The State of Career Tech Ed: Credentials of Value

The landscape of Career Technical Education (CTE) is rapidly evolving. What are states doing to maximize opportunities for learners? How are states grappling with the proliferation of credentials? To understand the current status of CTE in the United States, Emily Passias, Deputy Executive Director at Advance CTE, joins us to share their latest report on state policy, credentials of value and recommendations on state strategy.

To read Advance CTE’s full report, “The State of Career Technical Education: Credentials of Value”, click the following link – https://careertech.org/resource-center/series/the-state-of-cte/

Transcript

Matt Sterenberg (00:02.284)

All right, Emily, welcome to the podcast.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (00:05.279)

Thank you, thank you, happy to be here with you today.

 

Matt Sterenberg (00:08.942)

So we are gonna be talking about the state of career, technical education, credentials of value. But first, I wanna get to know you a little bit and your background. How did you get into this work?

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (00:21.035)

Yeah, so I came to this work, career technical education work in general, after having spent a good part of my early career in higher ed, working on the post secondary side as an academic teaching and shifted into career technical education and public policy in general about 15 years ago.

 

landed at the Ohio Department of Education and my home state of Ohio and had the opportunity to lead a lot of Ohio’s work around career technical education, around data, and around credentials and have was at the Ohio Department of Education for about seven years, but have spent about the last seven years or so working at the national level supporting other states and their work around CTE, around credentials, around

 

work-based learning and other related areas of interest and have really become a sort of evangelist for CTE and the promise that it has to support learners in terms of economic mobility, reaching their aspirations, et cetera. It’s my kind of fun.

 

Matt Sterenberg (01:34.36)

Well, I think this is a very interesting topic. There’s just a number of things we’ll cover today. And when I wanted to have you on the podcast, you said, well, actually we’re coming out with this great report and we’ll link to it. I highly recommend everybody checking it out, but it’s the state of career technical education, credentials of value where you go through and look at how states are conceiving of this, how they’re planning for it, how they’re.

 

strategically thinking, and then also how they’re managing the credential in conversations. And so we’re talking about short-term credentials, non-degree credentials. Everyone’s talking about this. I wanna first come out with a definition, first of all. So credentials of value, it keeps coming up. States keep talking about credentials of value. Emily, what the heck is a credential of value? What do we actually mean by that?

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (02:25.003)

Yeah, great question. And I think that’s the right entry point to the conversation. States define value in substantially different ways. And they are spending a lot of time grappling with this question of credential value and credential quality. I think about those two things as sort of distinct but related concepts.

 

Some states as they’re thinking about how they identify credentials that hold value for their learners, for their state systems, et cetera, are really thinking about alignment to in-demand occupations in their state or high wage occupations in their state and are really anchoring on value definitions that are tied to wages, the wages that learners who attain those credentials

 

are earning or could earn as a result of the attainment of that credential. Other states are really thinking about credential value in terms of the quality of the credential. They’re thinking about things like, does this credential measure the knowledge and skills that it purports to measure? Does it have robust assessment practices and sort of supports for learners to make sure that

 

attainment of those credentials and the outcomes from those credential assessments are reliable and valid. But I think most states that are in this work around credentials, and I should say not every state is doing credential related work, although I would say most are, 44 states have some sort of publicly available list of credentials that they are sharing back with their locals.

 

most states are sort coming at this from a blend of quality and value. They are thinking about like, yes, we want to incentivize and encourage folks to provide and attain credentials that are meaningful, that measure what they say they measure, and that offer the learners that attain those credentials a wage premium over what they were earning before or over particular thresholds that they’ve set in their state. And states are really grappling with what

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (04:46.015)

value means in these contexts. And that’s a lot of what we dug into Estates through this report is trying to figure out how they were defining value and then operationalizing that in their approval processes and their sort of downstream incentive processes too.

 

Matt Sterenberg (05:02.698)

Yeah, I love that you highlighted that because that the it’s the Wild West right now with credentialing and just because you have a credential doesn’t mean it’s a credential value. If the industry doesn’t recognize it, it’s not recognized by anybody. And at the root of it, it’s trust, right? Do I trust that this credential means something that it took something to earn it? And I think that’s the quality and rigor of credentials.

