Framework

Why the credential and the learning are priced separately

Bundling the two makes a certificate a receipt for a course. We sell them apart so it stays a statement about a person.

Most technical certifications are sold as a course with an exam attached. It is a comfortable model commercially, and it quietly changes what the certificate means: it becomes evidence that someone bought and completed a programme.

That is a real thing to evidence, but it is not the thing an employer is asking about. An employer wants to know whether this person can specify a read zone that survives a loaded dock door.

So assessment is priced and taken separately. Someone who already does this work can be assessed on it without buying material that teaches them what they already know. Someone who needs the learning can buy it. Both arrive at the same assessment, and the credential says the same thing about both of them.

The cost of this choice is that we cannot describe a pass rate as a course outcome, because the people being assessed did not all take the course. We think that is the right trade.