Short-term credentials are booming in part because many promise an immediate payoff. The Workforce Pell program that launched this month introduces something else for learners and workers to get excited about: Eligible short-term programs must stack toward a degree.
Stackability has long been a goal of higher education, and rightfully so. It’s a model that can help learners balance life and achieve what they need from education.
Institutions focused on healthcare training have long built stackable credential models that help students get the education and training they need to start and advance their careers as their life’s obligations allow. Baked into these “learn and earn” models is the ability to help learners bundle postsecondary credentials and professional experience, allowing them to alternate between school and work so they can balance the overlapping demands of employment, higher education, raising their children, and supporting their families.
But while stackability is highly desirable, a 2023 research study found significant barriers to implementing it, with a lot of variation by field and institution. Stackability rarely provides a straightforward path for most learners and colleges.
Over our professional careers, we have repeatedly encountered multiple myths that have grown up around stackable credentials—what they are and how they work—and the students who stack college credentials toward degrees. Because the programs newly eligible for Workforce Pell must lead to a stackable credential, institutions must quash these misconceptions so they can design viable new pathways that save learners time, money, and frustration and put them on a road to economic mobility.
Here are three of the most persistent myths—and how institutions can respond to them.
Myth No. 1: Learners stack credentials straight through until they’ve earned a degree.
The reality: Students lead complicated lives, which means they toggle between college and work depending on their circumstances. Sometimes, their financial circumstances will require them to be fully or overemployed, often for several years at a stretch. At other times, they’ll have enough money and support to attend classes and work toward a credential. In the interim, their professional interests and goals often change.
For instance, a graduate of the College of Health Care Professions earned a limited medical radiologic technologist certificate, then secured a full-time job working with patients. When she returned to college a decade later, she could enroll immediately in an associate degree program without having to retake classes because she had previously earned a stackable certificate. After successfully completing this degree program, she went on to a four-year university, earned a doctorate in business, and now manages two urgent care clinics.
To help students with busy schedules succeed, institutions should build credential pathways that allow students to pause and restart their education.
Myth No. 2: Stacking always follows a direct path at the same institution.
The reality: Some learners will start in one direction but end up in another program—or another institution—altogether.
Take the student mentioned earlier. She decided to return to college because she wanted to follow a different career track within the healthcare sector. Instead of looking to add to her clinical skills, she enrolled in a health and medical administrative services program so she could focus on management.
In other cases, learners with bachelor’s or advanced degrees sometimes enroll in community college so they can earn a specific career-focused credential. CHCP has recently experienced an influx of students with bachelor’s degrees in biology who enroll in surgical technology and other certificate programs to gain the right training and proper credentials so they can secure specific healthcare jobs.
The lesson here is that today’s learners are extremely mobile. Transfer students represent 13% of all continuing and returning undergraduates. Institutions should create frictionless transfer pathways and accept credit for prior learning so students can switch to a different academic route without being penalized. Institutions also should seek ways to help learners earn standalone certificates within degree programs so students don’t have to backtrack to be employable.
Myth No. 3: Students who want a college degree should enroll in a degree program.
The reality: College can be expensive and overwhelming, especially for first-generation college students and students from under-resourced backgrounds.
Time is the ultimate luxury for adult learners, whose work, childcare, and other responsibilities can make it challenging to complete even a nine-month certificate, much less a multi-year degree. A short-term credential creates an on-ramp that allows learners to increase their wages, strengthen their confidence in their academic abilities, and build momentum toward their broader educational goals. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
The nation’s colleges and universities are increasingly called on to serve a significant number of adult and working learners. By disabusing themselves of these myths swirling around stackable credentials and the students who use them to move ahead, institutions will be better able to help their students get to where they want to go.
Eric Bing is chancellor and CEO of the College of Health Care Professions. Jane Oates is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration and past president of WorkingNation.