Overview

LERs are a complicated but potentially transformative innovation in the ecosystem of learning credentials and career pathways. As the labor market continues to face shortages and displacements in the face of automation and AI, the market for LERs might increase as worker retraining/upskilling become more common as job seekers flock to skills and certificate programs. In a competitive, digitized hiring market, employers may desire a technology that verifies credentials, enables comparisons across multiple candidates, and delivers clear evidence of a candidate's skills. LERs deliver these relative advantages over a traditional degree and transcript, but the complexity of the technology combined with the difficulty in coordinating across numerous stakeholders can delay the adoption process. Although startups populate the LER space currently, the most dominant institutions of learning—colleges and universities—may end up absorbing the disruptive innovation represented by LERs.