 

is something that we need to start really addressing, right? Like, okay, what’s actually in here? And if people don’t trust it, if there’s no understood quality and rigor behind it, then it’s not going to have any value because it’s not going to communicate anything to me about what you know, right? And so the challenging work that you’re doing and that states are doing is trying to bring together all the key stakeholders to make these decisions.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (05:48.713)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt Sterenberg (06:00.758)

And one thing that you, have in the, in the piece is four recommendations. And I really want to go through those today. So the first thing that you have in terms of your recommendation is identifying and approving credentials of value, defining what those credentials of value are. How do we begin to have this conversation? What does effective collaboration look like? Because we’ve got education, we’ve got labor, we’ve got state policy. How do we.

 

actually collaborate? How do we coalesce these key stakeholders at the state level?

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (06:35.601)

Yeah, I mean, that’s the secret sauce to all of the rest of the work that states are doing around credentialing is getting that initial identification and approval of credentials that matter for employers and that will support learners and achieving whatever their aspirations are like getting that initial identification and approval right has all sorts of downstream implications. So from a collaboration perspective, maybe I’ll back up a little bit.

 

We have seen, to your point, a ton of work that states have been doing over the last, really over the last 10 to 15 years, but I feel like it has really accelerated over the last five years, a ton of emphasis on non-degree credentials, short-term credentials, credentials that put learners on a path to good employment, but also provide opportunities for

 

connections to other future education and training opportunities. We’ve seen something, we’ve seen more than 90 state laws passed across more than 30 states across the last five years. So a huge amount of action at the state level in terms of emphasis on credentials. The flip side of that or the potential negative to this

 

huge amount of attention on credentials is we have seen in many states the sort of proliferation of lists. Everybody’s got a list for their sort of specific piece of legislation or incentive structure or whatever. We’ve got a state who shared with us that they have seven different credential lists across all of the different initiatives in their state. And from an identity

 

Matt Sterenberg (08:26.968)

like healthcare, manufacturing, like those, is that how they define it? Like what’s the difference?

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (08:31.977)

They’re thinking more like a piece of legislation has identified a specific.

 

Matt Sterenberg (08:40.65)

in demand job or something or…

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (08:43.153)

Or like in that particular state, it’s an incentive fund. So there’s an incentive fund for these types of credentials. There’s an incentive fund for those types of credentials. They have got a set of credentials they use for high school graduation requirements and a different set that they use for accountability purposes. They’ve got some employer focused incentives that have a different set of credentials. So to your point about collaboration, what we’re really

 

pushing on in this report and what we’ve heard from states is sort of the next frontier for them is moving from a bunch of use case specific lists to a unified approach. We’ve got one list that everyone in the state has agreed on, has met all of our statewide priorities around providing credentials for occupations that we know that are important for our economy now and into the future.

 

There’s some sort of shared decision-making framework and shared understanding of the data that is used to inform and maintain those lists over time. So like really working as a state as opposed to distinct state agencies or individual partners or actors within the larger state ecosystem to come to some conclusion about what does

 

value mean for us as a state? How are we operationalizing that? What data are we using to inform our assessment of value, both in terms of that initial, like we’re looking at these credentials and saying, yeah, these seem like they would add value to for our learners and for our employers all the way through, like making sure that those lists stay current, that they’re revalidating those over time. But this initial identification and approval process is one.

 

the place where we hear the most pain, the strongest pain points from states, lots of folks really trying to refine the way they’re coming at this work. Folks learning that it takes a heck of a lot of collaboration and intentional partnership building and maintenance to get to that unified approach where they have a shared decision-making framework that they’re implementing.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (11:01.917)

regularly with Fidelity where they’re engaging their employers and industry groups, not just state level decision makers, but also those industry focused folks in the mix and really trying to get their arms around a common set of credentials that they want to incentivize so that they can be messaging that consistently, not only to learners and their families, but to educators.

 

to employers, to policy makers. There’s a lot of attention on credentials from policy makers and they sort of want to understand what value means. They hear lots of things from their constituents and having that unified list, having a consistent approach to defining, operationalizing what value means for a state.

 

and that shared decision-making framework allows for that messaging and communication to be consistent across all those groups, all those actors. Everybody’s singing the same tune. Everybody’s hearing the same music.

