By: Bryan Ashton

The topline:

Student affairs departments have an opportunity to build student skills and offer credentials to demonstrate the value of college.
Skill validation can be aligned to career competencies, durable skills, or industry-recognized certificates.
Student affairs’ widespread roles on campus offer several avenues to build student skills, including in student employment, student involvement and leadership and first-year experience courses.

Technology is changing work faster than ever, and higher education is under growing pressure to prove it’s worth the cost. To respond, institutions need clearer ways to show what students learn and how that learning translates to the workforce.

One strategy to underline postsecondary learning’s return on investment is creating new opportunities for skill validation within the existing experience. This includes benchmarking the learning strides that students take while enrolled, not just upon completion.

Many institutions that offer shorter-duration experiences have academic programs that fit this model, often called stackable credentials. The stackable credentials can often be applied immediately for employment opportunities while in school, helping address challenges with working while enrolled, reducing the risk of pausing their education, and providing opportunities for relevant, real-world work experience. Student affairs can bring this same model to the co-curricular side of the student experience.

As institutions look for new opportunities to measure learning, student affairs can play a significant role in this work. Student affairs leaders often own departments that lead student development, career development and co-curricular opportunities, as well as engage with employers, employ student workers and train student leaders. This combination of responsibilities makes them the prime candidates to champion skill development in co-curricular experiences. While there have traditionally been reservations about certifying learning within these departments, the idea of skill validation now transcends the traditional academic core and is increasingly an institution-wide function.

In fact, much of this work is already being done, such as teaching students how to connect their learning to career competencies like leadership, teamwork, communication or professionalism. Institutions can take this one step further and embed skill validation and industry certificates into the following areas of the student experience:

Student Employment is an increasingly important part of the student experience for students coping with the rising cost of college. On-campus jobs are rich in transferable skills that can set students up for future opportunities. As colleges develop new student employment opportunities, training modules should include built-in credentials for all student workers, as well as credentials that are specific to unique positions. Some examples of this are certifications for mediation for resident adviser roles, or broader customer service certifications for any student worker.
Student Involvement and Leadership provide many opportunities for training and recognition of the rich skill development that students experience. This could include a leadership training curriculum for students who hold organizational titles such as presidents, treasurers, and other officers.
First-Year Experience Courses cover a wide range of campus specific and general higher education topics that are usually taught by student affairs professionals. These courses can be expanded to include certifications in media or AI literacy, data analytics, research principles, leadership and other programs that are core for success in higher education today.

Integrating skill validation and certifications doesn’t uproot student affairs work, but rather grounds it in the principles that have motivated so many student affairs leaders. Anecdotally, staff share that students who participate in student organizations, sorority and fraternity life or student government are highly skilled and talented individuals; validating these skills can make that a fact employers can see. These experiences can be linked to skills, and durable skills, that can then be validated and recognized. While risk for low value recognition exists, enumerating the skills has many positive externalities for students as they navigate an increasingly challenging labor market.

Student affairs leaders are well positioned to lead this evolution of higher education to meet individual and employer needs. Embedded skill validation and credentialing serves students by providing them with opportunities for economic mobility and career advancement throughout their time on campus, not just at completion. It also creates an opportunity to highlight and underscore the immense learning that happens outside the classroom. A practical first step: choose one high-reach touchpoint, such as student employee onboarding, and pilot a single credential this academic year.

Bryan Ashton serves as the Chief Strategy and Growth Officer for Trellis and Head of Trellis Strategies. Bryan leads efforts at Trellis to continue to evolve the organization to meet the needs of modern learners across the country, including leading Trellis Strategies, a nonprofit research and technical assistance organization that supported over 350 institutions of higher education in 2025. Ashton also leads the government affairs and public policy functions for Trellis, an entity with over 40 years of government contracting experience.