Education and training systems across the world have witnessed swift growth in certificates, microcredentials, badges, certifications, and other nondegree credentials. This growth has spurred concern among many policymakers and educational leaders, who are uncertain of the value of these new credentials, including the quality of learning they represent, whether learners understand and can navigate this new landscape, and whether the skills nondegree credentials capture are recognized by educators and trusted by employers.
While the concerns of policymakers and educators in the United States and Europe are remarkably similar, there are wide differences between the two in who has steered the evolution of nondegree learning, and how they are responding to these shared concerns.
The United States has seen a profusion of voluntary and privately-led efforts—such as CredLens, Credential Engine, and the U.S. Qualification Framework—to shape the ecosystem of nondegree learning in the United States in a coherent infrastructure that supports transparent, trusted, and valuable nondegree learning. The European system, in contrast, is taking shape with the backing of European Union and national authorities.
Voluntary, non-governmental efforts to steer the development of nondegree learning in the United States, while beneficial, are limited in their uptake and effectiveness. Recognizing this, their leaders look for policymakers to incorporate their voluntary initiatives into federal policy. The United States, with its much larger investments in education data systems and linked learning-employment data—and lower levels of trust in the capacity of institutions and accrediting organizations to assure the quality of nondegree provision—is building a distinctively American policy infrastructure of employment-focused institutional accountability.
An Example of European Practice: Ireland
In EU education and training systems, the Bologna Process developed a policy infrastructure that was initially devised to support the comparability and portability of degree learning. That structure is now being extended and adapted to guide nondegree provision both by the EU and its member states, albeit with national variations in tempo and direction.
Ireland, an early mover and innovator within the EU in embracing nondegree learning, provides a useful example of how European and national measures have been harnessed to steer nondegree development. Backed by government funding, the MicroCreds.ie project led by the Irish University Association developed a framework of policies and practices for universities, basing their work upon European and national guidelines. These public higher education institutions have taken quality practices used to establish and recognize degree programs and modified them to develop short-term programs, or microcredentials, that confer nondegree awards. Programs are designed not only through internal academic review, but also with the collaboration and engagement with employers and professions. As in the example below, learners are advised of entry requirements, mode and duration of delivery, credit workload, and of the level of learning in the Irish Qualification Framework that will be recognized by their award.
Irish higher education institutions have not yet fully integrated degree and nondegree learning across their information systems, nor have they linked nondegree credential and earnings data—predictably so, given the absence of mandated reporting on job placement or graduate earnings and the prevailing view that higher education institutions bear responsibility for the quality and relevance of the learning they offer, while graduates are responsible for employing the skills they have acquired. Nonetheless, there is wide agreement within Ireland that its adaptation of degree-based transparency and quality measures have achieved a good balance between innovation and quality in credentialed nondegree learning.
The U.S. Nondegree Infrastructure Compared
By comparison, the national policy infrastructure of the United States has provided few, if any, instruments with which to steer the growth of nondegree learning. Instead, a distinctively American constellation of nongovernmental actors—including foundations, professional associations, nonprofit data aggregators, and educational technology firms—has emerged to fill this void. Together they have shaped dialogue in Washington, D.C., and the states, and they have proposed and implemented a range of voluntary responses meant to guide the path of nondegree learning and credentials.
As Table 1 shows, in most instances, private, voluntary measures have been launched in the United States to take on roles that European and national government initiatives have filled in Ireland. To the extent public authorities have had a hand in shaping the nondegree learning ecosystem, it has been U.S. states, since they are endowed with primary legal responsibility for public education and training, and are keen to achieve skill-based economic development.
Table 1: Governmental and Voluntary Policy Architectures in Ireland and US
| Ireland | United States | |
| Unitary National Quality Assurance Body | Yes – Quality and Qualifications Ireland | No – Multiple Nongovernmental Institutional Accrediting Bodies Recognized by U.S. Education Department |
| National Framework of Qualifications | Yes – National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) | No – Voluntary U.S. Qualification Framework under discussion, earlier Lumina-led Degree Qualification Profile |
| National Credential Registry | Yes – Irish Register of Qualifications | No – Voluntary nonprofit registry, Credential Engine |
| Uniform Credit Framework | Yes – European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) | Partially Public(Code of Federal Regulations regulates credit hour for award of federal student aid) |
| NDC incorporated into internal QA and/or external quality assurance | Yes – nondegree awards recognized in the NFQ are quality assured by institutions and QQI for private providers | Voluntary guidelines of good practice (e.g., UPCEA), uncoordinated institutional quality assurance measures, emergent voluntary and fee-based institutional accreditation (e.g., NECHE), and credential recognition (e.g., ABET) |
| Targeted Public Subsidy for Short Learning Programs | Yes – Access to dedicated learner subsidy for designated microcredential programs | Some state funding for nondegree/noncredit learning in designated fields (e.g., VA Fast Forward) |
| Common metadata semantic standard incorporating non-degree credentials | European Learning Model – under adoption | Voluntary – Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Description Language |
| Employment-based metrics for non-degree credential quality and provider accountability | No | State Credentials of Value frameworks; Voluntary national nonprofit initiative, CredLens |
Voluntary and private initiatives to guide the development of nondegree learning in the United States have not fully substituted for concerted public action. Voluntary qualification registries, data standards, data hubs, and qualification frameworks lack the universal adoption of their mandatory counterparts. Voluntary and fee-based credential recognition and institutional accreditation are nascent, and the latter likely holds modest promise of building understanding and trust in the skills represented by nondegree credentials, especially among employers. As a result, as Scott Cheney, CEO of Credential Engine, recently wrote, there is persistent frustration that:
“America’s credential marketplace is …a confusing tangle of degrees, certificates, badges, and licenses. Eager jobseekers struggle to connect their skills to opportunities while millions of jobs sit unfilled. Workers are left guessing which credentials matter to secure a job, and employers can’t easily identify candidates with the right skills.”
This has understandably spurred calls for “Policymakers to Lead the Charge,” using funding and regulation to scale and complete the work initiated by private and voluntary initiatives.
Today the U.S. federal government is poised to implement a change in the federal policy architecture of nondegree learning through Workforce Pell—at least for some low-income learners in eligible nondegree programs offered by accredited higher education institutions (i.e., whose graduates achieve sufficient completion; job placement; and median earnings, relative to tuition and fees, and whose credentials are designed to be stackable, portable, and certified by governors to be in “high-skill, high-wage” or “in-demand” occupations.
However, it is unlikely that Workforce Pell and its requirements will diminish the “confusing tangle of degrees, certificates, badges, and licenses” that mark the landscape of nondegree learning. The Congressional Budget Office’s budget scoring estimates that by 2034, only about 100K new recipients each year would receive Workforce Pell Grants. Thus, much of the nation’s nondegree provision will remain outside the scope of Workforce Pell. Moreover, given the diminution of federal government capabilities for expert consultation and policy innovation, eligibility for Pell Grant assistance is unlikely to be used as a lever to advance measures, such as standard language, that would be helpful in bringing greater transparency and clarity to the landscape of nondegree learning.
Rather than developing a European-like infrastructure of transparency, comparability, and institutionally-led quality assurance, the United States appears to be poised to embrace what is principally an employment-focused model of institutional accountability for nondegree learning that can be implemented in an education and training system with far greater scale—and less trust in its institutions and accreditors to assure the quality of learning—than is typically found in European higher education systems.
Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl is director of micro-credential strategy and innovation at Dublin City University. Thomas Weko is a research professor at the Institute of Public Policy at George Washington University.