Competencies and Credentials Are Reshaping Learning

In our first blog in this series, The Future of Career & Technical Education: Five Trends Every Curriculum Leader Should Be Watching, we looked at some of the changes shaping CTE today. In our last blog, CTE Is Becoming a Lifelong Learning Journey, we more closely examined how that journey can begin with career awareness and continue through education and training, employment, career advancement, upskilling, reskilling, and even career changes.

As we think about that larger journey, another important piece to consider is how learners demonstrate what they know and can do along the way. Completing a course, earning a diploma, or receiving a degree are still important milestones, but today they are increasingly joined by industry-recognized certifications, certificates from educational institutions, licenses, digital badges, microcredentials, and other ways of recognizing specific skills.

For those of us developing curriculum and learning experiences, this gives us something else to think about. We aren’t just considering what learners need to know and do within a course, but how that learning may connect to a credential, the next step in their education, or workforce opportunities.

A Growing Credentials Landscape

The number and variety of credentials available today are significant. Credential Engine’s Counting Credentials 2025 report identified more than 1.85 million unique credentials in the United States, ranging from degrees and certificates to industry certifications, licenses, microcredentials, and more than one million digital badges.

That is a huge number, but perhaps most relevant to CTE is the variety of ways learners can demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Industry-recognized credentials can take many forms, including certifications, occupational licenses, apprenticeship certificates, and badges. What matters most is that the credential represents skills employers understand and value.

When those credentials are tied to skills employers actually need, they can give learners something tangible that demonstrates what they have learned and what they are prepared to do. They can also help create a clearer connection between the learning taking place in a CTE program and what learners may eventually encounter in the workplace.

Building Along the Way

Credentials also fit well within lifelong learning because every learner’s journey is unique, and learners may not follow the same path or need the same skills at the same point in their careers. This is where stackable credentials can be particularly useful.

Rather than viewing education and training as one large destination, learners can build skills and credentials over time. Someone might earn an initial certification that helps them enter the workforce, return later for additional training, earn another credential, and eventually build toward a certificate, a degree, career advancement, or even a different career altogether.

This connects directly to a point we touched on in our last blog. Preparing learners for their first job doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of their education or training. Credentials provide a way to recognize the incremental progress they make along the way.

Credential Engine provides more information on this larger connection in its Counting Credentials, In Context 2025: The Opportunities of Digital Credentials report, examining how credentials fit within the education and workforce ecosystem. If you’re interested in digging deeper into credentials and how they fit into the larger learner journey, Credential Engine’s research is a great resource and well worth a look.

Making Sure the Credential Has Value

Of course, having more credentials available doesn’t automatically make them equally valuable. With nearly two million credentials available, learners, educators, and employers still must determine which ones are worth pursuing and, just as importantly, what a particular credential actually represents.

This is another area where partnership is needed. Educators know what works in the classroom. Employers and industry experts understand the skills people need on the job. Curriculum developers can bring those perspectives together and translate them into learning experiences that prepare learners to develop and demonstrate those skills.

The goal isn’t to build a credential into every program but to make sure that when a credential is part of the pathway, there is good reason for it to be there, it represents skills that matter, and it clearly connects to what comes next for the learner.

Connecting the Curriculum to the Credential

This brings up an important curriculum development question: If earning a credential is part of a CTE pathway, how do we ensure the curriculum prepares learners to earn it?

One place to start is with the credential itself. What knowledge and competencies does it require? Where should those skills be introduced and developed throughout the course or program? Where do learners have opportunities to practice them? And how are we assessing whether learners can demonstrate what they have learned?

Thinking about those questions early in the development process can help create a stronger connection between the curriculum and the credential rather than treating the credential as something that comes at the end of the program. Ideally, the instruction, practice, and assessment all work together to prepare learners for both the credential and the skills they may eventually be expected to demonstrate in the workplace.

Of course, simply adding a credential to a pathway does not automatically make the experience stronger. The credential needs to reflect skills that are valued by employers and be supported by meaningful instruction and real opportunities to practice. When those pieces come together, earning a credential becomes more than an outcome at the end of a program. It gives learners a clear way to demonstrate what they can do and how those skills may translate to the workplace.

Another Piece of the Larger Journey

As we continue thinking about where CTE is headed, the conversation around credentials shouldn’t simply be about adding more. We must consider which credentials have value, what skills and competencies they represent, how they connect to workforce needs, and where they fit within the larger learner journey.

Determining which credentials are needed and valuable takes a diverse set of perspectives. Learners, educators, employers, industry experts, and curriculum developers each see a different part of the picture. Bringing those perspectives together can help us develop programs where credentials are meaningful milestones rather than just something else to earn.

For learners, that can mean having a clearer way to demonstrate what they know and can do today while continuing to build toward their future.

How are credentials and competencies being incorporated into the CTE programs you’re developing today?

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