An answer from one accrediting organization: We are just starting to have those conversations with institutions and systems. In all honesty, the majority of the focus has been around credit-bearing programs.
Many believe it is difficult – if not impossible – to undertake large-scale innovations due to accreditation requirements. Our postsecondary system is degree-centric, organized around associate, baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral and professional degrees. Incremental credentials change this dynamic. This potential increases the complexity of the changing educational waterways, but there are many checks and balances – key among them, the requirements of institutional accreditation for approved colleges and universities. Is an incremental credential system compatible with accreditation? Credential As You Go interviewed the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in fall 2021 to explore these issues. One of the accreditors shared this answer: What I tell institutions and others asking about incremental credentialing is, “I hope you did not hear me say no.” I remind them that they should not believe the myth that accreditors won’t let us make changes, which is a common misperception. Accreditors have gotten a bad rap as for creating barriers to innovation and maintaining the status quo. Many institutional accreditors are not prescriptive about programs because programming is the institution’s domain. We ask that whatever the institutions develop comply with quality standards and that the institutions tell us how innovations are being implemented. Because we’re part of the regulatory triad, as an institutional accreditor we have to be sure institutions follow state and federal regulatory requirements The accreditor will review applicable changes to be sure the institution does not get into trouble while implementing initiatives and does not get caught among any bad actors who may also be working in this space. We’re asking institutions to demonstrate the quality and outcomes of their programs. Often when I hear others speaking about why accreditation is such a barrier, they’re referencing accreditation standards we no longer subscribe to. We have long since focused on outcomes, but I do admit that in the past, accreditation was very input-based – like how many of these do you have, how many of that? What percentage of? No longer.
Zanville & Travers (10/8/2021, Evolllution) Is Incremental Credentialing Compatible with Institutional Accreditation? Part 3: https://evolllution.com/programming/credentials/is-incremental-credentialing-compatible-with-institutional-accreditation-part-3/
Credential As You Go is a movement to inform and facilitate the development and adoption of a nationally recognized incremental credentialing system to improve education and employment outcomes for all learners. Many stakeholder groups are needed to realize this major transformation of the U.S. degree-centric system to an incremental credential system– state systems of higher education, postsecondary institutions and third-party credential providers, employers, quality assurance organizations, philanthropy, policy, research and others that comprise the learn-and-work ecosystem. To help guide the movement, Credential As You Go has assembled a National Advisory Board made up of nearly 130 people to date. Members of the Board are leaders in various components of the learn and work ecosystem and participate in key networks and alliances. The Board is large in order to help us raise national awareness of the importance of building a nationally recognized incremental credentialing system.
Many institutions (but primarily academic programs within institutions) around the U.S. are involved in innovative curriculum design related to incremental credentialing. They’re called by different names — stackable credentials, guided pathways, embedded credentials, micro-pathways, short term credentialing. We’re calling these developments incremental credentialing, to describe a credential-as-you go-approach. These approaches are described in the Incremental Credentialing Framework being tested for efficacy (feasibility of the Framework and student learning outcomes). We are working with cohort #1 — 21 institutions (an equal mix of community colleges and four-year colleges and universities) in CO, NC, and NY. An additional cohort will join us in Year 2 of the grant; and we will be inviting other institutions to work with the Framework and other resources through our new Walmart Systems Change grant.
State systems of higher education and institutions in Colorado, New York and North Carolina are building incremental credentials that span many discipline areas, reflect state and regional workforce needs, and share common topical or career areas of focus including:
An inventory of these incremental credentials is posted in Tools & Resources.
We are offering a series of Mini-Conferences on several topics to help bring us all up to speed. We are also supplementing those with additional professional development resources, and are going to be looking at different kinds of practices — including looking at policy, accreditation, technology, communications, and other areas. We’ll have a menu of resources on these at our website in then Tools & Resources section so people can use these resources and share them with their colleagues.
