Dr. Nan Travers on the Credential As You Go Initiative

Sustaining Capitalism

Although the majority of employers today still use a college degree as a gold standard of evidence for competencies to successfully fulfill a job position, leaders of a new initiative and movement called Credential As You Go are suggesting a bigger role for higher education that would help serve students more fairly and effectively through an incremental approach and keep up with the dynamic demand for talent in the workplace. This approach could also help employers understand the over 700,000 myriad credentials in the current marketplace that workers include on resumes and better match skills to jobs. One of those leaders, Dr. Nan Travers, joins Cindy Cisneros, Vice President, Education Programs at the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (CED) to share more about the initiative’s goals. Dr. Travers is the Director of the Center for Leadership in Credentialing Learning at SUNY Empire State College where she focuses on research, policies, and practices of the recognition, validation and credentialing of learning, and co-lead of the Credential As You Go initiative. She is also the Principal Investigator for a U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, $3 million grant that is fully funding the project.