Micro-credentials: small change with a big impact

The European Commission (EC) in its 2020 report on Micro-credentials highlighted the lack of clarity surrounding micro-credentials and thus has attempted to standardize these awards. As a result, the Council adopted a recommendation on micro-credentials in December 2021, aiming to support lifelong learning and enhance employability. Micro-credentials are short, targeted courses that certify specific skills and knowledge, often aligned with labour market demands. The EC’s recommendation promotes a common European approach to developing, assessing, and recognizing micro-credentials, enabling individuals to access flexible learning opportunities across sectors, including education and employment.

Key components of the recommendation include the definition of micro-credentials, principles for their design and delivery, and recommendations for their inclusion in formal education and training systems. The EC emphasizes transparency, quality assurance, and portability of these credentials across EU member states, fostering mobility and supporting inclusion. The initiative addresses digital transformation and the evolving needs of the workforce, ensuring skills recognition across borders and sectors, while promoting equal access to upskilling opportunities for individuals at all stages of their careers. While there is no reference to medium of instruction in which to deliver micro-credentials, a significant
proportion can be delivered fully online, and many European universities currently offer fully online micro-credentials.

Key elements of the EC recommendation

The EC’s recommendation on micro-credentials highlights several key elements designed to ensure the effectiveness and broad adoption of these credentials across the EU. Among the most important are quality assurance, portability, the use of learning outcomes, the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), and stackability. To ensure trust and credibility in micro-credentials, the recommendation calls for robust quality assurance mechanisms. These should align with existing European frameworks such as the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and the European Quality

Assurance in Vocational Education and Training (EQAVET). Institutions and organizations offering micro credentials must ensure high standards in content delivery, assessment, and learner support. Moreover, studies have shown that micro-credentials may improve student employability decreasing the so called ‘skills-mismatch’ while assisting students in preparing for the jobs of the ‘future’.

Portability is a critical element that enables learners to transfer micro-credentials across institutions, sectors, and borders. The recommendation promotes transparency and recognition of these credentials, ensuring that they are recognized by employers, educational institutions, and within different EU member states, thus facilitating both educational and labour market mobility. The European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet plays a key role in supporting the portability of micro-credentials by allowing individuals to securely store and share their verified qualifications across borders. It ensures that micro-credentials are easily accessible and authenticated, facilitating recognition by educational institutions and employers within the European Union. This digital solution enhances transparency and trust, making it easier for learners to transfer and use their micro-credentials in different contexts across the EU.

Micro-credentials are centred on learning outcomes, which clearly define what knowledge, skills, and competencies a learner will gain. This focus ensures that the credentials are relevant to labour market needs and helps learners demonstrate their abilities to employers and educational institutions alike.

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) provides a common reference system to compare qualifications across the EU, helping to situate micro-credentials within broader educational pathways. The recommendation also encourages using the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), a tool for recognizing and quantifying learning, which makes it easier to accumulate and transfer credits from micro-credentials towards formal qualifications.

Lastly, stackability refers to the ability to combine micro-credentials into larger qualifications, allowing learners to build up skills and knowledge progressively. This modular approach provides flexibility, enabling learners to continuously upskill or reskill while working towards more comprehensive credentials.

The bigger picture

Micro-credentials align well with the principles of the Bologna Agreement, which seeks to create a cohesive European Higher Education Area (EHEA) based on lifelong learning, mobility, and recognition of qualifications across borders. They complement traditional degrees by offering flexible, targeted learning opportunities that support continuous skills development throughout a person’s career.

One key alignment is with the lifelong learning principle of Bologna. Micro-credentials provide opportunities for individuals to acquire new skills and competencies at any stage of life, responding to labour market changes and technological advancements. Additionally, micro-credentials enhance mobility and portability, as they can be recognized across educational institutions and labour markets within the EHEA, promoting both academic and professional mobility.

Micro-credentials also fit into the Bologna Process’s emphasis on learning outcomes, ensuring that the skills gained are transparent and comparable across borders. By aligning with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and using the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), micro credentials can be stacked or accumulated towards larger qualifications like degrees, making them an integral part of lifelong learning pathways.

In short, micro-credentials offer flexibility and innovation, expanding the Bologna Process’s framework to accommodate shorter, more modular learning experiences. This makes them an adaptable tool that supports the Bologna goals of lifelong learning, mobility, and qualifications recognition, while meeting the evolving needs of diverse learners in a changing workforce.