Credentialing is a serious equity issue. About 48% of adults aged 25 years and older in the U.S. have a college degree; an additional 15% have some college but no degree. Degree completion by race-ethnicity reveals major disparities: 67% of Asian adults and 53% of White, non-Latinx adults have a college degree, compared to only 38% of African American adults and 30% of Latinx adults. African Americans are also the group with the highest percentage of adults who have some college and no degree (18%; U.S. Census Bureau, 2021), and they furthermore carry the highest student debt load among any racial group (Hanson, 2020). Individuals without a postsecondary degree are at a disadvantage to obtain living-wage earnings. A fair postsecondary education system is needed to capture uncounted learning and validate that learning to enable all individuals to be recognized for what they know and can do.
The George Washington University Institute of Public Policy (GWIPP) at George Washington University initiated the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library in January 2021. Credential As You Go initiated in fall 2021 with leadership from SUNY Empire State University, George Washington University’s GWIPP, and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. The Library joined Credential As You Go as a partner to support those developing and implementing incremental credentialing with curated, updated information. The Library offers an extensive glossary of terms used in the learn-and-work ecosystem, an index of more than 900 artifacts, initiatives working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, organizations working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, and other information resources. The open access, community-owned (wiki model) Library has a mission to support the many efforts working to improve the learn-and-work ecosystem, not only Credential As You Go. It has its own staff, national advisory board, and unique website: https://learnworkecosystemlibrary.com/
Colorado, North Carolina, and New York are rapid-prototyping states in Credential As You Go. Alabama has completed a readiness assessment and is in a planning stage in 2022 to potentially the initiative in 2023.
The George Washington University Institute of Public Policy (GWIPP) at George Washington University initiated the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library in January 2021. Credential As You Go initiated in fall 2021 with leadership from SUNY Empire State University, George Washington University’s GWIPP, and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. The Library joined Credential As You Go as a partner to support those developing and implementing incremental credentialing with curated, updated information. The Library offers an extensive glossary of terms used in the learn-and-work ecosystem, an index of more than 900 artifacts, initiatives working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, organizations working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, and other information resources. The open access, community-owned (wiki model) Library has a mission to support the many efforts working to improve the learn-and-work ecosystem, not only Credential As You Go. It has its own staff, national advisory board, and unique website: https://learnworkecosystemlibrary.com/
The George Washington University Institute of Public Policy (GWIPP) at George Washington University initiated the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library in January 2021. Credential As You Go initiated in fall 2021 with leadership from SUNY Empire State University, George Washington University’s GWIPP, and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. The Library joined Credential As You Go as a partner to support those developing and implementing incremental credentialing with curated, updated information. The Library offers an extensive glossary of terms used in the learn-and-work ecosystem, an index of more than 900 artifacts, initiatives working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, organizations working to improve aspects of the ecosystem, and other information resources. The open access, community-owned (wiki model) Library has a mission to support the many efforts working to improve the learn-and-work ecosystem, not only Credential As You Go. It has its own staff, national advisory board, and unique website: https://learnworkecosystemlibrary.com/
Incremental credentials capture learning as it is acquired along the learning pathway and formally recognizes and connects that learning to a larger context of work and education. Stackable credentials, smaller credentials added together or stacked into larger credentials is one approach. The Credential As You Go Framework includes five additional approaches to incremental credentialing. These include workforce-focused credentials that stand-alone connected or unconnected to other credentials, for credit or non-credit, focused on skilling, reskilling, and upskilling. Another approach focuses on specializations – for more in-depth learning than skill development, designed to help learners gain additional areas needed for advancement in employment and educational opportunities. Transfer credentials are designed specifically to transfer across academic departments and institutions right from the beginning. They are not designed in isolation from each other, but collaboratively across departments or institutions. Another approach involves the integration of workplace learning and/or field accepted credentials developed in conjunction with business and industry partners, into academic offerings, or providing opportunities to earn workplace credentials for the field within academic programming. The final approach is the awarding credentials retroactively, formally recognizing learning already achieved and/or building in natural entry and exit points.
