Hello CIPD peeps
I have been asked a few times exactly what the Chartered CIPD qualification is equivalent to in academic terms, and am struggling to evidence this online here.
Is it a post graduate diploma? At what level is it considered?
Any pointers helpful - many thanks.
I believe you are both right, gentlemen, because you are coming at this question from different directions.
The "swimmer-runner" (or chalk and chese) elephant in every professional room is not level of qualification, or indeed comparability with other professions, but competence.
So it is indeed essential for the "employer" (be they corporate head choosing an HR Manager, Speculator choosing an architect, or individual patient trusting their health to a Dr) to have some benchmark by which they can assess competence, irrespective of whether they personally have the faintest idea what that benchmark consists of.
But the reality is there is no such simple commonality
The common benchmarks we use are graduate (BA/BSc) Masters, Doctorate etc. with post-graduate qualifications attaching "alongside", but even these common standards are of variable value as indicators of competence to practice in differing professions.
Therefore in one context it is necessary that as measures of competence all qualifications be comparable, yet equally it is not just unnecessary but unrealistic to seek "like for like" measures of practice skill between them, since an HR Manager will never remove an appendix, a Physician will never calculate the stress factors in an aircraft's wing, an Engineer will never create the concept for the world's tallest building and an Architect will never negotiate a drop in pay and increased hours for all NHS workers with Unison.
This then brings the honest answer to the question back to squaring the circle of matching both the real world applied capability of practicing professionals and the theoretical capability a qualification indicates: Because academic knowledge indicated by letters is not the same as ability to apply that theory (a fact incorporated into medical training where no newly qualified "Dr" is independantly let lose on anything that breathes without at least one more year's closely supervised practice ...in its "trying out" sense).
So where does that put CIPD's qualifications?
In truth: in a limbo between misinterpretation and misunderstanding: In one interpretation as at least a Master's for Chartered Members, but in practical application for most "users" (corporate employers) not much above a BA. (Hence all those adverts saying "must be degree qualified..." and rejecting even FCIPDs), CIPD have not helped by messing with the qualification routes and awarding methodologies; but I believe it is time that the whole system was reviewed and a meaningful measure of camparison between all qualifications; academic, vocational, professional and post-graduate, was developed.
P
I believe you are both right, gentlemen, because you are coming at this question from different directions.
The "swimmer-runner" (or chalk and chese) elephant in every professional room is not level of qualification, or indeed comparability with other professions, but competence.
So it is indeed essential for the "employer" (be they corporate head choosing an HR Manager, Speculator choosing an architect, or individual patient trusting their health to a Dr) to have some benchmark by which they can assess competence, irrespective of whether they personally have the faintest idea what that benchmark consists of.
But the reality is there is no such simple commonality
The common benchmarks we use are graduate (BA/BSc) Masters, Doctorate etc. with post-graduate qualifications attaching "alongside", but even these common standards are of variable value as indicators of competence to practice in differing professions.
Therefore in one context it is necessary that as measures of competence all qualifications be comparable, yet equally it is not just unnecessary but unrealistic to seek "like for like" measures of practice skill between them, since an HR Manager will never remove an appendix, a Physician will never calculate the stress factors in an aircraft's wing, an Engineer will never create the concept for the world's tallest building and an Architect will never negotiate a drop in pay and increased hours for all NHS workers with Unison.
This then brings the honest answer to the question back to squaring the circle of matching both the real world applied capability of practicing professionals and the theoretical capability a qualification indicates: Because academic knowledge indicated by letters is not the same as ability to apply that theory (a fact incorporated into medical training where no newly qualified "Dr" is independantly let lose on anything that breathes without at least one more year's closely supervised practice ...in its "trying out" sense).
So where does that put CIPD's qualifications?
In truth: in a limbo between misinterpretation and misunderstanding: In one interpretation as at least a Master's for Chartered Members, but in practical application for most "users" (corporate employers) not much above a BA. (Hence all those adverts saying "must be degree qualified..." and rejecting even FCIPDs), CIPD have not helped by messing with the qualification routes and awarding methodologies; but I believe it is time that the whole system was reviewed and a meaningful measure of camparison between all qualifications; academic, vocational, professional and post-graduate, was developed.
P
