• the real challenges institutions face when trying to expand their microcredential offerings
• While these kinds of programs have long served adult learners looking to update their job skills or switch careers, research shows students fresh out of high school are flocking to them in greater and greater numbers. Learners ages 18 to 20 completed more certificates at higher ed institutions than any other age group during the 2022–23 academic year, according to an April 2024 report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Nearly 154,000 young learners earned certificates that year—an 11 percent increase over the previous year—among the 670,665 certificate earners across all ages.
• Many colleges and universities remain unsure of how to effectively launch and grow new microcredentials.
• US average of 64 microcredentials per institution reported in a recent UPCEA survey.
• The slow growth of microcredentials is largely due to the challenges colleges and universities face in implementing and expanding them, especially when attempting to do so in a centralized (or at least coordinated) manner.
• Finding reliable platforms to facilitate enrollment and payment for non-matriculated students (i.e., those not currently enrolled, for non-American readers). These systems should ideally track enrollments, direct payments to specific units, and handle functions such as wait-listing and refunds.
• Understanding the ecosystem and market for these tools, and how different segments intersect.
• Providing access to a learning management system (LMS) for non-matriculated students who don’t have regular university IDs
• Developing a more lightweight social ID for non-matriculated students, and determining what systems and supports
• Devising a business model and marketing strategy for microcredentials, which are typically priced far lower than degrees.
• Identifying and creating market-attractive microcredentials in an agile manner, often requiring new pedagogical approaches and course design methods that involve teams rather than individual instructors.
• Collaborating with the corporate sector to integrate real-world expertise into microcredentials and foster recognition of these credentials, particularly in the absence of widespread standards.
• these challenges, and potential solutions, are rarely addressed in the flood of publications on microcredentials
• Many sources on microcredentials focus heavily on defining what they are and fitting them into one of the larger frameworks that have been developed, such as the New Zealand Quality and Credentials Framework, the Australian National Micro-credential Framework, and the European Approach to Micro-credentials for Lifelong Learning and Employability, to name a few.
• I understand the need for definitions and frameworks, as they are important tools for addressing issues like shared language, quality assurance, and recognition by other educational institutions and employers.
• Frameworks are certainly useful and will be essential for developing standards for recognizing and transferring microcredentials. This work, for instance, is critical for standards bodies. But for those of us working on the ground, it’s time to move beyond comparing and perfecting frameworks. We need to focus on developing, supporting, and growing actual microcredential offerings.
• the primary model they use with higher education institutions is to offer microcredentials alongside a degree for currently enrolled students.
• You see this throughout the survey report but especially in the emphasis on offering microcredentials for credit.
• need to focus on explaining and exploring the challenges outlined at the beginning of this post, as well as other complex, hands-on issues colleges and universities face when rolling out microcredentials.

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