Today’s future and current workers are looking for quick, flexible ways to build skills that will launch them into or help them advance in economically viable careers. Employers are looking for specific, verifiable skills that signal job readiness.
What’s increasingly connecting the two? Microcredentials. As a skills-first economy takes hold and higher education faces an existential crisis, embracing microcredentials offers colleges and universities a way to remain relevant, responsive and expand their impact.
Microcredentials have been around since the 2010s, and they are gaining significant traction.
A 2020 Strada Education Foundation study found that 63% of Americans who were planning to pursue additional education or training expressed a preference for nondegree and skills training options. Strada’s subsequent work has found that learners increasingly focused on education and training opportunities more immediately connected to career opportunities, which the increase in high school graduates opting out of college in recent years may reflect. These learners don’t want an education that takes years or cost tens of thousands of dollars.
At the same time, employers want more accurate indicators of skills than they are getting from degrees. A recent survey by Hult International Business School found that 89% of human resources leaders say that, despite struggles to find talent, they avoid hiring recent college graduates, and 51% say lack of the right skills is the reason. Employers are increasingly recognizing—at last—that microcredentials are a valid and valuable gauge for hiring and workplace advancement decisions, especially in technology, manufacturing, business and healthcare fields. As Kathleen deLaski notes in her new book, Who Needs College Anymore?, “The degree’s status as the scaffold to the American Dream is breaking down.”
There also is a movement among states to increase funding for short-term credentials. A 2024 update to earlier research by HCM Strategists found that states have invested over $5.6 billion in short-term credential pathways. In its 2023 report, HCM Strategists said states are allocating funds for financial aid as well as program development, with some states “going so far as to incorporate short-term credentials into their funding formulas, thereby providing further recognition and financial support for these programs.” Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Utah all “allocate state formula funding for short-term credentials through an outcomes-based funding model,” with distributions based on student performance. Another example: The Utah Legislature this year authorized the First Credential Program that aims to provide every high school student with a job-aligned certificate or microcredential before they graduate.
Higher education should see the increased demand for microcredentials not as a passing trend but as a potential path to relevance—and maybe even a lifeline.
The enrollment cliff is here. Skepticism about value and cost has not abated. Financial strain is leading to institutional closures, consolidations and program eliminations. Shifts in federal policy and funding are destabilizing the higher ed landscape. While the idea of reshaping curricula and degrees to meet workforce needs may be anathema to many faculty, adding and expanding work-aligned microcredentials is, at least in part, a strategic way forward for higher education institutions eager to attract students.
Higher education should embrace the win-win-win that results from providing more options for affordable, short-term, high-value, embedded and stackable credentials that will bring in students and potentially bring them back over and over as lifelong learners.
A recent study conducted by WGU Labs, the WGU Academic Portfolio team and Gallup highlights how this might work. The survey of 1,700 students who left Western Governors University without completing a degree between 2018 and 2023 explored, among other things, how to re-engage them with higher education. Just 39% said they had the education or training they need for the type of work they hope to do in the next five years. Many participants said they were working but lack a credential or degree that might open doors to better positions and careers that provide economic stability and opportunities for growth. More than half of respondents had already earned at least one nondegree credential, and around 85% said they would be willing to re-engage to turn completed coursework into a credential. But respondents also said the cost of pursuing an additional credential was a barrier.
So, what is the bottom line for higher education? Embrace microcredentials as short-term learning options that provide work-relevant skills, experience and knowledge. Develop these programs in partnership with employers and industry to ensure relevance and alignment. Make sure these offerings are affordable, cost-effective, accessible, flexible and stackable—a pathway to additional credentials and even degrees at your institution. At WGU, we offer standalone credentials, and we embed them into numerous degree programs, so students collect valuable credentials as they progress through their academic programs. And we are exploring ways to award credentials for individual, skills-rich courses so all learning counts.
A well-designed suite of microcredentials could be the strategic advantage your institution needs to enhance program value, propel student success and connect students to your campus as lifelong learners.
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