Moving Fast Requires Moving Fast

I've spent enough time watching private universities chase the alternative credential market to know that most of them are going about it the wrong way. It's a humble opinion, but the data bears it out, and so does the pattern of organizational decision making we see repeated day after day.

EAB has another great market study suggesting that even private universities with exceedingly strong brands (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, etc.) are struggling to solve the alternative credential puzzle. So when a mid-sized private university with an underfunded continuing education unit and an 18-month curriculum approval process decides it's going to capture meaningful revenue from alternative credentials, we should be honest about the projected outcomes. The study reveals that most institutions are reporting ~$200,000 annually in revenues from alternative credentials. Professional certificates perform best. This isn't the result of a soft market. I've seen some studies projecting the US alternative credentials market to reach $118.8 billion by 2035, growing at a rapid ~18% annual rate. I'm suggesting that universities (specifically mid-sized privates) have underperforming alternative credential programs because the market has no tolerance for institutional inertia. What we're seeing in the alternative credentialling space is a need for speed, market intelligence, and employer relationships. Those are three characteristics you're hard pressed to locate within most private universities.

More than a few of these schools have permitted their alternative credential initiatives to creep back into the hands of traditional faculty. In most cases, this happens because institutional leadership is conflict-averse about asserting different models. In other cases, it's the product of faculty governance structures that make it impossible to locate alternative credentialling outside a traditional school or college. I've seen the abysmal failure of trying to repackage traditional programs as alternatives credentials. The working adults looking to reskill in six weeks aren't interested in a shortened version of a semester-long graduate seminar. They need something that produces demonstrable skills and competencies that employers recognize and reward. Meanwhile, the professional and continuing education units that actually have the market intelligence, the employer relationships, the adult learner experience, and the operational agility to compete in this space are kept at arm's length from strategic decisions and operationalizing market-sensitive alternative credential programs.

The private universities that are genuinely successful in the alternative credential space are centralizing alternative credential development within the PCE units (or similar schools and colleges). They're designing programs up from adult learner and employer needs, not down from existing curriculum. They're building stackability into their offerings so that a credential creates an optional pathway toward a degree, not requiring it as a gateway to enrolling. And most critically, they're pricing their credentials in ways that reflect what the market expects, not what their budget offices think they should.

The alternative credential opportunity is real, but it requires the right organizational conditions to generate value. For private universities that have been hesitant to let their PCE units lead this work, the cost is time and money spent on programs that will continue to underperform. It's also a missed opportunity to keep the institution relevant and competitive in a rapidly evolving higher ed market.