Access Is Not Enough

When adult learners can advance their education through their own life experiences, the benefits can go far beyond just one learner.  

Take Marine Corps veteran Santiago Vega, Jr., who qualified for college credit based on his military training. He used those credits to graduate from Norco College, transferred to California State University, Fullerton, and earned a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. His success inspired his father, Santiago Vega, Sr., a fellow Marine veteran who sought credit for his own service after seeing his son advance and began pursuing an associate degree in behavioral sciences.  

The Vegas’s experience story highlights the power of Credit for Prior Learning (CPL), which awards college credit for college-level learning from military service, work, apprenticeships, and other experiences. Learners age 25 and older represent approximately one-third of enrolled college students, yet high costs, rigid schedules, and work and family obligations can make completion especially difficult. CPL can shorten that path by recognizing college-level learning adults have already acquired. Learners who benefit from CPL are more likely to graduate, complete credentials more quickly, and save money. Colleges benefit, too; students awarded CPL go on to complete 17.5 more units on average than students without it. 

Yet the prevailing model has a key limitation. It puts the onus on students to know CPL exists, determine whether they qualify, collect documentation, and petition a college for review. This is not easy. Processes can be complicated, burdensome, inconsistent, or limited. Advisers and faculty may not know every available option, and student-facing information may be difficult to find or understand. Meanwhile, fewer than 11% of adults receive CPL for learning gained through work or life experience. 

Veterans are the clearest example of the gap. Their military transcripts document rigorous training, but in one survey, only 27% of student veterans who received credit for military learning received credit toward courses in their major. Many also experience underemployment for years after leaving the military. 

From our respective vantage points in a national workforce organization and California’s community college system, we see the imperative for education to recognize what learners already know and help them translate that learning into credentials, mobility, and economic opportunity.  

Equally important, we need to make this often-invisible opportunity visible, and stop waiting for people to find it.

A National Effort to Make Skills Count  

A broader national effort is underway to recognize skills, no matter where or how they were acquired. Jobs for the Future (JFF) has been at the forefront of this work through several initiatives, including its Centering Adult Learners work, which provides research, technical assistance, coaching, and communities of practice to help states and colleges adopt policies that make education more responsive to adult learners. 

The need is urgent. In California alone, roughly 6.8 million working adults have substantial learning and experience but no college credential that makes those skills visible and portable. Nationally, employers increasingly want to hire based on skills, but workers still need trusted credentials to move into quality jobs and advance. Without reliable recognition, experienced workers remain invisible on paper and can become trapped in roles with few routes forward. 

States are contributing to this broader momentum in different ways, including policies and flexible, career-connected pathways that make skills and credentials more visible, portable, and measurable for job seekers and employers. In Illinois, students can earn an endorsement on their high school diploma and transcript by completing an individualized plan that includes career exploration, work-based learning, and career-focused instruction. The endorsement can also lead to college scholarship opportunities. Ohio’s Innovative Pathway Program enables schools to create pathways for new and fast-growing occupations by combining courses from multiple career fields to meet emerging workforce needs. Maryland’s Career-Connected Learning system builds flexibility directly into programs of study, allowing students to pursue an internship, apprenticeship, or capstone project while maintaining a rigorous pathway and making more room for applied learning in the final years of high school. Although these initiatives are broader than CPL, they reflect a related principle. Learning should connect across classrooms, workplaces, and credentials so individuals can communicate what they know, and employers can identify the skills they need. 

Several states have emerged as leaders in CPL policy and practice. Colorado and Kansas have adopted statewide frameworks or guidance for evaluating and awarding prior learning. Oregon and Washington coordinate CPL across institutions and sectors. Michigan reimburses colleges for each CPL credit awarded to eligible students. Texas and Ohio use outcomes-based funding that indirectly rewards colleges for helping students progress and complete credentials more quickly. 

These approaches expand access. California is taking the next step by embedding proactive outreach into the learner journey and putting JFF’s learner-centered, skills-first principles into practice at scale.

How California Flips the Script  

The California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education in the nation, serving 2.2 million students across 116 colleges. Under Vision 2030, its strategic roadmap, it aims to provide meaningful CPL to at least 250,000 Californians by 2030, with a stretch goal of 500,000. The objective is not merely to accept more petitions. It is to embed CPL into outreach, onboarding, and advising so colleges can bring the credits to learners. 

The heart of this model is Mapping Articulated Pathways (MAP). Developed through work serving veterans, MAP provides California’s community colleges with a shared platform for evaluating military training, industry certifications, apprenticeships, standardized assessments, work experience, and other prior learning. Faculty determine the articulation. Once an equivalency is approved, it appears across the system’s CPL landing pages and statewide CPL Student Portal, Credit for Being You. Other colleges can then review and adopt it, making the opportunity visible to more prospective and current students. 

From College Credit to a Verifiable Skills Record 

The work of awarding CPL cannot stop at the classroom. A growing body of research highlights the need for colleges, employers, and state policymakers to better connect credits earned in higher education with the skills and competencies needed in the workplace.  

JFF’s work-based learning initiatives demonstrate how education and employment can be designed as connected experiences. Through its dual enrollment model in Tennessee, students earn college credit for learning in both the classroom and the workplace. JFF also helps employers design and scale Registered Apprenticeship programs that combine paid work with structured education and training. CPL builds on these approaches by allowing college-level learning acquired through work to count toward a credential. California is applying that principle through a demonstration project examining how carpentry apprenticeship learning can be translated into college credit, helping learners advance without repeating what they have already mastered. 

California is also taking steps to ensure that CPL and other college credits can be translated into skills employers can see and validate. The state is rolling out the California Career Passport, a secure, learner-controlled record of academic transcripts, licenses, industry credentials, military service, apprenticeships, job training, and other verified learning. Employers can use the Career Passport to confirm a candidate’s credentials, learners can share verified records, and colleges can show how prior learning applies toward a degree or credential. Together, CPL and the California Career Passport connect two sides of a skills-first strategy.  

This infrastructure can also reach people who are not yet students. A worker could learn from an employer, union, apprenticeship, military transition program, or workforce agency that existing training already puts a credential within reach. CPL then becomes more than an academic policy. It becomes a strategy for recruitment, advancement, and economic mobility. 

A Learnable Model 

California’s approach is ambitious, but its lessons for other states, institutions, and policymakers are practical. Shared infrastructure can prevent each college from starting from scratch, while technology can support high-volume administrative work without displacing faculty authority. Institutions can publish equivalencies before a learner asks, integrate CPL into onboarding and advising, connect academic credit to portable and verifiable records, and involve employers in identifying high-value training and credentials that should count. 

The evidence base must continue to grow. We need stronger research on how CPL affects wages, promotions, job mobility, and access to family-sustaining careers. Together, CPL and the California Career Passport can lay the foundation for a skills ecosystem in which learning is recognized across colleges, employers, and workforce partners. For that ecosystem to succeed, employers must value verified skills and credentials alongside traditional degrees in hiring, advancement, and talent development. 

Access to CPL is necessary, but access alone is not enough. Institutions have a responsibility to identify learning, validate it, and make its value visible. 

The Vega family shows how powerful CPL can be when the right person discovers it. California is building a future in which the opportunities and credits will find veterans like the Vegas, and other adult learners, not the other way around. The goal is simple: Colleges should recognize college-level learning through academic credit as a matter of course, not the exception. That is how skills become visible, credentials become more attainable, and workers gain a fairer path to quality jobs.