 

Matt Sterenberg (12:07.222)

Yeah. And I think identifying and improving credentials of value is the most important first step because that allows you to then go, all right, what are we marching towards? How do we set up programs that can actually credential these students? You know, is there a regional approach? How do we engage with our community colleges, our career and tech ed folks on the K-12 level, but at least gives you something of like, okay, here’s what we’re marching towards.

 

Do we have the educational programs to get there? And then for the learner to actually have an idea of what a pathway means and to know that it’s been identified as something that’s either in demand or high wage. But your second recommendation is revalidating previously approved credentials. So kind of going back every so often and saying, okay.

 

Is this still a credential value? Is this still a credential that’s approved by the industry, still relevant, valuable? So, which I think is critical because, you know, just if we look at this from the economic perspective, let’s say they have this credential value and they say, this is a really great credential. You know, people will pursue it ideally. And then you have more supply of workers that have this credential. And so eventually the wages might adjust.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (13:28.021)

That’s right.

 

Matt Sterenberg (13:31.366)

It might be high wage because the supply is very low. We’re willing to pay more to get these people. And there always needs to be kind of a rethinking and a readjustment of is this credential still valuable? Does it have the same value it used to have? And obviously we have a dynamic labor market that’s always going to have different values. for instance, a state might be like, all right, Toyota is opening up a plant. We need to rethink.

 

I think your work with states as being like laboratories of this work, they know what’s best for them and having to revalidate, but that’s also a lot of work, you know, to sustain this. Like what are, how are states actually doing this work today? Do you have any examples or what are your recommendations for the revalidation process and how often to revisit it?

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (14:10.537)

Yes. Yeah.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (14:23.123)

Yeah, this is the area where I think there is a lot of opportunity for growth in terms of state approaches. To your point, states have realized that the time and capacity investment in getting this credentialing work right, making sure you’re identifying and incentivizing the right credentials, it takes a lot of effort. It is politically charged. There’s a lot of pressure from

 

credentialing bodies and vendors who offer these credentials to get their credentials on these state lists because they see that as a money-making opportunity for them. So the revalidation, the initial identification is incredibly important, but states are often using…

 

signals from employers through real-time labor market information and other types of labor market data about what credentials they should initially approve. Once you’ve had a credential on your list for a while, you should theoretically be able to look at actual outcomes from learners who attained that credential and identify if the state is getting the return on investment for and the learner is getting the return on investment for the attainment of that credential.

 

This is where we see a lot of opportunity for growth and system sort of development at the state level. Only eight states shared with us that they had that data in hand to be able to look at outcomes for learners who have attained these credentials to use in their process of revalidating their lists. So, you know, our

 

are my sort of first recommendation there is like, let’s get the data right. Let’s make sure that states are collecting in a timely fashion, the sorts of data that they would need to assess the impact of individual credentials on both learners and economies and create the routines to use those data for good, essentially. Like create the routines to make sure that the decision makers within states.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (16:31.909)

know the impact that credential A has on a learner’s employment trajectory or education trajectory versus credential B. There’s been a lot of conversation in the last couple of years about return on investment analyses and trying to understand if the credentials that states are incentivizing are producing the return on investment that states are hoping that they produce. And states are finding that they don’t always have the data to be able to

 

assess those things for their revalidation processes. So I think, you know, one of the places where we’re hoping to see some strong activity in the coming years is around one, developing processes for revalidating credentials and two, grounding those in smart intentional data use. You know, we, there’s some complexity here to the revalidation conversation though, because states have set up a lot of incentives.

 

incentives for learners, incentives for educators, incentives for schools, districts, post-secondary institutions, other training providers to encourage them to offer and or pursue these credentials within their states. Those incentives also add complexity to changing your lists. As you’re thinking about, for instance, we’ve had a number of states who’ve added credentials as a

 

opportunity for students to demonstrate readiness for high school graduation. It’s part of their high school graduation options. Many states who have added credentials to their high school graduation requirements have also created policies that stabilize the list for four to six years so that the list is the same when a student walks in the door of high school as it is when they walk out the door of high school.

 

So these conversations about revalidating or keeping this list dynamic and up to date are.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (18:33.937)

intertwined with incentive systems and making sure that you’re able to clearly communicate to folks like this list should be dynamic because we want to make sure we are meeting the needs of the labor market and setting learners up for success and that there’s a tight match between what we’re encouraging learners to pursue and what employers are asking for. The revalidation process is further complicated by the attachment of incentives.