Because of the many questions we were hearing around language issues in credentialing, we sponsored a virtual Summit on Language Used in the Credentialing Space: Big Concepts, Many Terms, Multiple Perspectives, Different Voices on March 16, 2022. The Summit focused on three especially troublesome areas of language use: Credentials and Pathways; Equity, Inclusion, Fairness; and Competencies, Skills, Learning Outcomes. Blogs summarizing the discussion appears in a four-part series at The EvoLLLution. See Part One). Noted was that many concepts and terms in the learn-and-work ecosystem are new to the field and have no established definitions. Many are trending terms and concepts, not well understood. Others are used in different ways, depending on stakeholder perspectives and contexts. A document that focuses on the terms, concepts and context is available here: Definitions and Use of Key Terms in Incremental Credentialing. An UPCEA committee focusing on typology, terminology and standards has observed that this may not be the best time to lock in set definitions for particular terms given the flux in the marketplace and instead focus on bringing clarity and supporting particular terms and attributes without creating a specific definition for each one. One of UPCEA’s recommendations is to consider a “continuum of credentials” in creating order and sense-making for their institution. The key is transparency: We can call these things anything we want as long as we define and contextualize them. So, what we call a short-term non-degree credential, whether it’s a micro-credential, badge or certificate, is not as important as declaring that it is a short-term non-degree credential. This description allows some cross-walking of these credentials until there is a common use of terms.
We’re hearing from states undertaking rapid-prototyping that the following would be most helpful:
An answer from one accrediting organization:
Post pandemic, everybody’s going to need to think about the new normal. What is business as usual? What areas of our accreditation processes can we make clearer, so institutions understand they have permission to proceed? For accreditors, what areas are we vague about? We need to go back and clarify our language, policies, and procedures as regulations change. We’re seeing several areas of change around innovative partnerships, contractual arrangements, mergers, consortia, consolidation and incremental credentialing. These changes are making us step back and think about what they mean for the institution and what we need to be aware of within our policy and procedures framework to help institutions move along this pathway without doing themselves—or students—harm. It is important to have these conversations with our state, system and institutional partners to try to meet institutions’ needs and eliminate areas of vagueness, lacking clarity or where our policy presents a challenge. There is a willingness to revisit them.
State systems of higher education and coordinating boards play a major role in policy. These entities typically develop and implement postsecondary policy in alignment with federal and state statute. They administer academic, financial aid and workforce programs to include the review and approval of academic programs and research centers; commission and conduct research and analysis and complete data reports; set tuition rates, and administer funding formulas and allocate funds. Governors often play a key role in these entities by appointing their CEOs.
Here are examples from two states:
Since 2016, FastForward in Virginia operates statewide short-term credential program. Impetus: students + employers needed short-term education options and employers wanted short-term credential programs of value.
The State University of New York (SUNY) adopted a broad micro-credential policy in 2018, following recommendations of Micro-Credentialing Task Force created in 2015:
Multiple bills passed in 2022 in Colorado to support credentialing strategies and disadvantaged students:
Detailed information is at the Colorado Department of Higher Education website.
Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session passed HB 1505 to require public postsecondary institutions to award students a nationally recognized digital badge upon completion of gen ed core courses that demonstrate career readiness:
One area that’s particularly challenging among all the institutions is around technology. Data on non-degree or non-credit information is typically pulled either manually or through separate systems from the credit system. In order to eventually verify what learning is, some institutions are beginning to pull together, particularly some of the community colleges, their noncredit side (the workforce side_ together with the credit side. We’ll be looking for examples of how fast technology solutions are going into place, related to data collection, student information systems, degree audits, learning verification systems (transcripting), etc. We will offer a Tool Kit at our Tools & Resources section of the website on Technology to assist state systems of higher education and institutions especially.
Credential As You Go has acquired three phases of funding to date. Lumina Foundation funded Phase I, resulting in the Incremental Credential Framework for testing. The Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education funds Phase II (Grant R305T210063), which focuses on rapid prototyping of and research on incremental credentials with a national campaign. An anonymous private donor fund at the Program on Skills, Credentials & Workforce Policy at George Washington University funds the development of the prototype Learn and Work Ecosystem Library. Walmart funds Phase III, which focuses on systems change for expansion and sustainability of incremental credentials. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of Lumina Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, Walmart, or George Washington University.
