The issue that’s started to preoccupy me there is the power of the US to determine the direction and pace of change in global higher education, which has obvious consequences for smaller educational economies like ours, but also for those like the UK system that have some very sturdy cultural traditions, but might face changing business expectations.

It’s a big world.

Actually, there are a few robust higher education systems that don’t use your familiar degree classifications, including Australia’s, so that might suggest change is thinkable.

In Australia, students graduate with a transcript detailing individual academic results in each subject/topic they’ve undertaken. They can include a calculated Weighted Average Mark if it’s relevant, but they don’t fall back into the traditional UK degree classifications unless they graduate with an extra thesis-focused Honours year–a tiny minority.

There are plenty of institutions looking at adding extracurricular achievements to the formal transcript, and a whole lot of bustle in the edtech hedgerow from companies looking to find ways to add badges for MOOCs and other open courses to the overall picture.

The parallel development is the rise of eportfolios where students assemble this material for themselves, along with accredited and graded work samples that they choose to make visible to employers alongside their CVs.