Meg Knight

Micro-credentials are increasingly being positioned as a practical answer to one of higher education’s biggest challenges: how to help working adults build relevant skills without stepping away from their careers. As industries are reshaped by AI, automation and changing workforce needs, learners need flexible, credible and career-connected ways to reskill and upskill. Well-designed, stackable micro-credentials can support that demand by offering focused learning, meaningful assessment and pathways that connect short courses to longer qualifications. 

My career has been a series of well-timed pivots.  Some were carefully planned, others emerged because the world changed around me. Each required me to learn something new: to build new knowledge and capabilities and prepare for what was coming next. 

I began with a BCom on campus and later completed an MBA and a teaching diploma. All three served me well, giving me knowledge, experiences and relationships that shaped my career. 

But careers, and the skills they require, no longer stand still for very long. 

AI and other emerging technologies are transforming industries rapidly. People increasingly need to reskill or upskill, or prepare for entirely different kinds of work. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) identifies this need for continuous workforce development as one of the main reasons for growing interest in micro-credentials. OECD: Micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability. 

Why working professionals need just-in-time education  

It is cruelly ironic that the people most likely to need new skills are often those least able to step away from their lives to acquire them. They may be working full-time, raising families, or managing significant financial commitments. 

I discovered this personally during one of my own career pivots. A few years ago, it became clear that organizations would need to transition toward more sustainable practices. I wanted to develop the knowledge to help lead that change. As formal qualifications had served me well in the past, I enrolled in another master’s degree.  Halfway through, I realized I had gained much of the knowledge I needed. At the same time, the costs were piling up, and my career and family obligations had changed. The size of the commitment had become difficult to sustain. So I made the difficult decision to stop.  

I now have several completed courses, but they are neither transferable nor formally recognized outside that university. I am not sure they would mean much to an employer as evidence of what I know or can do. Some of the learning is also already out of date because the sustainability field has changed so quickly. 

In hindsight, I did not need another three years of “just-in-case” education. I needed credible, carefully designed learning at the point at which I could apply it. 

I needed just-in-time education. 

What are micro-credentials, and why are they growing in higher education? 

At their best, micro-credentials combine the immediacy of YouTube-style learning with the pedagogy and credibility of formal education. We are already accustomed to finding information when we need it. But watching content is not the same as developing a capability. A well-designed micro-credential can bridge that gap. It can provide focused, expert-led learning and meaningful assessment, resulting in a trusted signal that someone has mastered a skill, not simply watched some videos. 

Micro-credentials also change the economics of lifelong learning. Instead of making one large commitment upfront, learners can complete smaller credentials as their time, finances and needs allow. Each can be valuable on its own while also stacking towards a certificate, diploma or degree. 

There is evidence that this can produce tangible benefits. One study of older working adults in the Virginia Community College System found that those who completed a second, related credential were more likely to be employed and earned higher wages than those who returned but did not complete one. The returns varied by field, however, and were particularly strong in health-related disciplines. Stacking the Deck for Employment Success 

A micro-credential is not valuable simply because it is short; its value depends on whether it develops a capability that learners and employers genuinely need, whether that capability is assessed credibly, and whether the credential is recognized and leads somewhere meaningful. 

How universities can design stackable micro-credentials that employers trust 

For universities, the opportunity is not simply to divide existing degrees into smaller pieces or add hundreds of short courses to their catalogs. They need a coherent process:  

market insight → employer co-design → credential architecture → learning design→ delivery → evidence of skills → credential 

Employers should help define the capabilities and workplace tasks that make the credential relevant. Assessment should produce credible evidence of what the learner can do. Credentials should connect into clear pathways, and fast-changing content must be reviewed and updated regularly. 

In hindsight, I would probably have approached my sustainability education this way. I could have completed a series of shorter, industry-relevant credentials as they became useful to my work and updated them as the field changed.   

A real-world example: The ABET Sustainability Micro-credential 

At OES we recently created just this, a sustainability-related micro-credential. In partnership with ABET, their subject matter experts and our learning strategists created a short learning experience designed to be industry-relevant and able to be completed by working professionals.  

The ABET Sustainability Microcredential is a self-paced, eight-week online program for science, engineering, and mathematics students and professionals. It embeds sustainability and ethics into STEM learning, supported by Amara, a built-for-purpose AI learning assistant that helps learners connect sustainability principles to their own career and context. 

Our learning strategist on the project, Tara Maybanks, had the following to say: “For me, the strength of the ABET Sustainability Micro-credential is in the way it connects learning to what people are actually doing in their careers. The goal of the course was to create meaningful opportunities to explore sustainability and consider what it looks like in their own professional context. It was designed to build on the foundational knowledge that they already possessed. That’s where I think micro-credentials can really add value. They give people learning they can use now, without sacrificing depth or credibility.” 

The future of lifelong learning is flexible, accessible, and career-connected 

The expansion of education to enable multiple pathways to success in a more accessible way opens the door to those who have been excluded in the more traditional model. Formal degrees will remain valuable. So will informal, self-directed learning. This is not an either/or debate. 

Micro-credentials have the potential to connect the two, giving people greater agency over what they learn, when they learn it and how far they take it. 

The larger opportunity is an education system that follows learners as their careers evolve, helping them make the next well-timed pivot without requiring them to put the rest of their lives on hold. 

As for my next pivot?  I’m already eyeing my next micro-credential…. ‘Responsible AI for Leaders’  

Sources 

ABET. (n.d.). ABET sustainability microcredential. https://www.abet.org/sustainability-microcredential/ 

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (n.d.). Micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/micro-credentials-for-lifelong-learning-and-employability_9c4b7b68-en.html 

Xu, D., Solanki, S., & Cadwallader, S. (2026). Stacking the deck for employment success: Labor market returns to stackable credentials for older working adults. ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED671457.pdf