CERTIFICATION so as to ensure professionals speak to current and contextual issues that they deal with every day .
She concludes that refresher courses taken by professionals must be thoroughly reviewed by experts to ensure content relevance as opposed to the number of hours put in . To subject the certificate to an expiry date would make the process nonsensical .
Dr . Joan Mutua begins by posing a question : ‘ Why would one toil to achieve the highest levels of education if they know that their qualifications have an expiry date ? As a scholar I feel only technical and specific college certifications should have expiry dates thus calling for refresher courses .
One would expect that professionals like the pilots need to have the simulator courses because of plane design changes and advances in technology plus regular medical checks every now and then . She opines that we need to identify disciplines in need of refresher courses and go for it .
Prof . Attiya Waris says knowledge can never be taken away and recognizing that a person has gone through a specific learning process should always be acknowledged . However in some situations learning can become outdated and a person in a particular field like technology where developments are happening fast would probably require updates unless they are active in the field .
However Iam not convinced that trainings are necessary people are today not following the professions they began with and that should not undermine the qualification rather it can give them a more diverse or holistic understanding in their work . I think rather practitioners in a particular field should decide whether updates are necessary but never blanket and must not be used as a money making enterprise .
Capping it off , Sen . David Ekwee Ethuro says , certification is to confirm a person trained in a particular field and met all the prescribed requirements , certificates are disaggregated to distinguish the level of excellence from distinction to pass , adding
“ It is common practice for manufacturers to make products with usage guidelines , dosages and even storage protocols to ensure proper product use but manufacturers assume that nothing lasts forever and hence they include an expiry date .”
technology doesn ’ t make the knowledge acquired that led to the certificate irrelevant . More often than not , it enhances efficiencies and effectiveness , perhaps dealing a mortal blow to the famous ‘ human error ’.
He concludes : ‘ products , commodities , pharmaceuticals have a shelf life due to their chemical compositions . That is why storage conditions must be prescribed . Elements of weather such as humidity , temperature , pressure , etc vary their compositions . Contrary to this , human beings adapt to all environments , be it climate change or edaphic factors .’
Responding to a similar question a year ago on whether a degree should ever have an expiration date of when you can ’ t use it anymore , Konstantinos Konstantinides , EE , Ph . D . plainly answered NO ! as this would render the education system irrelevant .
He opines that the degree itself never “ expires ,” because it simply states that you fulfilled certain requirements to get that degree . It is up to others to decide whether those requirements are now relevant to do your job .
In other words , he continues , a degree was never a guarantee to keep a job . For example , certain careers require constant certification to allow you to work in that field . Examples include law and medicine which have a system in place .
In the US attorneys need to take continuing education credits to maintain their license , the continuous education is built in the profession . Likewise Medical doctors also need to pass certain exams to prove competence and also maintain their licenses .
A degree seems to simply be an an entry document into a profession . A legitimate degree assures the potential employer that the applicant has mastered the principles of his discipline at some particular time and therefore is probably capable of upgrading as the situation dictates .
It has been stated many times that any degree is actually outdated the moment one graduates but if we accept that the attainment of the degree is just proof that the graduate has mastered certain principles in the subject matter and can competently self-tutor thereafter .
This in essence is what is commonly understood as innovation in that if the only thing graduates ever achieved was to reproduce and regurgitate what they learnt in college then there would not be any progress in any field of study .
Acquiring a degree simply demonstrates that one is teachable and that one has the ability to retain basic facts on the subject and by implication they are capable of building on the basics to learn both theoretically and hopefully in practice too .
In a nutshell what is clearly coming out is that if your company has a leadership disconnected from the reality of the wider business ecosystem , which celebrates certification and ignores refresher trainings then the whole corporate brand is certainly endangered ! ■
William Kalombo is the Chief Executive Officer , Marketing Africa Limited , and Publisher of the bi-monthly Marketing Africa Magazine . You can commune with him on this or related issues via mail on :
WKalombo @ marketingafrica . co . ke .
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