Credential verification was never designed to operate at today’s scale. What was once an occasional administrative task has quietly become a persistent operational burden for universities and higher education institutions worldwide. As demand for verification grows, institutions are increasingly expected to act as the central trust authority — often without the systems or resources to support that role efficiently.
Despite widespread digital transformation across higher education, credential verification remains largely manual.
Universities continue to receive verification requests by email, PDF attachments, and ad-hoc forms. Each request typically requires a staff member to locate records, confirm authenticity, respond securely, and maintain audit trails — often across multiple internal systems.
This process is not only time-consuming, but also fragile.
Manual handling introduces delays, increases the risk of human error, and creates compliance and reputational exposure, particularly when requests come from international employers, background screening providers, or regulatory bodies.
Across background screening and verification workflows, manual credential verification commonly takes 24 to 72 hours1 to complete.
In many cases, this turnaround time reflects queue backlogs rather than complexity. Requests accumulate faster than they can be processed, especially during peak hiring seasons and graduation periods.
For employers, these delays slow hiring decisions.
For graduates, they create friction at critical career moments.
For institutions, they represent ongoing administrative drag with little strategic value.
The volume of credential verification requests is no longer marginal.
In the UK alone, over 1.5 million credential verification checks2 have already been processed through higher education verification services — highlighting just how large and persistent this demand has become.
Each of these requests represents staff time, process overhead, and institutional responsibility — multiplied year after year.
Yet the underlying model has not meaningfully changed.
Credential verification is not merely administrative — it is foundational to trust.
Research indicates that 49% of UK employers3 have encountered candidates misrepresenting educational qualifications during hiring processes. This places additional pressure on institutions to act as definitive arbiters of truth, even when verification systems are not designed for high-volume, real-time validation.
As expectations rise, institutions face increasing responsibility without corresponding infrastructure.
The result is a structural mismatch.
Institutions are expected to:
all while relying on manual processes that were never designed to operate at scale.
As verification demand grows, universities risk becoming an operational bottleneck in an ecosystem that depends on speed, reliability, and trust.
Solving this challenge does not require institutions to do more manual work — it requires changing the model entirely.
Verifiable, source-issued digital credentials allow institutions to confirm authenticity at the moment of issuance, rather than repeatedly responding to downstream verification requests.
When credentials are issued with built-in verification, the need for follow-up emails, PDFs, and ad-hoc checks disappears.
No paperwork.
No repeated requests.
No manual confirmation loops.
Just official digital proof, verifiable at the source.
Credential verification is no longer a niche administrative function. It is a critical component of institutional trust infrastructure.
As higher education continues to digitize, institutions that address verification at the source will be better positioned to reduce administrative burden, manage risk, and support graduates and employers more effectively.
The question is no longer whether credential verification needs to change — but how quickly institutions can adapt to a system built for scale.
1 SHRM, 7 HR Questions (and Answers) About Employment Screening (https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/7-hr-questions-answers-employment-screening)
2 Prospects Hedd (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/hedd)
3 Prospects, Half of UK employers have been victims of degree fraud (https://www.prospects.ac.uk/prospects-press-office/half-of-uk-employers-have-been-victims-of-degree-fraud)