Skills, not wages, measure what truly matters in the workforce

Skip to content

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

The federal government has just radically changed the way it measures higher education outcomes. Now for the first time, all programs that participate in the federal student loan program will be held accountable for the earnings of their graduates.

Framed as a “do no harm” provision, the new Student Tuition and Transparency System and Earnings Accountability rule amounts to a relatively low bar. Although earnings are a convenient metric to assess initial program outcomes, this new one-dimensional standard fails to measure what truly matters over the long term.

We have known for years that simply preparing someone for a first job is not enough. Artificial intelligence, automation and other global forces are rapidly changing jobs, the economy and the skills that workers need more rapidly than ever.

Today, employers are losing faith in degrees as a signal of workforce readiness. According to one recent survey, 7 in 10 employers now use skills-based hiring approaches. As job functions shift, employers are finding it more efficient to fill job vacancies by reskilling and upskilling incumbent workers.

Because the tools and systems needed to assess skills and aptitudes are finally coming into their own, employers can more easily find the right talent, and learners can demonstrate what they know and can do without fixed time constraints.

Learners are also using credit for prior learning and innovative online approaches that validate their skills and knowledge as they work toward a degree. But still too often, the public narrative focuses on the idea that a degree should be based on straightforward metrics such as class time or immediate earnings.

The current focus on skills presents our nation an opportunity to rethink how we measure quality. Rather than calculate the value of postsecondary education by simply glancing at what recent graduates are earning, we should measure the mastery of skills.

Until recently, the quality of college graduates was measured by inputs such as institutional prestige, or through proxies of seat time and credit hours. Completion assumes that students have gained certain knowledge and skills, but it never clearly spells out what graduates really know or can do. Without an accurate measure, policymakers embraced wage thresholds as a blunt-force way to assess college graduates.

But these yardsticks measure only what people are paid, not the skills they possess. While engineering students regularly graduate into jobs that pay close to six figures, bright and talented graduates in other majors such as education and liberal arts might pursue careers that add value to a community but pay relatively little.

Now there is no excuse. We have the capacity and capabilities to measure and evaluate outcomes based on skills, competencies and how they show up in real work. Because the workforce is changing so rapidly, employers must know exactly what their workers are capable of. While automation has disrupted entry-level coding roles, for example, these workers still have valuable technical and durable skills that can be redeployed within an organization.

Focusing on what people know and can do will help ensure learners and our economy succeed. When we prioritize skills, we can better identify how capabilities transfer across industries, which can open up new opportunities for workers and help employers fill critical roles.

In Alabama, for instance, healthcare employers looking to fill hard-to-find surgical and sterile processing technicians recruited metal pickling equipment operators who had to follow strict safety and sterilization procedures. By recognizing these shared competencies, employers expanded their talent pool and connected workers to new career pathways they might have overlooked.

We already know what works. Institutions are building innovative, high-quality and rigorous competency-based education programs that state clearly what learners must master before they earn a credential. Because they’re rooted in competencies, these programs lead to credentials that deliver value because skills and learning outcomes are transparent, credible, and comparable.

When credentials are clearly conveyed, employers can verify the skills that workers have, and states can hold institutions accountable for meeting the demand for these skills. The logical evolution of this approach is a future-ready quality assurance model that ensures that credentials and the skills embedded within them are valid, legible, trustworthy and tailored to the demands of the modern economy.

This model gives both learners and employers clarity and confidence around competencies without having to interpret them from college transcripts or job descriptions. It enables states to document whether programs are producing graduates with the skills and competencies that regional economies need.

Better than the first-job earnings metrics in place today, a quality assurance model can confirm whether credentials are truly delivering verified skills that matter and are producing measurable mobility for learners, employers, and communities.

We should applaud the new federal “do no harm” standards and other accountability measures that raise the bar. But our nation’s colleges and universities must aim higher by seeking to do good throughout the lives of their learners.

When institutions ensure that their graduates have the right set of competencies, they can propel them beyond their first job and into successful and upwardly mobile careers over their lifetimes.

Charla Long is president of the Competency-Based Education Network.

Tags

Alabama

College degrees

college graduates

earnings accountability rule

federal government

Federal student loan system

student tuition and transparency system

U.S. workforce

Wages

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.