Here's my brief personal story of certification: Once upon a time I had a job with a company building VB applications. The company wanted more business so they talked me into pursuing a cerfication offered by a very large corporation whose name I will not mention. While taking the exam I ran across a question that basically, outright, asked me if their company's product was better than a competitors (it actually listed the competitor by name). I answered 'no', because their product clearly was not as good. I can't imagine that I got that answer correct and I did not get the certification. I still do not have any certifications to this day and I cannot say that I am unhappy about it.

I don't propose that this university system becomes a certification mill and I would, without hesitation, invite Randal and anybody from Stonehenge to teach such classes without any kind of grade submitted at the end (remember the unstructured part of the idea?) which is kind of what they already do at Perl conferences.