Apprenticeship is an important workforce development strategy in Germany and is growing in prominence in the United States. Intermediaries, or organizations that facilitate the successful implementation of apprenticeship with employers and apprentices, help ensure a successful and high-quality experience in both countries’ systems. This brief from the Urban Institute compares the German and US apprenticeship…

This report presents findings from the 2020 National Survey of Postsecondary Competency-Based Education. The 2020 survey is the third in a series done by the American Institutes for Research. Our goal is to understand the national landscape of postsecondary competency-based education (CBE) and give stakeholders an assessment of the field to inform their actions. Key…

This issue brief serves as a primer on past and current developments in prior learning assessments (PLA), including how the strategy can help students bridge workforce and academic competencies, and how it can be incorporated into strategies for workforce development. In the first section, we introduce past and current developments in PLAs. In the second,…

Higher education today may be under more scrutiny than ever before. As a greater share of the United State and Canadian population attend post-secondary education, holding a credential or having some higher education experience is no longer rare nor necessarily indicative of qualification as it was 50 years ago. Additionally, as costs have outpaced family…

Learning frameworks are tools that specify learning outcomes and/or competencies that define, classify, and recognize educational, learner, and industry expectations of knowledge, skills, and abilities at increasing levels of complexity and difficulty. They are not standards, and they are not limited to academia, but they do allow for alignment, translation, and mapping of learning through…

This publication examines current challenges with the articulation of learning and argues that a new means of articulating learning is necessary. Specifically, drawbacks and inefficiencies developed to accommodate the credit hour measure of student learning are examined. As an alternative, a new competency-based measure of learning is proposed.

This paper incorporates insights from five years of the Education Design Lab’s work with a goal of helping institutional leaders learn from the experiences of their peers. It is designed to support “intrapreneurs” who embrace a mindset shift as the relationship changes between buyers and sellers of postsecondary learning.

More colleges and universities view competency-based education (CBE) programs as a model to serve nontraditional students and improve workforce readiness, according to this report from the American Institutes for Research.

This report summarizes and brings to a close phase one of the T3 Network. The report is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on the T3 Network’s vision, guiding principles, and profiles the work groups. Part II highlights the T3 Network’s recommendations, organized as a list of pilot projects that together provide the foundation…

A series of reports from Jobs for the Future examines how competency-based education (CBE) can be adapted to meet the needs of underprepared adult learners and help them earn college credentials to advance in today’s workforce.