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Engineering Degree Mobility for Working Learners

Engineering Degree Mobility for Working Learners
Learners should be rewarded and credited for their learning and experience, whatever form they take, and integrated degree pathways can provide them with the recognition and validation they need.

When Maria, a 44-year-old single mother, decided to return to school, she was not looking for a traditional college experience. She was looking for a promotion. After more than a decade in manufacturing, she had accumulated industry credentials, college credits and deep on-the-job expertise. What she did not have was a clear map to the degree she needed for that promotion. Which of her credits would transfer? Would her technical training count? Which program would actually lead to advancement?

Instead of guidance, she found fragmentation, confusion and frustration. Advising systems that could not see her full record. Credentials that did not align. Transfer rules that depended on where she started rather than what she knew. The problem was not motivation; it was system design.

For millions of working adults and career-technical learners, this is the defining barrier in higher education—not persistence or preparation but a set of disconnected systems that fail to recognize learning, reward experience or reliably connect credentials to opportunity.

That is why state-led degree pathways matter.

From Maze to Mobility Infrastructure

For decades, higher education reform has focused primarily on first-time, full-time students moving through traditional institutional pipelines, but today’s dominant learner is an adult who is working, stopping and starting, accumulating credits, credentials and experience across multiple systems.

In this environment, institutional reform alone is not enough. Colleges can improve advising, redesign curricula and map programs, but no single institution controls transfer policy, workforce credentials or cross-sector alignment. Only states have the authority to engineer pathways that function as true mobility infrastructure: coherent, navigable systems that allow learning to move seamlessly across K–12, career-technical education, workforce training, community colleges and universities (CCRC, 2023).

State-led degree pathways do three critical things:

  • They eliminate credit loss by guaranteeing transfer and equivalency across institutions.
  • They convert workforce learning into academic currency through statewide credit recognition and stackable design.
  • They align education directly to labor-market demands so credentials reliably lead to advancement.

When designed well, these systems replace guesswork with guidance and dead ends with building blocks to opportunities.

What States Are Building Nationally

Across the country, several states are beginning to shift from institution-centered reform toward system-level mobility design.

Colorado has published sector-based stackable credential ladders in healthcare and software development, mapping short-term certificates directly into associate and bachelor’s degrees with employer-validated competencies and wage progression (RAND, 2023). Arkansas’s Career Pathways Initiative integrates education, training, career counseling and wraparound supports, producing large gains in credential attainment and earnings for low-income adults (National Skills Coalition, 2021).

These efforts share a common insight: the most powerful pathways are not those that accelerate traditional students but those that reconnect adults to degrees through workforce-aligned, credit-transparent systems. However, few states have built these elements into a single, coordinated ecosystem. Ohio has risen to the challenge.

Ohio’s Integrated Model for Career-Technical and Adult Mobility

In my role working on statewide transfer and workforce initiatives at the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), I have watched this system take shape firsthand. ODHE has spent the past decade constructing a comprehensive degree mobility framework that links career-technical education, workforce credentials, transfer policy and adult re-engagement into a unified system. Rather than treating guided pathways, transfer and workforce alignment as separate reforms, Ohio is engineering them as interconnected components of a statewide mobility network.

Four elements are especially transformative:

1. Career-Technical to Degree Pathways: Breaking the Wall Between Workforce and College

One of the most persistent structural barriers in higher education is the wall between career-technical education and academic degrees. Too often, high school CTE students and working adults earn valuable technical training that does not translate into college credit which forces them to start over if they decide to pursue a degree Ohio is dismantling that wall through Career-Technical Assurance Guides (CTAGs) and OTC Degree Pathways.

CTAGs guarantee that approved career-technical coursework and assessments transfer as college credit across all Ohio public institutions. For K–12 career tech students, this creates a true college-credit on-ramp into associate and bachelor’s programs. For adults returning with technical training or recognized industry credentials, it converts prior learning directly into academic progress.

OTC Degree Pathways extend this model even further. Designed specifically for adult learners and workforce participants, these pathways map Ohio Technical Center programs and industry credentials directly into aligned college degrees. Instead of treating workforce training as a separate track, Ohio is embedding it into degree architecture itself. The result is a radical shift: workforce learning becomes the beginning of a degree, not a detour from one.

