The gatekeepers of education have for a long time put a rubber stamp on the knowledge they have imparted to you.
Credentials show the world what you know. Even if you already knew it, that little piece of approval gives legitimacy to that knowledge.
But that little piece of paper doesn’t really show that you know it either. It merely indicates that you had the opportunity to be exposed to the knowledge at some point in time at some appointed location.
Slowly we have moved from “we will teach you more because we have greater knowledge (look at all of our books) than you can acquire on your own” to “your greater knowledge is irrelevant without our approval.”
When we wake up and stop paying homage to credentialism, the end for traditional verification of knowledge will come swiftly, and those institutions that are not willing to keep up, will also end swiftly.