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Ensuring Credentials Lead to Real Opportunity

Students aren’t collecting credentials for their own sake – they’re spending time and money on the belief that a credential leads somewhere: a job, a raise, a path upward.
  • December 15, 2026
  • 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CDT
Too often, colleges only find out whether that belief was justified after the fact – once a student has already finished a program that didn’t lead to steady work, or led to one indistinguishable from what they had before. Federal attention on program-level outcomes and short-term Pell expansion means that gap is about to get a lot harder to leave unexamined.
Colleges are preparing for a future where they'll be expected to show their work, not just claim the result.
This session focuses on how leaders use completion, employment, and wage data together – not as separate reports, but as one picture – to decide which programs to invest in, which to redesign, and which short-term credentials genuinely open the door to something bigger rather than becoming a dead end.

Panelists

Kim McKay

VP for Student Services & Enrollment Management
Odessa College

Kymber Taylor

Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research
Northern Essex Community College

Allison Dolan-Wilson

VP of Institutional Advancement and Workforce & Academic Innovation
Northern Essex Community College

What You'll Learn

See how colleges define "credentials of value" locally, using a clear, repeatable set of signals that leaders, faculty, and employers can all stand behind.

Learn how colleges build a simple, ongoing rhythm with employers so program-to-job alignment doesn't go stale as the regional economy shifts.

Explore how program leaders design stackable pathways so a short-term credential creates real momentum toward a higher-wage role, not a dead end.

Understand what rising expectations around program-level outcomes and short-term Pell will require colleges to track and communicate.

Hear how colleges confirm that a redesigned or newly stacked credential actually improved completion or wages, not just enrollment in the new pathway.