Consider a working adult who has completed college courses, earned an industry certification, supervised employees, and acquired technical skills on the job. How should that person demonstrate what they know and can do?
Traditionally, that person has used a transcript to document the courses completed. A résumé can describe their employment history. Neither one connects the learning across those experiences nor provides evidence of the capabilities claimed.
Learning and Employment Records (LERs) are intended to help make those connections. They can bring together information about education, skills, credentials, and workplace achievements in forms that individuals can carry and share across institutions and employers.
As a former healthcare executive and former university president, I find that possibility compelling. However, I am interested in the as-yet-unanswered question: Will people use it?
Issuing a record is not the same as a student claiming it, a worker sharing it, an employer considering it, or a college recognizing the learning it represents.
Digital LER initiatives have been around for a few years. Some recent ones offer reasons for optimism and useful reminders that widespread adoption requires more than just a better digital record.
More than a digital résumé
LER is an umbrella concept, not the name of a single product or universally adopted system. An LER may incorporate achievements documented through credentials such as Open Badges, while a Comprehensive Learner Record can organize multiple achievements. A digital wallet provides a way to store, select, and share credentials. These components serve different purposes.
The goals of many of these initiatives are not simply to create longer or more detailed résumés. Many times, objectives are designed to give achievements more context: Who issued the credential? What was required? What evidence supports it? How does it relate to a particular skill or opportunity? Standards such as Open Badges support that richer information.
One of the impediments to widespread acceptance of LER initiatives is the requirement to distinguish an authentic credential from a convincing demonstration of competence. The World Wide Web Consortium’s verifiable-credentials standard explicitly distinguishes verifying a credential from establishing that its claims are true. Technology can help establish authenticity and detect tampering; the recipient still must evaluate the issuer and the claims.
Consider a hypothetical “teamwork” credential. Was it awarded for attending a workshop, completing a group assignment, or demonstrating effective collaboration over several months? Those experiences may all be worthwhile, but they are not equivalent.
To be useful, LERs should make such differences clearer. The opportunity is better evidence, not merely more labels pinned onto a digital badge.
From advocacy to practical experiments
SkillsFWD offers a cross-section of efforts to move LERs into practice. Its published case studies include the Alabama Talent Triad, Central Ohio Talent Network, ColoradoFWD, Indiana Achievement Wallet, Montana Validated Skills Demonstration, MyCareer Forward Pittsburgh, and Arizona State University’s student-worker initiative. Its lessons cover organizational support, user engagement, technology implementation, measurement, and sustainable funding.
That range is insightful. There is no single adoption problem. A college student seeking campus employment, an experienced worker changing careers, and an employer trying to verify qualifications may need different services built around similar records.
Arizona State’s approach is particularly interesting because it connects learning records with a specific activity: student on-campus employment. The university describes its 2024–2025 pilot project as designed to give working learners portable credentials and connect those records with résumé-building tools and a skills-based campus hiring marketplace. Those are project goals, but are not yet proof of improved employment outcomes.
Nevertheless, I like the concept. A university can act as both an educator and an employer, allowing it to test whether the evidence it produces is useful in an actual hiring process. That seems more promising than distributing credentials and hoping an external employer eventually requests them. Developing a skills-based campus hiring marketplace is a plus, particularly for a university the size of ASU.
A few colleges are working collectively. AACRAO’s 2026 account of the LER Accelerator describes a cohort of 22 institutions and a planning year focused on the foundations for pilots and implementation. Participants identified challenges involving governance, faculty engagement, shared terminology, and disconnected credit and noncredit systems.
These are institutional changes that exceed technology installations. Someone must decide what an achievement means, who can attest to it, how the information is maintained, and where it should be used.
For college leaders, the question becomes: Are we preparing to recognize records issued elsewhere, or will we only issue our own? A system built entirely around exporting achievements—without corresponding willingness to evaluate incoming evidence—would leave much of the portability promise unfulfilled.
Colorado’s cautionary lesson
A March 2026 account from Colorado Succeeds illustrates the difficulty of moving from availability to participation. ColoradoFWD operated seven pilot sites spanning healthcare, workforce centers, public agencies, and education partners.
In one direct-care demonstration, more than 1,100 people were invited, but only 12 registered and 4 completed the experience. Those figures describe one component, not the entire Colorado effort. The broader demonstration did not meet its original scale targets either.
The report emphasizes usability, consent, understandable credentials, and a clear benefit to participants. Employers stressed integration with existing human-resources processes and reduced administrative work. Connecting the tools to state systems also proved harder than anticipated.