 

to some of these credentials. So one of the things that we’re hearing states consider is

 

intentional runways for removal. So giving the broader field a one year, two years, sometimes more than two year runway, a warning that credentials are coming off the list and some rationale. We’re seeing states think about some things that seem very simple, like if this credential no longer exists or is no longer available for learners to pursue, the vendor no longer offers it, like

 

let’s get that off of our list. Let’s make sure we’re not sort of pointing learners towards things that are no longer attainable. And making some regular updates to those sorts of options more regularly. Most states say they are revalidating their credentials. Only a few are actually using outcome data. I think eight states told us they were using some outcome data.

 

and only 14 states told us they were using like other labor market or wage data to make those revalidation decisions. So I think having a strong credentialing ecosystem requires both getting the identification as right as you can, knowing that you’re making those decisions based on signals from employers usually that are imperfect, right? Your real-time labor market data is only as good as the…

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (20:39.411)

the job ads that employers are putting out that sort of signal what they’re looking for in their talent, but also getting the validation right over time, making sure that the credentials that you’re incentivizing are actually making good on their promise that are creating those good outcomes for the learners, good outcomes for the employers who are seeking them. That is a place where I think there’s a lot of opportunity for states to refine their approaches, build new approaches.

 

And to that conversation we were having a moment ago about collaboration, that revalidation process should stem from whatever shared decision-making framework that they’ve agreed on. They should bring those same collaborators back to the table to make sure that those decisions are sort of consistently made with all the right inputs and all of the right data at the right time.

 

So it’s complex, it’s difficult. And one of the reasons that states are still sort of in that development phase of that revalidation work is that complexity. They’re really trying to figure out how to balance the capacity it takes to get it right with the need to do it regularly and the effort it takes to do it right regularly.

 

Matt Sterenberg (21:54.286)

And that really stuck with me what you just said of just having a shared framework of if you’re a state, define what you view as a credential of value. And then really, we need to have a healthy system that we all agree on of what are the metrics that we’re going to measure? Does it fit the criteria of a credential of value? Because I think we also need to have a healthy

 

distrust of each other in the sense that like labor, for instance, we don’t want you to be advocating for credential value that you’re only going to be hiring for in spring 2026 for all these different educational providers to stand up programs. And it’s just like, we actually need to hire for this. And then it’s going to go away. We have to stand up a program. And for a learner, you don’t want to get a credential that it’s only valuable for a brief moment.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (22:34.975)

Right. That’s exactly right.

 

Matt Sterenberg (22:53.068)

right? And then those jobs are filled and it’s actually we’re done. And so like, there’s a longevity question with a number of these credentials, we’re obviously acknowledging that credentials can come onto the credentials of value, we’re going to revalidate, maybe they’re going to fall off. And so what’s what someone once said to me, Nick Moore from the state of Alabama, and they do a lot of cool work, he was on the podcast, and he always used the phrase wooden nickel, we don’t want to give students wooden nickels, essentially, something that they

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (23:19.295)

That’s exactly right.

 

Matt Sterenberg (23:21.57)

you know, this credential has no value anymore. There’s no currency tied to it. And so there is going to be a moment where we have to consider like the longevity of these things. And if we have a shared system of, let’s pretend like we had all the data in the world, it would automatically update, right? Like we’re calculating the wages of the person that has this credential or the economic mobility, the ability to transfer jobs or whatever it may be. And we wouldn’t have to.

 

have people in a room deciding whether or not this was a credential of value based on our inputs, based on our shared system. It is or it isn’t, and it can almost automatically update if we kind of agree on what a credential of value is.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (24:05.363)

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I appreciate you sort of framing that way around it sort of is or it isn’t. I think one of the things that we saw pretty strongly in our data and our conversations with states on their approaches is folks are generally using thresholds, whether those be around wages or demand for a particular credential or return on investment.