2. Industry-Aligned Transfer: ITAGs as Degree Ladders

Ohio’s Industry Transfer Assurance Guides (ITAGs) represent one of the most sophisticated workforce-to-degree transfer systems in the country. Developed with employers and faculty, ITAGs create statewide, guaranteed pathways in high-demand fields such as information technology, advanced manufacturing and healthcare. Short-term certificates, technical coursework and associate degrees are intentionally sequenced, so learners can stack credentials, earn while they learn and progress toward bachelor’s degrees without losing credit.

Unlike traditional articulation agreements, ITAGs are not bilateral or institution specific. They are guaranteed articulations that are portable, transparent and validated across the entire state system. For working adults, this replaces uncertainty with assurance: Every credential earned moves them closer to a degree and a better job.

3. Transfer as Infrastructure: OT36 and Guaranteed Transfer

Even the best workforce pathways fail if general education does not move. Ohio’s Ohio Transfer 36 (OT36) and Guaranteed Transfer Pathways create a statewide general education passport, ensuring foundational coursework transfers as true equivalents across all public universities. For adult learners who may accumulate credits over many years and institutions, this protection is essential. OT36 functions as a universal transfer currency, preventing credit loss, accelerating time to degree and preserving momentum for students who cannot afford to repeat learning they have already mastered (ODHE, n.d.).

4. Re-Engaging Adults with Some College, No Degree

Ohio has also invested heavily in re-engaging adults who stopped out with credits but no credential. Finish for Your Future sets statewide goals and resources to increase adult enrollment and attainment, while Strong Start to Finish addresses roadblocks in gateway courses that halt momentum for returning learners (ODHE, n.d.). Expanded credit for prior learning initiatives helps adults translate work and life experience into academic progress, improving completion likelihood (ODHE, n.d.). Ohio’s participation in Credit When It’s Due ensures we can retroactively reward adults who’ve earned substantial postsecondary credits but no credential with an associate degree, acknowledging progress and propelling further completion. Regional innovations like the Ohio College Comeback Compact remove financial barriers and locked transcripts to re-engage stopped-out learners with advising and enrollment support.

Together, these programs recognize a simple truth: the fastest way to raise attainment is not only enrolling new students but finishing the degrees already half-built in the workforce.

Why This Matters

Ohio’s model demonstrates what becomes possible when states design pathways as economic infrastructure rather than isolated academic reforms.

For learners, the impact is profound:

  • Workforce credentials become degree currency.
  • Career-technical education becomes a college on-ramp.
  • Transfer becomes predictable, not punitive.
  • Advancement becomes navigable, not accidental.

For institutions, these systems strengthen completion, deepen employer partnerships and stabilize enrollment by reconnecting adults to degrees. For states, they function as talent strategies, closing skill gaps while expanding equity and mobility.

Most importantly, they replace a system built around institutional convenience with one built around learner progress.

What Other States Can Learn

Ohio’s experience offers several lessons for state leaders nationwide:

  1. Design pathways at the system level. Institutions cannot solve transfer and workforce alignment alone. States must lead.
  2. Treat credit as infrastructure. Guarantee transfer, standardize equivalences and expand prior learning recognition statewide.
  3. Build workforce learning into degree architecture. Stackable credentials must be designed as ladders, not dead ends.
  4. Center adults from the start. Pathways should assume stop-out, re-entry and work-based learning as the norm, not the exception.
  5. Align governance, data, and employers. Mobility systems require cross-agency coordination and labor-market validation.

The Bottom Line

At a time when employers cite persistent skill shortages and millions of adults hold stranded credits, degree mobility systems function as economic infrastructure. States that align career-technical education, workforce credentials, transfer policy and adult re-engagement are not merely improving completion; they are accelerating labor-market participation, raising regional earnings and strengthening competitiveness (Community College Research Center, 2023; National Skills Coalition, 2021). The future of higher education will not be built institution by institution but system by system.

Selected Resources & Links

Community College Research Center (guided pathways)

National Skills Coalition (alignment/stackable credentials)

RAND Corporation (stackable credentials/toolkit)

Ohio Department of Higher Education (transfer/alignment programs)

Washington State Institute for Public Policy (guided pathways report)

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