I do not interpret this as evidence that LERs cannot work. I interpret it as a warning against treating an invitation as engagement or a functioning platform as a functioning service. Before asking someone to maintain another record, we should be able to explain what becomes easier, faster, or more attainable as a result.
Employers need a better process, not another platform
In June 2026, 1EdTech released two reports addressing the distance between education providers’ credential offerings and employers’ ability to use them.
In Bridging the Gap: Aligning Education and Workforce Adoption of Digital Credentials, 1EdTech goes beyond identifying adoption barriers by proposing a minimum set of information for employer trust: skill identification, achievement context, evidence of skill, and trust signals.
An important distinction is between a shared definition of a skill, which helps employers compare candidates, and an explanation of how a particular person demonstrated that skill. Both are necessary; a common vocabulary should not erase individual achievement. The report’s illustrative examples make this tangible. Instead of simply labeling someone’s skill as “leadership,” it describes a person leading a five-person, cross-functional team to deliver a software release within a two-week sprint. Similarly, an assessment description should explain the evaluation criteria rather than merely state that an instructor verified the work.
For colleges, my viewpoint is that converting a course title into a digital badge does not solve the problem. The record should explain what the learner demonstrated and how it was evaluated. The report argues that some improvements can begin with more detailed writing in existing credential fields, rather than waiting for entirely new systems.
The report also cautions against treating the employer as a single reader with a single information need. Recruiters may need concise, scannable summaries, while hiring managers need access to more detailed evidence and assessment information. It recommends “progressive disclosure,” presenting high-level information first, with the ability to examine supporting detail as needed. Platforms should accommodate both machine processing and human review, adapting the presentation to the reviewer and the hiring stage.
The report explains that credential information often sits behind links or on external platforms rather than within the systems employers use to evaluate applicants. Even rich evidence may be overlooked when accessing and interpreting it requires extra work. My takeaway is that the goal should not be to make every employer read a longer record. It should be to make relevant evidence easier to use when a decision requires it.
1EdTech’s companion report, Building Seamless LER Systems: A Path to Scalable Credential Data Sharing, makes a useful distinction between sending a credential once and keeping records usable across systems over time. It identifies ongoing server-to-server synchronization as the clearest unresolved data-transfer problem: handling initial transfers, subsequent updates, corrections, and revocations rather than treating sharing as a one-time event.
The receiving end presents a separate challenge. In the report’s implementer survey, 72 percent of respondents identified employer-system readiness as the most frequently cited obstacle to credential exchange. Even reliable delivery does not ensure that hiring software can interpret the information or make its evidence useful during screening and evaluation.
From my perspective, the practical implication is that colleges and their technology partners should test more than whether a badge can be transmitted. They should test whether records remain current, are matched to the right person, and retain their usefulness throughout the hiring process.
The National Governors Association’s June 2026 account of its Skills in the States convening reinforces this point. Participants challenged the assumption that employers will use a platform simply because it has been built. They emphasized employer involvement in design and tools suited to the capacity of small and mid-sized businesses.
That suggests a practical starting point: Choose a hiring or advancement problem with a willing employer, agree on the evidence needed, and test whether an LER improves the process. Employer participation should begin with defining the problem, not with an invitation to a product demonstration.
Standards matter, but acceptance matters too
It would be inaccurate to suggest that LER development is waiting for all technical standards to be invented. Open Badges 3.0 and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 already address important parts of issuing and organizing verifiable achievements. Other standards address the description of competencies and the movement of records into employment systems.
HR Open Standards and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s T3 Innovation Network are working on the Learning and Employment Record Resume Standard. HR Open describes a second version under development, including an open interface intended to support connections with human-resources systems and the direct submission of records to employers or job boards.
States may also influence adoption through purchasing decisions. In August 2026, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies and 1EdTech announced a partnership that includes procurement guidance encouraging relevant technology standards and certification, alongside common definitions and cross-agency data governance. It is an announced strategy. No one knows how quickly these standards will be implemented and when evidence of resulting employment gains will be available.
These efforts deserve attention because they address how records travel through existing systems. Technical portability does not settle whether an institution will accept the achievement. A college could receive a perfectly authentic credential and still need to determine whether it satisfies a degree requirement. An employer could verify its origin and still find the assessment insufficient for a particular job.
I would pair every technical integration project with a recognition agreement. What will the receiving organization evaluate? What additional evidence might it require? What decision could the record influence?
Without those answers, we risk making records easier to move without making learning easier to recognize.
Give students and workers a reason to participate
The learner’s experience should be central, not something addressed after the institutional systems are connected.
