Overview

For many learners, the only postsecondary credentials that count for employment are academic degrees. This focus may limit access to further education and employment. Yet many individuals have acquired valuable skills and knowledge through their life and work experiences. To “count” that valuable learning, the U.S. needs a credentialing system that captures and validates quality college-level learning, wherever and whenever it is acquired.

Credential As You Go is a movement to facilitate the development of a nationally adopted incremental credentialing ecosystem that improves education and employment outcomes for all learners. Transformation of this order is needed because the current system—in which postsecondary providers primarily focus on degrees and employers rely on degrees as a proxy for job candidates’ knowledge and skills—is increasingly unfair and inefficient. The movement calls for a system that recognizes learning as it is acquired throughout an individual’s education and career journey. Such a system requires that the learning inherent in degrees and other credentials be unbundled into smaller, recognizable, incremental units.

Click here for a ten-minute video which makes the case for incremental credentials.