By Rachel Antrobus and Brenda Hernandez

In this blog, we explore what Metrics Academies are surfacing about credentials of value, why traditional return on investment (ROI) measures fall short, and what it will take to design skills-first pathways that truly support economic mobility.

A college student graduates. They did what they were asked: chose a major and program, persisted, and completed within 6 years. They took on debt—carefully, often reluctantly—because they believed it would pay off in the long run.

Fast-forward a few years, and they are working but not getting ahead. Their wages are steady but not growing. Their loan balance is still there, shaping their financial choices. And somewhere between expectation and reality, a question takes hold:

Was college worth it?

This question is at the center of the national conversation around credentials of value. It is also what institutions are examining through the Designing for Economic Mobility Metrics Academies, a professional learning initiative and partnership between the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH) and WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility. Through the Metrics Academies’ state-specific convenings, college and university faculty and staff come together to build data literacy skills and learn to use labor market information to strengthen education pathways and connect students to economic opportunity.

The Metrics Academies provide a structured forum for teams to dig into their own data to understand how education connects to economic mobility. By analyzing labor market data, mapping career pathways, and discussing the realities that students face after graduation, participating teams came to a clearer realization. The value of education is often assessed one program at a time even though the outcomes students experience are shaped by a much broader set of conditions.

Why the value question is so difficult to answer

At first glance, the concept of a credential of value feels straightforward. A program is valuable if it leads to strong earnings, stable employment, and upward mobility. But the closer that institutions look, the more that clarity dissolves.

A credential’s economic value depends on much more than just the credential itself. It is shaped by interacting conditions—some within institutional control, many beyond it:

  • Completion—and how we measure it—is one of the most overlooked conditions that shapes the value of a credential. Many of the data used to define credentials of value focus on students who complete, often excluding those who do not. While this creates a cleaner picture of postgraduation earnings, it obscures a critical reality: Students who leave without a credential often carry debt without the benefits a credential is meant to provide. So, metrics can overstate value by focusing on those who succeed.
  • Debt adds another layer of complexity. Two students who complete the same program may earn similar wages but experience very different levels of economic mobility depending on what they borrowed or how long they delayed earning while enrolled. For students with fewer financial resources, even modest debt can constrain early career decisions and delay wealth-building. Education can function as both an engine of opportunity and a mechanism that reproduces economic inequality.
  • Time also matters. Most ROI metrics capture earnings 1 to 3 years after completion. That window works well for programs that lead directly to specific occupations, but it misses the way that many careers actually unfold. Graduates from broader, more flexible fields often experience slower starts and stronger long-term growth, particularly as they move into roles requiring judgment, coordination, and leadership. When we measure ROI too early, we do not just miss nuance; we systematically undervalue entire pathways.

How we measure alignment is limited

Beneath these conditions sits a quieter but equally consequential issue. The way we connect education to the labor market does not reflect how careers actually work.

Most workforce alignment efforts rely on a tidy mapping between fields of study and occupations. This approach assumes that students move from a specific program into a corresponding job. In practice, this relationship is rarely linear.

A teacher may have studied English, biology, or physical education. A psychology graduate may become a counselor or a project manager. Roles like project manager and teacher draw from business, engineering, communications, and beyond. These are not edge cases—they represent the majority of career pathways.

This is the one-to-many problem at the heart of workforce alignment. One program opens up multiple possibilities, and one occupation draws from multiple forms of preparation.

In trying to simplify the relationship between education and work, we distort it. And that distortion matters. It can make programs seem less valuable than they are, limit how students understand their options, and steer institutions toward pathways that prioritize immediate outcomes over long-term mobility.

From alignment to translation

In addition to the lack of alignment between education and work, teams participating in the Metrics Academies surfaced translation as another prevalent challenge. That is, institutions often found that students were learning skills that employers highly value—including communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking—but colleges and employers often described, or translated, those skills differently. As a result, students were left to bridge that gap on their own.

Translation, in this context, means helping students connect what they learn in academic programs to the language, expectations, and signaling systems of the labor market. Students report that they are rarely supported in making a connection between the skills they learn and the skills required by the labor market. As a result, the burden falls on students to translate their skills into language that resonates with employers. Students with stronger networks or prior workforce exposure often figure it out, while others struggle.

Skills-first pathways are designed to address this translation issue. A skills-first approach is not simply about identifying competencies. It also involves helping students practice, communicate, and apply their skills in ways that connect to real-world opportunities. In this approach, translation becomes a core institutional function.

Designing pathways to economic mobility

Across the Metrics Academies, participants also shared that many students struggle to see how their education connects to longer term economic opportunity, especially in broader or more flexible fields of study. Take the role of a project manager. From a traditional workforce alignment lens, the most direct pathway might appear to be a business degree. But in practice, project managers come from engineering, communications, social sciences, the humanities, and many other programs. What connects them is not a shared major but a shared set of capabilities: coordinating teams, managing timelines, communicating across groups, and navigating complex problems.

The project manager example surfaced a broader realization during the academies. Many careers do not follow clean, linear pathways, yet higher education systems are often designed as though they do. When institutions focus too narrowly on connecting programs to jobs, students can struggle to understand the wider range of opportunities that their learning may open up, particularly in majors built around transferable skills.

As participating institutions mapped pathways and examined labor market data during academy sessions, conversations increasingly shifted away from simply asking, “What job does this major lead to?” Instead, participants began asking a different set of questions: “Who are our students, and what skills and experiences do they already bring?” “What are employers actually hiring for—not just in job titles, but in capabilities?” and “How do we make those connections more visible and attainable?”

This reframing broadens the focus from programs and jobs toward the relationship between students and employers. In this model, colleges are not only providers of education; they also help students translate skills, navigate opportunity, and connect learning to real workforce contexts.

Designing for economic mobility, then, is not just about helping students land a first job. It is about helping them see and navigate the range of directions their learning can take them over time. It requires making pathways more visible, strengthening relationships with employers, and ensuring students can communicate what they know in ways that resonate beyond the classroom. It also means assessing how access to information, networks, and guidance is distributed. Some students will find their way regardless. Others will not unless systems are intentionally designed to support them.

If credentials of value are to mean anything, they must deliver not just opportunity in theory but also economic mobility in practice for far more students than they do today.

Rachel Antrobus leads projects that boost student success and economic mobility from kindergarten through college. She has worked across K–12, higher ed, and government to improve pathways, build systems, and support youth and young adults. Her past roles include developing research and professional development at the RP Group, advancing K-12 to college transitions at Career Ladders Project and Gateway to College’s National Network, and improving education and workforce programs for target populations for more than a decade in municipal government. She has a BA in communication studies and an MPA from California State University, Long Beach, and an EdD in educational leadership from the University of Southern California.

Brenda Hernandez supports college administrators, educators, and staff to use data, collaborate across sectors, and develop student-centered solutions to improve learner outcomes. She specializes in helping first-generation, low-income, and underserved students prepare for and access college. Brenda has a BA in sociology with a minor in Chicana/o/x studies from the University of California, Davis, and an MA in educational leadership and policy studies from California State University, Sacramento.