More Students Are ‘Stacking’ Credentials en Route to a Degree

Even after Nelson began the program in which she racks up microcredentials while on the path to a bachelor’s degree, she didn’t entirely get it.

Nelson is enrolled in the stackable information technology bachelor’s program offered by Western Governors University.

The nonprofit had the fortuitous timing to launch a stackable program leading to a bachelor’s degree in computer science in January and three more in May—in writing, marketing, and data science.

WGU has rolled out microcredential programs in states including Nevada that supply certificates and certifications on the way to degrees in information technology and health care.

Affordability matters, too, Pulsipher said; WGU’s IT microcredential program costs about $150 per credit and edX charges $166 per credit for its MicroBachelors degrees.

Agarwal reports edX signed up as many learners in April as it did in all of last year— it now has 30 million, worldwide—and a survey of the newly registered found that 11 percent were already unemployed or furloughed and trying to learn skills that would help them get new jobs; edX has said it will offer a 30 percent discount on MicroBachelors programs to students who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

BYU Pathway Worldwide, an online spinoff of Brigham Young University-Idaho, has created stackable bachelor’s degrees in all of the subjects it offers.

That’s because students in these programs, and the others like it, first get certificates or certifications on their way to earning associate or bachelor’s degrees.

More than a quarter of students in conventional college programs quit after their first year, when a degree still seems intimidatingly far off.

Earning that first certificate, he said, is like reaching the base camp; stacking them into a bachelor’s degree, like getting to the top.

Nearly 70 percent of students racking up industry certifications on their way through the edX/Western Governors stackable IT programs finish their bachelor’s degrees within two years, the university says.

An IT tech in Carson City, Nevada, Salazar had already gone to community college, but he said he had few job offers after getting his associate degree.

Once he started earning the certifications, “I started getting lots of offers,” even without the bachelor’s degree he expects to finish this year.

Graduating with one or more certificates and a bachelor’s degree “has the ability to show employers that you have a breadth of knowledge,” said Karen Elzey, associate executive director of Workcred, which teams with universities to add certificates and certifications to bachelor’s degrees.

While both can be included in a stackable bachelor’s degree, certificates and certifications are different.

Many have programs that help students earn industry certifications in fields including accounting and manufacturing.

The University System of Georgia in January launched what it calls a “nexus degree”—certifications that add to associate degrees that can then add up to bachelor’s degrees.

Conventional institutions that are working to come up with stackable credentials have been slowed by accreditation requirements, occasional faculty resistance, the need for certification bodies and academic departments to collaborate, and the difficulty of explaining the process to prospective students.

There’s growing pressure on colleges and universities to speed the process of embedding certifications and certificates into bachelor’s degrees.

Nearly one in 10 undergraduates today is working solely toward a certificate, and more are pursuing certificates or associate degrees than are studying toward bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce reports.

And while consumers might not fully understand stackable credentials, many are increasingly recognizing that in some fields they can boost incomes with a smaller investment than a bachelor’s degree.

For instance, workers with certificates in construction and other blue-collar trades often make more than liberal arts and humanities majors with bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown Center found.

“I don’t think people really know what stackable credentials are yet,” she said.

That’s because certificate holders who stop short of a bachelor’s degree may miss out on substantially greater earnings; a typical graduate with a bachelor’s degree will earn $1.19 million over his or her lifetime, compared with $855,000 for someone with an associate degree and $580,000 for a high school graduate, the economic think tank the Hamilton Project calculates.

Some research, including from the public policy think tank Third Way, has found much less financial benefit from microcredentials that are not industry certified than from associate or bachelor’s degrees.

Back at her breakfast in Henderson, Nelson said friends have begun to ask her about the stackable credentials model.