The majority of people in the US believe workforce-relevant skills and knowledge should be a priority for college education. Regardless of whether faculty intentionally and overtly design learning to focus on these skills and knowledge, I believe that nearly all high quality offering in Higher Education implicitly include skills and knowledge with valuable transfer to the workplace. And Best Practices in digital credential design allow us to notice, name, and formally recognize though our credentials where they show up in our learning opportunities and when learners acquire them.

Although there are equity concerns that are essential to consider, the Student Success piece is a compelling element to consider: In addition to supporting learners' needs for acquiring skills and providing them with credentials to communicate about their skills, the possibility of credentials supporting completion and attainment could be a valuable consideration in program design.

6 part playbook from Alamo

embedded MCs

Report from 2022 WCET workshop

Interesting data to collect. Relates to the Equity report from Credential Engine: https://credentialengine.org/credential-transparency/equity/

Consumption issue: the outgoing recognition is valued by the sender but not in a format that is appreciated by the receiver. The problem with putting highlights on a laser discs is that it requires someone to have a laser disc player.

It is also important to note that this positive evidence for low-income certificate-earners stands in con-trast to findings for other historically underserved groups; studies indicate that individuals of color and older individuals go on to stack credentials at lower rates and see smaller earnings gains relative to White individuals and younger individuals (Bohn and McConville, 2018; Bohn, Jackson and McConville, 2019; Daugherty et al., 2020; Daugherty and Anderson, 2021). Although we suspect many low-income individuals are also individuals of color, the findings suggest that there are inequities within stackable credential pipelines that might be more strongly tied to race, ethnicity, and age than to socioeconomic status. It is also possible that many low-income individuals never complete a first certificate and thus do not enter a stackable credential pathway

Important note on Equity: The positive findings for credential-stacking among low-income individuals stand in contrast to findings for other historically underserved populations, such as older learners and individuals of color, which show some evidence indicating lower rates of stacking and lower returns from stacking relative to younger individuals and White individuals.

75% would have increased interest if the credentials are stackable. For a group that also claims to not know what these things really are, tough to know how much to read into this. On it's face, it's powerful encouragement for incremental credentialing.

While data is kind of all over the place, this seems like a reliable response. Regardless of how well they understand non-degree credentials and how much meaning is mixed in other areas of the survey, it's straightforward that a super majority see MCs filling skills gaps and improving the quality of their workforce.

For some, this is reasonable and rationale. It's the point of the whole enterprise. Yet for others, this take is controversial, as it may threaten the ideals and/or visions of the purpose of Public Education. These stakeholders may ask, "Is it the job of public education to serve industry's needs by preparing proper cogs for the workforce wheels?" At the same time, others may wonder, "Is public education willfully performing a disservice to our students if our credentials are not valued by employers?"

These are important questions to ask, and to answer.