Tracking the Skills Gap
A significant gap exists in the accreditation landscape for noncredit programs, primarily workforce development programming, as recognized accreditors focus the bulk of their resources on degree programs offered at higher education institutions. Currently, no recognized programmatic accreditor exists with a specific noncredit workforce development discipline or scope. This chasm has had disastrous effects nationwide, including a multi-faceted equity and “skills gap,” millions of unfilled middle-skill jobs, and limited access to Federal Student Aid (FSA). These factors force workforce development programs to look to institutional scholarships, state funding, and industry subsidization to help students who are often underserved and have other barriers to enrollment. On average, 40-50% of community college students enroll in noncredit programs, and only a small percentage of noncredit students ever earn a credit or credential. To make matters worse, noncredit programs, even those similar to for-credit programs with industry-recognized credentials, must be repeated to earn credits for completion. As such, students and taxpayers pay twice for the same course or program, and students spend double the time in training to earn a credential.
Meanwhile, workforce development programs and associated credentials have expanded exponentially as the demand for skills and competencies increases in response to the rising costs of higher education, the changing of perspectives toward return on investments, and the sheer number of education and training alternatives. Simultaneously, employers have moved toward skills-based hiring practices and require data and analytics to create benchmarks and rubrics to evaluate a candidate’s employment potential. Add to that, “employers are weighing the quality of a bewildering proliferation of education credentials on applicants’ resumes and transcripts — and whether or not they’re even real”[1]. According to a Collegis Education survey released in January 2024, ”employers said some of the barriers to establishing partnerships with higher education institutions included cost, lack of real-world application, slow turnaround time to deliver desired content and decentralized contact with the institution.” The survey also indicated there’s “an opportunity for higher education to rethink how to go to market.”[2]
Accreditors that serve as Title IV gatekeepers and govern $120 billion in federal financial aid are also under-invested in the ability to map occupational skills and education needs to the dynamics of the market, specifically in middle-skill jobs in advanced manufacturing, transportation, semiconductors, clean energy, nanotechnology, and cybersecurity. This is worrisome because the federal government is investing heavily in unaccredited short-term training for these programs, which could lead to wasteful spending and negative implications for students. The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), the advisory board overseeing the recognition of accrediting agencies by ED, expressed the following concerns about our nation’s accreditors at its 2023 meetings:
March 2023 – They repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of available student achievement data from recognized accreditors seeking recertification with ED[3].
August 2023 – Expressed concern that recognized accrediting agencies do not include noncredit programs in their scope, and as such, member institutions offering transfer of credit for noncredit training may be violating federal regulations in 34 CFR 602 and 668, accrediting standards, and their policies and procedures[4].
To fill this gap, we seek to create a new and innovative programmatic accreditor, NAC. NAC’s vision is to align accreditation with emerging technologies and the new way of doing things. We plan to achieve that through our main tool, the AiHub, which will leverage Big Data, ONet attributes, blockchain ledger, AI, ML, analytics, and modern collaboration tools to help workforce programs innovate and improve outcomes.
[1] Hechinger Report Credential Chaos
[2] Microcredentials on the rise, but not at colleges (insidehighered.com)
[3] Day-1-Transcript_Final_NACIQI-Winter-2023-2.pdf (ed.gov)
[4] https://sites.ed.gov/naciqi/files/2023/08/NACIQI-Report-of-Meeting-August-1-3-2023_Final2.pdf