The microcredential landscape is often called a “wild west” in higher ed circles.

The field is crowded with tens of thousands of program providers, in and outside of academia, online and in person. Short-term programs vary widely, from certificates to badges to boot camps, spanning weeks to months to over a year. And while some programs offer high returns, others yield little to none or insufficiently track outcomes.

Now, two accrediting agencies are stepping into that murky terrain, hoping to bring some order—and branch out into a new market. Both the New England Commission of Higher Education and the Higher Learning Commission, which has been researching short-term programs for eight years, are gearing up to assess whether providers of these programs meet their standards.

This past spring, NECHE voted to start endorsing noncredit program providers, including traditional four-year and two-year higher ed institutions and external organizations that offer these programs. For colleges and universities, NECHE’s recognition will be a bonus marker of quality on top of their existing accreditation. The move comes after the accreditor spent two years developing a microcredential-focused quality framework and testing it out on a cohort of six providers as part of a pilot project funded by the Lumina Foundation. Now, NECHE plans to launch its new recognition process for noncredit providers this upcoming spring.

The goal is to start with at least 30 applicants for recognition. But NECHE officials expect to see greater demand as noncredit providers vie for students and employer partnerships in a competitive market and seek to strengthen pipelines from noncredit programs to jobs and degrees.

Laura Gambino, vice president of NECHE, said the stamp of approval will also signal to students which programs are worthwhile.

“There’s virtually no quality assurance in that space,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is all about ensuring that students have access to high-quality learning opportunities” as millions of students flock to these programs.

This fall, the Higher Learning Commission is launching its own endorsement for microcredential providers, specifically those outside higher ed. The accreditor has been working since 2017 to think through the role it could play in an evolving higher ed landscape. With funding from Lumina and ECMC, it started a think tank on the topic to consult with experts and, two years later, launched its Credential Lab, a hub to help institutions and students navigate the rapid expansion of short-term credentials.

HLC conducted a pilot project this year, starting with four microcredential providers from outside higher ed, to create and try a possible endorsement system. Now that endorsement process is set to launch before January. (Both the HLC and NECHE are recognizing program providers, not assessing individual programs.) The HLC’s Credential Lab is also in the process of selecting higher ed institutions to participate in its Innovation Center, a series of webinars for colleges and universities interested in growing their microcredential offerings or taking their first forays into the field.

“We are knee-deep in this,” said Barbara Gellman-Danley, president of the Higher Learning Commission.

A 2023 survey of HLC member institutions found that 91 percent expected alternative credential offerings to grow at their institutions and 86 percent wanted help parsing the quality of external providers to explore potential partnerships.

As traditional higher ed institutions struggle with a range of challenges, from declining traditional-age student enrollments to funding losses, Gellman-Danley sees them exploring partnerships with external providers to expand their offerings as a way to be “competitive.”

“They’re looking for some kind of solution, and we want to make sure that they don’t grab a solution that’s a temporary one and that they’re prepared,” she said. Meanwhile, microcredential providers, also eager for these partnerships, are looking for “credibility.”

An ‘Essential’ Step

Accreditation experts say it’s high time accreditors ventured into evaluating alternative credentials, both to keep up with students’ shifting preferences and to defend them from bad actors.

“Reviewing microcredential programs and providers is essential for protecting students,” Nasser H. Paydar, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Accrediting organizations recognized by CHEA and the U.S. Department of Education have already demonstrated their ability to review providers and programs. The review of these programs should begin as soon as possible, validating their quality, thereby protecting students.”

Paul Gaston III, an emeritus Trustees Professor at Kent State University, said quality assurance for microcredentials “really needs to be done” and he believes accreditors are clearly the bodies to do it.

“Accreditors have the advantage of 100 years or more of experience in evaluation procedures,” he said. “The challenge lies in adapting those procedures to a kind of credential that is not traditional.”

Evaluating a New Landscape

Officials at NECHE and HLC say they’ve drawn on decades of know-how as evaluators to reimagine quality standards for a world of shorter, faster credentials.

For example, NECHE’s quality framework for noncredit program providers includes “agility” as a marker, alongside more traditional benchmarks like qualified faculty and student supports.

“Noncredit providers have to be able to respond to employer needs, state workforce needs, very, very quickly,” Gambino said, unlike degree programs, which “move a little more slowly” when it comes to change. As a former faculty member and chair of a curriculum committee, “‘agility’ is never a word I used to describe our process.”

That’s why NECHE plans to recognize noncredit program providers over five-year cycles, with annual data reporting requirements, rather than the 10-year accreditation cycles it uses for degree-granting institutions. Reviews by peer evaluators will also be offered online and in hybrid form to accommodate online providers.

Alongside agility, measuring returns on investment, such as employment and job-promotion rates, is especially important for short-term programs, Gambino said, because so many students come to these programs with such goals in mind. NECHE and HLC also plan to evaluate providers on whether their noncredit offerings can serve as on-ramps to credit-bearing programs if students choose to continue their education.

Gellman-Danley said adapting accreditors’ skills and processes to the microcredential landscape also comes with the added challenge that some providers outside academia don’t collect the data higher ed institutions traditionally track. For example, she found some showed high job-placement rates but had few metrics to show proof of student learning.

She hopes that the HLC’s endorsement process encourages alternative credential providers to keep better data, but at the end of the day, an endorsement is not required to access financial aid, unlike at the colleges and universities HLC accredits and can command to shape up.

“These companies don’t all have the financial data that we might want to see to make sure that they’re sustainable,” she said. “They don’t all have outcomes metrics—even really good [providers]. They’re new to it. It’s kind of a nascent industry … We’ve been amazed at how complex it is when we got into this.”

Models for the Future

Gaston believes NECHE and HLC could serve as “bellwethers,” modeling how other accreditors could go about venturing into the microcredential landscape.

By evaluating new kinds of providers, accreditors are also asserting their ongoing value and relevance at a time when more Americans are questioning traditional higher education and accreditation, he said. He pointed out there have been recent challenges to the existing accreditation system, notably an effort by six state university systems to start their own accrediting agency.

Accreditors would be “off-putting” to students if they ignored the burgeoning nondegree programs they’re embracing, Gaston said. But accreditors “taking seriously these opportunities that are increasingly popular has to contribute to a more positive regard for the accreditation process and for higher education in general.”

Larry Schall, president of NECHE, also noted that as workforce Pell becomes a reality and federal dollars start to flow to low-income students in eligible short-term programs, it’s an opportune time to have tools to evaluate these program providers. States are going to be responsible for certain quality checks on these programs, so he can foresee NECHE potentially partnering with states to help with that process, depending on the final details of the workforce Pell program.

As HLC and NECHE—and perhaps other accreditors down the line—start to work with microcredential providers, there’s bound to be some competition. But accreditors aren’t too worried.

Gellman-Danley said with hundreds of thousands of alternative credential providers, it’s a “very big market” with plenty of room to go around. She’s particularly proud of the process HLC has developed, she said, but “we applaud our colleagues who are looking into this or doing this as well.”

Schall agrees there’s space for multiple accreditors in the expansive microcredentialing wild west.

“We don’t mind competition,” Schall said. “The number of colleges is actually shrinking. The number of noncredit providers is growing. And so, the supply is going to be huge.”