Digital Promise’s Pathways Unlocked toolkit takes this approach. Introduced in 2025, it offers user-research resources and design guidance intended to address barriers such as complex interfaces, inaccessible language, and insufficient attention to learners’ circumstances. Its emphasis is on useful, accessible tools and greater learner agency. That emphasis raises a basic question: What value does someone receive before widespread adoption has occurred?
I would consider piloting a free basic service that helps users assemble an understandable record, organize supporting evidence, and prepare materials for an immediate application or advising conversation. Optional paid services might support a business model, but access to one’s existing achievements and the ability to export them should not be used as bargaining chips.
I would also explore colleges’ alumni relationships as a distribution channel. A college could introduce the service before graduation, connect it with career advising, and sponsor enhanced assistance during the transition into employment. Alumni could subsequently add new learning rather than treating graduation as the endpoint of their educational relationship.
These are proposals to test, not established formulas for adoption. Free access does not eliminate the time required to learn a system or keep information current. Sponsorship also requires a sustainable funding plan.
I would design onboarding to reuse information people choose to provide from existing records, rather than requiring extensive retyping. But imported résumé statements should remain clearly distinguishable from achievements verified by an institution or employer. Convenience must not blur the source of a claim.
The Building Seamless LER Systems report also raises an important question for colleges offering digital wallets to students or alumni: Does the learner control a portable record or primarily have access to an issuer-managed account? It distinguishes issuer-managed experiences from genuinely holder-controlled wallets and calls for clearer guidance on how to move between them. Its wallet-to-wallet example on page 18 highlights the possibility of losing information when credentials move between providers.
In some circumstances, preserving the connection between a credential and its holder may require the issuer to reissue it rather than simply transfer a file. The report calls for portability guidance that explicitly addresses the transition from institutional or provider-controlled environments to longer-term learner-controlled ones. I would ask a college and its vendor to demonstrate what happens after graduation or a change of provider. Can the graduate move the record elsewhere, preserve its supporting information, and continue sharing verifiable achievements? A lifelong learning record should be designed to outlast a particular institutional account or software contract.
Control matters just as much. Users should understand what they are sharing and with whom. They should not have to disclose their entire educational or employment history to demonstrate a single relevant qualification. The W3C standard identifies privacy risks from combining digital information and emphasizes minimizing unnecessary disclosure.
For colleges, the same learner-centered approach should extend to academic decisions. I would begin with a defined opportunity, such as evaluating prior learning for a particular program, rather than promise universal recognition. I would not reduce a college education to a checklist of occupational skills. A useful record should make room for evidence of inquiry, judgment, communication, and intellectual growth. The goal should be to explain learning more fully, not to narrow what counts as learning.
Measure use, not just issuance
The central distinction in evaluating these initiatives is between activity and value. I would ask every LER project to report a sequence: records issued, records claimed, records shared, records considered in decisions, and resulting outcomes.
Each stage answers a different question. Issuance measures production. Claiming shows that the individual has taken an initial step. Sharing suggests a purpose. Use in a decision demonstrates engagement by a receiving organization. Outcomes address whether the effort was worthwhile.
Even a sequence like this needs context. A learner might use a record successfully during an occasional job change and have little reason to open the wallet between applications. I would not assume that daily platform activity is an appropriate measure of success.
For employers, I would examine verification time, hiring effort, and the usefulness of the information in selecting or advancing employees. For colleges, I would examine prior-learning decisions, avoid repetition where appropriate, and consider the time required to evaluate evidence. For individuals, I would ask whether the record helped secure an opportunity or clarify a next step.
Where feasible, evaluations should compare these results with the previous process or a comparable group. A person obtaining a job after utilizing an LER does not, by itself, establish that the record caused the outcome.
Reports should also distinguish goals, pilot observations, and independently evaluated results. The publications reviewed here include implementation accounts, public research summaries, toolkits, and partnership announcements. They should not be treated as interchangeable forms of evidence.
From portable records to recognized learning
Policy interest in LERs continues. In a September 8, 2026 brief, the Bipartisan Policy Center recommended supporting portable LERs and modern skills frameworks as part of a broader effort to redesign education and workforce systems for disruption, including changes associated with artificial intelligence.
LERs could become an important part of that response. However, the objective should not be to give everyone another account or to count a continually expanding supply of credentials. The objective should be to help people carry credible evidence of learning into their next opportunity and help the receiving institution use it.
That requires colleges willing to recognize learning, employers willing to change processes, technology providers willing to connect systems, and services that offer individuals a reason to participate. The most important question is how much previously overlooked learning we can help people employ to achieve a better job or a promotion. And despite all the advances in systems, specifications, and pilot projects, it may be a while before we have evidence indicating the merits of these initiatives.
