Digital Credentials and Maryland's Workforce Future

This is the sixth post in our series on the new LER briefs. Catch the intro post here if you missed it.

Over the last several posts, we've looked at microcredentials from the vantage point of students, faculty, advisors, and employers. This one zooms out to the state and federal level — because the individual pieces we've covered are actually part of something bigger.

The problem, briefly

The traditional resume — degrees, titles, past employers — is losing ground as the main way to signal what someone can actually do. Employers report difficulty finding qualified candidates even as resumes pile up, and workers who built real skills outside traditional degree paths often go unrecognized.

The Learning and Employment Record (LER) is the response to that gap: a verified digital record of a person's skills, credentials, and experiences that travels with them across institutions and employers, whether those skills came from a classroom, a co-op, the military, or the job itself.

This isn't a niche idea anymore. In December, the U.S. House held a bipartisan hearing on how LERs empower workers and expand opportunity. In April, Congress introduced the MATCH Act, aimed at building state-led talent marketplaces around verified credentials. Globally, a large majority of employers now use skills-based hiring, and states like Alabama and Indiana have already stood up their own credential marketplaces.

Maryland doesn't have that infrastructure yet. UMBC is helping build it.

What UMBC has already built

Since 2015, UMBC has issued verified digital microcredentials across curricular, co-curricular, and work-integrated learning, now over 200 active credentials, with 84 new ones added just in the past year. That work is backed by real governance: the Microcredential Advisory Committee sets strategy, and the Microcredential Review Board evaluates every proposal against a published rubric. That governance model has been cited by institutions including Kennesaw State, the University of Colorado Boulder, UMGC, and the University of Florida.

This past year, UMBC was also selected as one of only 25 institutions nationwide for the inaugural LER Accelerator cohort, and Maryland had more institutions represented in that cohort than any other state.

The Maryland opportunity

Maryland's Higher Education Commission has already urged institutions to address degree inflation and build alternative credential pathways. The University System of Maryland's Vision 2030 identifies credential issuance as a priority, and its Alternative Credentials Task Force has been developing guidance shaped largely by UMBC's model.

What's still missing: a shared credential registry, a statewide coordinating body, and a common framework connecting higher ed, workforce agencies, and industry. Conversations between AACRAO and state agencies such as MHEC and the Maryland Department of Labor have begun but haven't yet become a coordinated effort. That window is open right now, and Maryland's four LER Accelerator institutions (UMBC, UMGC, Johns Hopkins, and Morgan State) provide the state with a ready-made network to build on.

The bottom line

UMBC isn't starting from scratch here; a decade of credentials, governance, scholarship, and statewide networks (including the Maryland Digital Credentialing Community of Practice) are already in place. With federal legislation moving and Maryland agencies naming the gap, what's needed now isn't more program-building at UMBC. It's state-level coordination that brings institutions, employers, and agencies together to turn strong individual programs into a functioning talent marketplace.

That's a bigger conversation than any one office can carry alone. If your work touches on state policy, employer partnerships, or workforce development, this is a good time to pay attention.

Want the full brief? Read it here.

Questions? Submit a support ticket or reach out to the DCI team directly.