Funding: Lumina Foundation
Performance period: August 28, 2013-Sep. 30, 2017
Summary: In the course of three successive projects, researchers at GWIPP, with partners at Workcred and Southern Illinois University and advisors from higher education, business and government developed and piloted a technical language for describing credentials, an online registry to which colleges and other credential providers could automatically post and update comparable information about their credentials, and a prototype search application to enable employers, students, career coaches and others to conduct customized searches of the registry's data. All three components, were open-source to allow the development of an open applications marketplace. The success of the Credential Transparency Initiative led to the creation of an independent nonprofit, Credential Engine, to take the system to scale. The project also resulted in several publications, including “Creating and Communicating Critical Information about Workforce Credentials,” by Stephen Crawford & Robert Sheets, a chapter in Transforming U.S. Workforce Development Policies for the 21st Century, edited by Carl E. Van Horn, Todd Greene, and Tammy Edwards (Upjohn Institute Press, 2015).