Credentials play a significant role in determining an individual's qualifications, expertise, and potential job prospects. A quality, trusted, and valuable credential is one that is widely recognized and respected within a specific field or industry.
Given rapidly changing workforce needs and shortages of qualified workers in many industry sectors—as well as workers’ ongoing need for education and reskilling—credentialing is garnering significant attention these days.
The recent rapid growth in short-term credentials provides clear evidence that the nation’s degree-centric system is insufficient—that an incremental credentialing system is needed to better meet the needs of today’s workers and employers. It’s also clear that, for the learn-and-work ecosystem to function well, these new credentials must be high quality, trustworthy, and valuable. These criteria, therefore, are critical to building an incremental credentialing system.
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.