 

They’re using thresholds in a informative way, but not necessarily a decision-making way. Like must meet X threshold to get on or not on the list. And I think that’s one of the things that we do think states should be thoughtful and intentional about is like, what is that decision-making framework? What are the thresholds around wage or demand or return on investment or whatever that you

 

in your state with your collaborators want to include in your shared decision-making framework that can really simplify the decision-making around initial identification and approval and then revalidating those credentials over time. For the folks who are actors in those systems to be able to see very clearly like credential A meets all of our criteria or all of our thresholds, credential B does not and have very clear recommendations for what happens

 

upon meeting or failing to meet particular state agreed upon thresholds for quality or for value. If states can get there, I think that will really streamline a lot of their decision making. We see a lot of states saying like, we consider that, we consider wages for instance, but we also need to balance that with demand. There’s some clear tension between wage and demand for states as they’re thinking about credentials of value.

 

You’ve got, frankly, a lot of low wage work that has credentials that are attached to those occupations, but are very, very high demand in states and states really trying to think about not only incentivizing credentials that lead to economic prosperity and economic mobility for their learners, but also thinking about like, okay,

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (26:32.625)

Maybe we need a lot of childcare workers, for instance, as a high demand occupation in most states. There’s a credential that is very commonly approved in states for folks who work in the childcare industry that is in many states not well connected to other educator preparation programs. It often sits sort of at the community college level.

 

is not necessarily tied to a four-year program for teacher preparation. So what we see some states trying to think about is like, okay, we know we need a lot of folks who are prepared and have the credentials to be able to have a functioning childcare ecosystem. So we’re going to make some concessions on wage thresholds to honor that demand threshold, but we also need to intentionally connect this credential for childcare workers to

 

our broader teacher preparation ecosystem to provide opportunities for wage increases and mobility. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. A true sort of stackable, intentional, like designing intentionally stackable credentials at the state level, rather than sort of relying on credential vendors, which in IT and some specific industries, there’s some very

 

intentionally vendor designed stair step pathways for credential stackability, but that’s not the case in all industries. Not all industries use credentials the same way, which is also a challenge we see states grappling with. see healthcare and IT where credentials are very much a part of the way that employers think about knowledge and skill validation.

 

particularly, you even at the high school level for the entry level positions. Then we see other industries like, you know, business, finance, where that’s not how they validate knowledge and skill, especially for sub baccalaureate opportunities. And states really grappling with the distinctions and the way that industries validate knowledge and skill and building that into their decision-making framework, being thoughtful about how they’re addressing those differences in the way they’re making decisions.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (30:07.027)

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I think that is something that is a hot topic of conversation in a lot of states. And I will say my recommendation for states is usually not to go down the path of creating credentials where credentials don’t already exist. Non-degree credentials, of industry recognized stuff. Rather,

 

My sort of recommendation for states is often to mirror how industry is validating knowledge and skill. So if you have programs and industries where credentialing isn’t the core way that they validate knowledge and skill, there’s lots of ways that you can work with your employers and your community to understand the knowledge that learners need to have coming out of that program.

 

the skills, the technical skills they need to have, the connection between the technical skills and the academic learning that those learners are experiencing in their broader program of study, and identify the appropriate measures of program effectiveness, program quality for those programs. Part of the reason we’re seeing this proliferation of credentials is because

 

States are trying in some cases to treat credentials as a one size fits all solution, right? They’re trying to have a credential for every single pathway or program of study. Where on the back end of that, we can see in some industries, employers aren’t valuing those credentials on the employer side. So states are putting a lot of money, effort, and tension around encouraging learners to get credentials that

 

don’t necessarily translate in the same way in business, say, as it does in IT or healthcare. So, I really encourage states to think about, okay, what are the in-demand occupations in finance in my state? What are the key licensures and education knowledge skill ability that folks need to have to get those in-demand jobs? In some cases,

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (32:25.373)

it’s a bachelor’s degree and sub baccalaureate credentials. Finance is a great example of that. There are a lot of really valuable credentials that folks in the finance industry can pursue, but most of them come after a learner earns a bachelor’s degree. My recommendation in those circumstances, states design their pathways intentionally to get learners to whatever the credential of value is for their aspirations, even if that credential is

 

a bachelor’s degree or something post-baccalaureate, and be clear and communicative with learners and families at the start of those programs so that they understand the best opportunities in this field might require additional education and training beyond this high school program or this community college program, and really lean into credentials in places where there’s demonstrated value, demonstrated evidence from employers that

 

That is the thing that helps them determine whether or not a candidate is right for what they need, their talent needs are.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (34:08.425)

Absolutely.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (34:38.037)

