Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Creating a Competency-Based Qualifications Framework for Postsecondary Education and Training

Incomes, job security, and economic growth increasingly depend on postsecondary credentials with value in the labor market. While a vast number of adults in the labor market engage in noncredit occupational education and training, without common metrics or quality assurance mechanisms, they cannot translate their education and training into postsecondary credit and the value of their credentials is not clear to employers, educators, or students. This report urges for a system that assesses competency to measure learning, rather than relying on the credits as the metric for learning. Furthermore, this report examines federal, state, and institutional efforts to better assure the quality of credentials and to bridge noncredit and credit-bearing instruction, and provides recommendations that can be taken to create a competency-based system for measuring learning.