands), if not individual professors and students (many more). The diversity of opinions about what a college education means has long been seen as a strength of American higher education. But in recent years, many employers and policy makers have argued that the lack of a common definition of what students should know and be able to do -- and a dearth of adequate methods of gauging whether they know it and can do it -- has contributed to a decline in the quality of higher education and to the awarding of more degrees, but of lesser value.

a lack of transparency in the current credentialing maze has fueled the confusion and created a buyer-beware environment.

When every credential is unique to its issuer and impossible to compare with others, they all lose their value to job seekers and employers.

Funded by Lumina Foundation, the initiative will develop common terms for describing key features of credentials; create a voluntary, web-based registry for sharing the resulting information; and test practical apps (software applications) for employers, students, educators, and other credential stakeholders.