New market demands are pushing small, four-year liberal arts colleges to offer microcredentials, indicating growing momentum across sectors of higher education to elevate workforce readiness within their academic offerings.
Chief learning officers at community colleges are leading the charge in expanding non-degree offerings, reporting the highest levels of institutional investment in this area. Meanwhile, large research universities—like the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville—are catching up.
However, strict faculty governance and curriculum processes and different accreditation standards have caused some liberal arts schools to lag, says Mike Simmons, an associate executive director at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
“That’s changing as more employers embrace skills-based hiring and demand more transparency into students’ coursework and grades. The Ivy Leagues don’t have to deal with this yet, but most colleges and universities in the country have to address this issue.”
Student demand is also driving the change. A recent study by EAB, a higher education consulting firm, found that the number of academic majors heavily influences where students choose to enroll.
“Prospective students are looking for academic variety that directly correlates to career success,” says Jennifer Dearden, provost and dean of the faculty at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. “They want tangible evidence that a liberal arts education results in career-ready skills.”
This fall, Allegheny launched a new program offering 28 microcredentials tailored to in-demand industries, such as artificial intelligence engineering, cybersecurity and game design.
Mount Saint Mary’s University, a private all-female liberal arts school in Los Angeles, also launched a new initiative aimed at boosting four-year students’ hands-on experience and demonstrable skills. One of the key pillars involves microcredentials offered by the school and third-party providers.
“We understand that today’s graduates need more than just a diploma,” says Ann McElaney-Johnson, president of Mount Saint Mary’s.
Like Allegheny, the new credentials are designed to be integrated within students’ current academic and career pathways, while offering employers a granular picture of the skills students are learning.
“They provide a complement to the breadth of a liberal arts education and the depth of specialized skills that employers are actively seeking,” McElaney-Johnson adds.
How to integrate microcredentials into the liberal arts
Simmons and McElaney-Johnson agree that microcredentials are designed to complement, not compete with, degree programs available at liberal arts institutions. Program design is essential to build faculty and leadership buy-in.
At Mount Saint Mary’s University, microcredentials are housed in the Office of Career and Professional Development, where academic departments can collaborate on new programs that best align with student and employer demand.
At Allegheny College, an academic committee reviews and votes on any microcredentials proposed by faculty. Microcredentials aren’t created from scratch; rather, they are redesigned into bite-sized offerings from existing curricula and repackaged to emphasize in-demand skills acquired in the program.
“Microcredentials don’t replace a major or minor but instead help our students articulate skills embedded within a discipline, or how they’ve cultivated skills that are cross-disciplinary through their major/minor combination,” says Dearden.
For example, the college’s new content creation microcredential combines coursework currently offered in its computer science and art departments.
“All of the values inherent to a liberal arts education—communication, critical thinking and discipline—all have economic value as well,” Simmons says. “You don’t need to diminish one credential offering for another.”