Yep.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (36:00.595)

Yeah, this sort of request for a national list or even just a national framework for what quality means is something we hear a lot. We also hear on the flip side, these efforts need to be highly localized and like attentive to the needs of the local, regional or statewide economy. So there’s some tension there between the like,

 

Help us out, give us the list of the things that we should be paying attention to. But we also want to make sure this is really context specific. I think my sort of recommendation for folks is, I do think there are some places where cross state collaboration makes a heck of a lot of sense. New England is a great example and we already see

 

I was in a conversation recently with two states in the New England region who are sharing data and passing information back and forth about what they’re seeing from employers, particularly where they have learners that cross state lines for employment or employers who are recruiting in other states for particular types of roles or programs. We also see a lot of cross state collaborative work, particularly in this data sharing space.

 

where you have major metropolitan areas that are near state lines, where you see lots of learners, where you think about the larger talent ecosystem, across the state lines. My home state of Ohio, Cincinnati, is a great example of that. The Cincinnati area pulls talent from Indiana, it pulls talent from Kentucky, as well as talent from Ohio. There’s efforts across those states to share information, to share data.

 

about learners who are crossing state lines or employers who are recruiting across state lines and be thoughtful about the information that states have that can inform their decision making. We’re not yet seeing cross state collaborative approaches to like, hey, let’s all make decisions based on the same factors in this particular reason, region or across these.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (38:21.439)

couple of states. Despite the fact there’s a lot of commonality across states, we’re not really quite to that shared cross-state decision-making framework just yet. I do think states are really trying to be thoughtful and intentional. We see more actually customization at the regional level as opposed to sort of cross-state levels. contextualizing their credential lists for regions or using

 

region-specific labor market data. Florida is an example of a state that really looks at regional labor market data to make decisions about their unified credential list that they have in Florida. So I think really, I think we will see some states really pushing on thresholds like we discussed earlier and shared decision-making framework and sort of continuing and pushing on the national conversation about

 

what the operationalization of these value and quality definitions looks like and states really looking to learn from each other about efficiencies they’ve created in their systems, routines that they’ve built to help smooth these transitions as things come on and off of the list. And just, are constantly, this is the hot topic we are hearing questions from state leaders on like.

 

how do we do this better? How do we do this more efficiently? And really wanting that peer-to-peer learning from other states. They’re always looking for that state that’s like already cracked the nut on something.

 

for sure. Yeah.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (40:52.061)

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I guess I would sort of wrap up by saying one of the things that we found in our analysis, we also collected every state’s list, every state that has a publicly available list, we collected all of them that we could identify. And we found in the ballpark of 12,000 and change, individual credentials that are approved across states.

 

Obviously, there is a set of credentials that show up on lots of different state lists, but across all 44 states that have publicly available lists that we were able to find, there’s about 12,000 unique credentials that are approved across all this list. There have been a number of different analyses that take a stab at like the national landscape of how many of these credentials actually matter to employers.

 

And those analyses sort of come to similar conclusions that it is a very, very small set of credentials that have demonstrated demand from employers through looking at real-time labor market information, through looking at outcomes for learners who attain them. So I do think one of the big things we need to have a sort of reckoning around is like, are we,

 

over identifying credentials of value? think the answer is yes. We are over estimating value and over identifying credentials that have it. And states have a role to play in refining their approaches to sort of getting their lists, their incentive structures, their processes intentionally designed so you get closer to you might have a smaller set of credentials. I think most states really should.

 

have a smaller set of credentials than they are currently incentivizing on their state approved lists, but making sure they’re the right credentials, that you’re incentivizing that right set of credentials for your learners in your context, for your employers. And it’s, it’s the other thing I would say is like, it’s okay to not have a credential for every single pathway. If that is not how industry is validating knowledge and skill for the occupations that that pathway prepares learners for.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (43:14.261)

And I think those are tough policy and implementation questions that states are grappling with and have been grappling with and have made a lot of evolution on. And I’m hearing lots of conversation from states about, we know that we need to evolve the system. We need to move to sort of the second generation of credential policy for our state. What is…

 

What is the next iteration of this policy? And I’m excited to see where states go with this work as they’re really thinking about refinement of their approaches, being data informed and strategic in their approaches and sort of moving from the kitchen sink approach to credentialing, like everybody should have one, all credentials are good to a more strategic and intentional approach where they’re really matching their approved credentials and their incentive structures to

 

demonstrated demand from employers and really thoughtful and intentional shared decision making.

