https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/stackable-credentials-awards-for-future.pdf

1. The Future of Stackable Credentials Stacking credentials—combining short-term awards either with other short-term awards or with degrees—has the potential to help align skill supply with skill demand, especially for low-income and first-generation college students. But there are various types of stacks—progression, supplemental, and independent—and they are likely to have different labor market impacts and meet different student needs. There is no question that short-term awards are growing, including vocational credentials and more formal, credit-bearing certificates. But how this growth matches with the growth of stacking is unclear. First, many of the vocational credentials stand alone and are not combined with degrees. Second, when our definition of stacks is limited to certificates, none of the three forms of stacks account for any more than single digit percent shares of degrees. Within this category, the largest group is independent stacks— accumulation of more than one certificate—even as progression stacks—certificates that lead on to degrees—would ideally be most impactful. Progression stacks have the potential to address some of the completion barriers faced especially by low-income and first-generation college students. Third, our measure of progression stacking includes any sequence in which a certificate is earned before an associate or bachelor’s degree. This measure does not reject awards that are in different disciplines or that are do not build on each other without losing credits, and as such it is expansive in what is counted as progression stacking. Hence, a narrower definition more consistent with the underlying conceptual model suggests a trivial amount of stacking in the aggregate. Better data on vocational credentials might show a wider spread of stackable credentials. Indeed, from the cross-sectional survey data that we do have, we conclude that supplemental stacks are important and are probably growing significantly. In contrast, what we do know about vocational credentials suggests that so far they have not been incorporated in large numbers into progression stacks. Thus our conclusion that progression stacking is not a significant phenomenon based on an analysis of combinations of certificates with degrees would not change even if we could take better account of these credentials.

可堆叠证书的未来 堆叠凭据——将短期奖励与其他短期奖励相结合奖项或学位——有可能帮助使技能供应与技能需求保持一致，特别是对于低收入和第一代大学生。但是有多种类型的堆栈——进步、补充和独立——它们可能会对劳动力市场产生不同的影响并满足不同的学生需求。 毫无疑问，短期奖励正在增长，包括职业 证书和更正式的信用证书。但这种增长如何与堆叠的增长相匹配尚不清楚。首先，许多职业证书是独立的，不与学位相结合。其次，当我们对堆栈的定义仅限于证书时，三种形式的堆栈所占的学位份额都不超过个位数百分比。在这一类中，最大的一组是独立堆栈—— 积累多个证书——即使是进展叠加——获得学位的证书——在理想情况下将是最有影响力的。进度堆栈有可能解决一些完成障碍，尤其是低收入和第一代大学生。第三，我们对进展叠加的衡量包括在副学士学位或学士学位之前获得证书的任何顺序。该措施不拒绝不同学科或不建立在彼此而不会失去学分，因此它在被视为进展堆叠。因此，更符合基本概念模型的更窄定义表明聚合中的堆叠量微不足道。 更好的职业证书数据可能会显示更广泛的可堆叠证书。事实上，根据我们确实拥有的横断面调查数据，我们得出结论，补充堆栈很重要并且可能正在显着增长。相比之下，我们对职业证书的了解表明，到目前为止，他们还没有 被大量合并到进程堆栈中。因此，即使我们可以更好地考虑这些证书，我们基于对证书与学位组合的分析得出的进展叠加不是一个重要现象的结论也不会改变。