That's a very naive view of the role of an academy. Most of the best ones go far beyond product training and into best practices and skill development.
It's not the role of HootSuite's product to teach you the theory & best practice of being a great social media manager. It's not the role of HubSpot's product to teach you how to be a great marketer. But that's precisely what HootSuite and HubSpot's academies do, and why those certifications actually mean something.
Finally even on the product side, that doesn't make sense one you get to high value products. On one end of the spectrum are consumer apps – and I agree with you there. E.g. If you needed an academy to learn how to use the Twitter iphone app, something is seriously wrong. On the other end of the spectrum are products bought by businesses for $100k+. These products generate a ton of value, when implemented properly, and touch many processes – they are complex and they need to be. As an executive, if I'm buying software for $250K you will be absolutely sure I'm paying $5K for all my admins to get certified on the product ASAP. You can't wait 6 months for them to learn it when there's thousands of dollars of value on the line every day tied to their efficiency. B2B products lie at different points along this spectrum and academies generate great ROI at almost every level when done properly.
It's not the role of HootSuite's product to teach you the theory & best practice of being a great social media manager. It's not the role of HubSpot's product to teach you how to be a great marketer. But that's precisely what HootSuite and HubSpot's academies do, and why those certifications actually mean something.
You can even see in Optimizely first iteration of their academy, they have wisely split into separate learning tracks: strategy, configuration, product, and results. https://learn.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/sections/200386128-Beg...
Finally even on the product side, that doesn't make sense one you get to high value products. On one end of the spectrum are consumer apps – and I agree with you there. E.g. If you needed an academy to learn how to use the Twitter iphone app, something is seriously wrong. On the other end of the spectrum are products bought by businesses for $100k+. These products generate a ton of value, when implemented properly, and touch many processes – they are complex and they need to be. As an executive, if I'm buying software for $250K you will be absolutely sure I'm paying $5K for all my admins to get certified on the product ASAP. You can't wait 6 months for them to learn it when there's thousands of dollars of value on the line every day tied to their efficiency. B2B products lie at different points along this spectrum and academies generate great ROI at almost every level when done properly.