INDUSTRY CERTIFICATIONS - Opportunity America

INDUSTRY

CERTIFICATIONS

A BETTER BRIDGE FROM

SCHOOL TO WORK?

TAMAR JACOBY

SEPTEMBER 2019

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INDUSTRY CERTIFICATIONS

A BETTER BRIDGE FROM SCHOOL TO WORK?

TAMAR JACOBY

SEPTEMBER 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tamar Jacoby is president of Opportunity America, a Washington-based nonprofit working to promote

economic mobility¡ªwork, skills, careers, ownership and entrepreneurship for poor and working

Americans. A former journalist and author, she was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and,

before that, the deputy editor of The New York Times op-ed page. Her articles have appeared in The New

York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and Foreign Affairs, among

other publications. She is the author of Someone Else¡¯s House: America¡¯s Unfinished Struggle for Integration

(Free Press, 1998). Her edited volumes include Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What

It Means To Be American (Basic Books, 2004) and This Way Up: New Thinking About Poverty and Economic

Mobility (American Enterprise Institute, 2017).

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

Opportunity America is a Washington-based nonprofit promoting economic mobility¡ªwork, skills,

careers, ownership and entrepreneurship for poor and working Americans. The organization¡¯s principal

activities are research, policy development, dissemination of policy ideas and working to build consensus

around policy proposals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks the two dozen employers who gave their time to explain how their firms do and do not

use industry certifications in hiring, training and promoting workers. Executives at the National Institute

for Automotive Service Excellence, the National Center for Construction Education and Research and the

National Institute for Metalworking Skills were accommodating and helpful, describing how their organizations develop and update certification tests. Researchers at Burning Glass Technologies furnished data

and advice. Rooney Columbus provided invaluable research support. Special gratitude goes to the Smith

Richardson Foundation for its generous support of the project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive summary........................................................................................ 1

Introduction.................................................................................................... 5

I. CONTEXT.................................................................................................... 7

New tools for a new economy.................................................................. 7

Certification development and uptake..................................................... 8

NONDEGREE CREDENTIALS.............................................................. 9

A role for policy?..................................................................................... 11

II. THREE CREDENTIALING BODIES........................................................... 13

Roots....................................................................................................... 13

Culture and functions.............................................................................. 14

THREE CAREER LADDERS................................................................. 16

Keeping current....................................................................................... 18

III. THE EMPLOYER PERSPECTIVE............................................................... 21

Users and nonusers................................................................................. 21

EIGHTEEN COMPANIES.................................................................... 22

A hiring plus factor.................................................................................. 26

Training, promotion and pay................................................................... 27

Perceived value....................................................................................... 29

IV. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY...................................................... 31

Conclusion............................................................................................... 34

Appendix: Interviews................................................................................... 35

Endnotes...................................................................................................... 38

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