 

Emily Passias, Ph.D. (44:36.425)

Thank you so much for having me. Great conversation and really appreciate the invite.

 

Matt Sterenberg (51:37.762)

to stack the credential and have the incremental approach to a pathway.

 

Matt Sterenberg (52:57.102)

What just came to me is it’s interesting, like some of these more technical middle skill, you know, we rely on certain credentials and hopefully we trust them of here are the skills and competencies that you’ll have once you get this credential. And then we have these other industries where it’s not really at to your point. We don’t have a credential that really represents it.

 

But I think kind of a natural conclusion of this credentials of value work is like what credential would be value valuable that we don’t have today? I mean, it certainly like, as we think about those finance or marketing sales, whatever it might be, you’d say, you know, there, we don’t have a credential for this. How would we design a credential? Because this is a valuable role.

 

But we don’t have a great way to represent the skills and competencies. How do we stand up a program? So it’s almost like the absence of a credential of value. Once we have a list, allows us to see where gaps are potentially, which I think is also an interesting byproduct.

 

Matt Sterenberg (54:29.454)

Mm.

 

Matt Sterenberg (57:34.06)

Yeah. And this isn’t just something that career in tech ed is grappling with. think higher ed broadly is grappling with this. You know, what does this actually mean? I think the whole, premise here is how do we get the information back to learners and communicate like what this pathway is, what it’s going to lead to and the credential value. Like we highlighted, it’s not just wages, it’s quality.

 

And for some people, it’s just, I just want to move industries. I’m not necessarily making more money, but I’ve always wanted to be a mechanic. What does that look like? You know, and that’s, so I want to like caution, like it’s not just about wages. You know, sometimes learning for learning sake is great or you’re moving industries. It’s not necessarily something that has to pay you more like quality. it recognizable? And the more we can put that information in the hands of, of learners, they can actually make an informed decision.

 

Like, did I know what the salaries of teachers were when I started my journey in secondary education? I didn’t think, I probably wouldn’t have embarked on it. But like we don’t have enough of that transparent information. So I really quickly want to go through your recommendation just so we get all of them out there. We didn’t even go into all of them in detail. So read the report, which we will link to, but identifying and approving credentials of value, revalidating those credentials.

 

incentivizing credentials of value, which there’s a lot of funding mechanisms that states can employ, and then collecting data for informed credentialing decisions, which is going to power all of this. The last thing I want you to highlight is it’s cool that states can do this work. Each state has a different ecosystem, different labor and educational landscape.

 

But kind of the shame is we’re not sharing all this information. And that’s why I encourage people to read your report because you’re trying to coalesce all this data. Like how can states work together? Like why does each state need to have their individual credentials of value list? kind of, kind of seems like it’s duplicative work in many senses. Like we need a national credential of value conversation. I just want to hear your thoughts on.

 

Matt Sterenberg (59:55.424)

on the work that you’re doing and what recommendations you have for states and how they can work and cooperate together.

 

Matt Sterenberg (01:03:58.87)

And states are competitive with each other too, which is interesting because we’re like, we want to keep our talent, but kind of the point is like, imagine Vermont’s like, this is a credential value and it’s like not in New Hampshire. Like, what do you mean? Like, is it only valuable in Vermont? can’t, if I have this credential, I cross state lines. has no value. Like there’s, that’s why I think like there, we need to have kind of a broader conversation on yes, regionally it’s important. There might be a job in Burlington that matters a lot in Burlington and

 

not so much in Nashua, but at the same point, we also need to think of remote work, right? Like it’s not like the idea of remote work. And a lot of times these jobs are skilled trades in person, but I do think there needs to be a bigger conversation so that I have a better idea of who has this credential, who values this credential that I have and not just because my state did the work.

 

Matt Sterenberg (01:08:15.106)

Well, I appreciate Advanced CTE’s leadership on this and bringing all this information together because as many people have highlighted, it’s the Wild West and for you to do the analysis of what states are doing and how they’re conceiving of this, I think is fantastic. So I will link to the report. Make sure you check it out. Emily, thank you so much for joining me.

 

There’s always more to learn.