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Credit for work, a key tenet of an #ApprenticeshipDegree, is taking hold: “Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald's, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree,” reports Alina Selyukh of NPR. Alongside our expansive partners, Reach University & National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (NCAD) are creating a world where everyone, everywhere has access to job-embedded higher education, so that skill and effort — not money or connections — are what it takes to get ahead. Not only are leading employers, such as Walmart and IBM, offering employees credit for the work they already do, but more specifically building “a pipeline of talent from the front lines to open positions within the company.” This marks a tremendous step forward in aligning employers and colleges and smoothing the pathway to a degree and career pathway. 👏 👏 Read more: https://lnkd.in/dfZ3Zfv8 #Job2Degree #Employers #Degrees #FutureOfWork

When Walmart stopped requiring college degrees for most of its corporate jobs last year, the company confronted three deep truths about work and schooling: A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree's high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook. Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree. Behind the scenes, executives often paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have. For now, companies and educators are only starting to chip away at one of the first steps: figuring out how much college credit a work skill is worth. Getting credit for Walmart training Something unusual happened to Bonnie Boop one semester. She’d returned to college in her late 40s using Walmart’s tuition-assistance program after joining the company as a part-time stocker. In her younger years, she had gotten two associate degrees, so her children used to joke that she might as well say she’d gone to school for four years. But to her, it wasn’t the same. “Bachelor’s degrees tend to open more doors,” Boop says. Plus, she says, she persisted for “the principle of it all.” At Walmart, Boop stocked health and beauty aisles in the evenings after another day job. Later, she went full time and got promoted to supervise others. This required new training at “Walmart Academy”: brief, intensive courses on leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning. https://lnkd.in/gGHXR-kj

Work is extra credit. Earning college credit for doing your job is nothing new in corporate America. Universities have long offered credit for corporate training. But not so much for retail and fast food. That may soon be changing with the Walmart and McDonald's pushing more than rollbacks and Happy Meals. Over the past few years, more and more companies have been doing away with the college degree as a requirement for specific jobs. Whether they actually follow through on that promise in their hiring practices is debatable. But this trend also coincides with growing discontent among prospective students and graduates over the value of a degree. If you've worked the retail and fast food industry, you realize it can be a very hard and grueling job. Wages aren't great, and the customer isn't always right. But many of these organizations such as Walmart and McDonald's have extensive and reputable employee and management training programs that rival those of banking institutions and tech titans. The goal and intent behind this movement to get universities to recognize and provide college credit for these programs makes a lot of economic and socioeconomic sense. While they may not have gone the traditional route to a degree, these workers have not only done training in leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning among other areas, they've actually lived and breathed all of it on daily basis. So, why not count that work learning towards a degree? As for skills learning on the job, that's still a work in progress. Much of that has to do with figuring what equates to what, but even evaluating the work experiences of so many requires time and resources. Companies, and for that matter, society often talks about the need to provide opportunities for those who want them. Opportunities, by themselves, simply aren't enough. It's also about providing circumstances for upward mobility https://lnkd.in/gzwBQMPy #college #work #experience #education #retail #fastfood #workforce #corporate #management #leadership #training #mcdonalds #walmart

Walmart & McDonald's Want Employees To Get College Credit For What They Learn On The Job It's long past time to redefine what counts as valuable experience. Between the number of people getting college degrees nowadays, the soaring tuition to get them, a punishing job market, and stubborn wage stagnation, experts have found that the value of a college degree has been declining for years. It's never been a fair system to begin with — there are certain skills that no amount of schooling can actually teach. And two iconic American brands are aiming to bridge this gap by changing the definition of what constitutes "experience." Walmart and McDonald's are offering college credits in their respective fields, similar to how corporations provide college credit for training. What Walmart and McDonald's are trying to do isn't exactly new. American universities have long granted credits toward college coursework in business classes, for example, for workers who've completed corporate training at companies like Google, IBM, or Microsoft. But when it comes to jobs at Walmart or McDonald's, the perception has long been that these jobs are menial and unskilled — these are positions for teens or the elderly, and especially the poor and uneducated.

#ICYMI: Walmart is highlighted in this recent NPR article along with other major employers for partnering with colleges to award credit for workplace training programs, paving the way for workers to earn college degrees faster and at lower costs. Walmart has over a dozen short-form certificates and 25 training courses — in tech, leadership, digital operations — that translate to credit at partner universities. The car-service chain Jiffy Lube has its own college credit program, too. These programs will benefit the employer, higher ed institutions, and employee-learners as Amber Garrison Duncan, C-BEN Executive VP & COO adds, “For adults who feel like they weren’t college material, what we are able to do is say, "You are. And you’re doing college-level work already." We’re thrilled to see companies like Walmart and McDonald’s take such significant strides in the skills-based movement. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dfZ3Zfv8

Some of the nation’s largest employers — like Walmart, McDonald’s and Jiffy Lube — are broaching a new frontier: convincing colleges to give credits to retail and fast-food workers for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree. Educators hope this brings more students into the fold, expanding access to education and allowing more people to achieve better-paying, more-secure careers with less debt and fewer years of juggling work and study. Behind the scenes, executives paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have. Learn more about how it works 👇

There is a great re-imagining of higher education happening in the US. It is heartening to see employers connecting workers to college access opportunities and supporting them in getting college credit for skills they have learned on the job. The traditional four year college route works for many people. But for others who can not access that path due to learning styles, academic readiness after high school, economic reasons or other factors, programs like these can be a lifeline to greater economic opportunities and independence. #college #collegeaccesss #opportunity #learning #adulting #lifelonglearning #jobs #skills

"Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree." https://lnkd.in/dfZ3Zfv8 #HigherEducation #WorkExperience #CollegeCredit #CorporateEducation #AdultLearning #DistanceEducation #WorkforceDevelopment #LifelongLearning #EduNews #InnovationInEducation

It's not often that I'm out here hailing Walmart and McDonalds, but I'm thrilled by their recent initiative to offer college degrees to their employees. This development is incredibly promising because it addresses a critical challenge faced by many students today—balancing the need to earn a living with pursuing higher education. Often, students struggle to juggle work and study, with their employment becoming essential for survival but also potentially hindering their academic success. By providing access to college degrees, these companies are not only investing in their employees' future but also leveling the playing field for those who may not have had the opportunity to pursue higher education otherwise. This initiative has the potential to empower countless individuals by opening doors to career advancement and personal growth. It represents a significant step toward creating more equitable access to education and opportunities in our society. I applaud Walmart and McDonald's for their commitment to supporting their employees' educational aspirations, and I look forward seeing the potential impact of this. If it is successful, I hope other corporations get on board. It would also help if these companies provided monetary study incentives.

"A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree's high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook. "Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree." Finally. The value of OTJ training getting its due. Seems such learned practical have been undervalued due to a lack of "standardized measurement", otherwise made easy by college letters obtained according to a curriculum of course grades (not necessarily applied skills). Unsure what to do in life, many high school grads are ushered into college to figure it out. Often, a fortune is spent on a degree that has no bearing on a career that fulfills them. Oh, and those student loans need to be paid back, so a paycheck becomes more urgent than meaningful work. Still, industry may help keep colleges afloat in maintaining post secondary academic relevance by translating OTJ skills into college course credits. If a person has cultivated skills and knowledge on the job, why do they need college credits to validate them? HR pros? #vocationaleducation #collegecredit #corporatetraining https://lnkd.in/e6J_EfGQ