Stackability

Micro-credentials are considered stackable because they are designed to be modular, allowing learners to accumulate several micro-credentials over time and combine them to form larger qualifications, such as a certificate, diploma, or degree. This flexibility enables individuals to build their skills gradually without committing to a long-term program upfront.

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) provides a common reference system to align these learning outcomes with specific qualification levels across Europe. Micro-credentials linked to EQF levels ensure that learning is structured and comparable across borders, promoting recognition and portability. Additionally, many micro-credentials use the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) to quantify learning outcomes in terms of workload and achievement. ECTS credits are widely recognized, allowing learners to stack micro-credentials earned from different institutions and use them toward larger qualifications, such as diplomas or degrees. A critical aspect of this stackability is the alignment with
learning outcomes. Micro-credentials are based on clearly defined learning outcomes, which describe the specific knowledge, skills, and competencies a learner will acquire. By focusing on outcomes, micro-credentials ensure transparency and relevance, making it easier for institutions and employers to understand what the learner has achieved and how it fits into broader qualifications.

Stackability, supported by recognizable learning outcomes, EQF, and ECTS, enables learners to progressively build their education. They can combine micro-credentials at different stages of their careers to create larger qualifications, with their learning recognized and transferable across the European education system. Stacking can, in theory, occur in three ways: vertical stacking which involves credentials being added to each other in a hierarchy, horizontal stacking whereby related credentials are combined on the same level, and value-added stacking which combines components of vertical and horizontal stacking which is useful for making minor yet valuable additions to larger degrees (Informed by Kazin and Clerkin, 2018). While an important element in the landscape of micro-credentials integrated stackability is likely to take more time to implement as it will require a shift in how accredited qualifications are designed and rolled out. Nevertheless, it could prove to be the crux that allows micro-credentials to become truly portable across national and European universities.

The impact of stackability on degrees

If micro-credentials become stackable and widely recognized, the quality and perception of traditional degrees could be impacted in various ways. The fact that micro-credentials can be stackable and thus can be part of a full degree requires that the quality assurance of the micro-credential must be just as solid and reliable. After all, if the authenticity and quality of small change is inadequately governed, this will also impact the trustworthiness of larger banknotes. When a Board of Examiners grants an exemption based on a micro-credential that is already obtained at another institution, the Board will have to be convinced of the quality, level and learning outcomes of this particular micro-credential. This implies that we must prevent the introduction of the micro-credential from leading to erosion of our highly regarded degrees in Europe and therefore ensure that the quality of a micro-credential is assured in such a way that the micro-credential is as trustworthy as a degree.

The stackability of micro-credentials can create flexible and modular learning pathways increasing flexibility for learning. Furthermore, stackable micro-credentials can allow learners to progress at their own pace and increase the accessibility, cost effectiveness, and relevance to industry of lifelong learning opportunities. Students can adapt their education to their career goals potentially requiring traditional degrees to evolve to include more modular approaches, blending broad academic knowledge with specialized skills. In a similar vein, micro-credentials aim to promote competency-based learning. Finally, from a financial perspective, as micro-credentials are often cheaper and more accessible than traditional degrees, universities could perhaps become more competitive on cost and offer shorter, more affordable programs.

The European Maturity Model for Micro-credentials in Higher Education

The implementation of the micro-credential at a national level is a considerable challenge for policy makers. The European Digital Education Hub has therefore collaborated on a maturity model that provides HEIs with the tools for a Socratic dialogue allowing them to reflect on their current position at a local level and gain a sharper view on how to further strengthen the micro-credential within their institution. In doing so, we aspire to provide a toolkit that supports institutions to work in a similar way despite national differences, putting panEuropean trustworthiness in the micro-credential well within reach.

The core element of the maturity model is a set of guiding questions that cover all key principles of the EC’s recommendation, organized into three overarching areas – business models, technology for micro-credentials and quality assurance.

In addition to the opportunity to reflect, the maturity model also facilitates a holistic way of thinking within the framework of the EC’s recommendation. This can be seen, for example, in the key principle of stackability. This is of course an aspect that has to be taken into account in the actual design of a micro-credential, but the principle also has an impact on possible business models as well as the technology used for micro-credentials because ideally it would be possible to map stackability and document learner pathways on the portal used.

Written for OEB Global 2024 by Paul den Hertog, Kerstin Schoerg, Laura Widger and Neill Wylie.