By Michelle Mott, AACRAO Consultant, Innovative Credentials Project Manager
In early December, Learning and Employment Records took the floor at a bipartisan congressional hearing examining how the U.S. education and workforce systems can better recognize skills, reduce hiring friction, and expand economic opportunity. Representing AACRAO on the panel, Alex Kaplan, independent expert and advisor on AI and LERs, emphasized the critical role higher education will play in shaping this next phase of credentialing.
The U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development hearing reflected a growing consensus: while the nation has no shortage of learning, it continues to struggle with learning mobility: how learning is documented, verified, and understood across education and employment systems. LERs are increasingly viewed as a key bridge.
Learning Mobility and A Shared Challenge of Invisible Skills in a Fragmented System
Members of Congress and witnesses emphasized that millions of Americans acquire valuable skills through college coursework, short-term credentials, military service, apprenticeships, and work-based learning. Yet, those skills are often invisible or difficult for employers to verify. Traditional resumes and transcripts are becoming increasingly insufficient for a labor market shaped by rapid technological change and AI.
The hearing framed LERs as a response to this fragmentation: secure, digital records that bring together verified learning and employment data over a lifetime, allowing individuals to share proof of what they know and can do on their own terms.
Key Testimony from Alex Kaplan on the Promise of LERs
Kaplan underscored that LERs are no longer a theoretical concept. After years of pilots and standards development, multiple states, including Alabama, California, Arkansas, and Kentucky, are actively building LER ecosystems as part of their workforce infrastructure. The question before higher education is no longer whether LERs will shape the future of credentialing, but how they will be designed, governed, and trusted.
His testimony highlighted four critical points:
- Verification and trust are foundational. As AI accelerates both hiring processes and misinformation, LERs offer verified, tamper-resistant records that restore confidence in academic and skills claims, reinforcing colleges and universities as trusted credential issuers.
- Learner control must be central. LERs should be owned and controlled by learners, with individuals deciding what information is shared, when, and with whom. This principle aligns closely with the registrar profession’s long-standing commitments to privacy, informed consent, and responsible data stewardship.
- Interoperability matters more than scale alone. Without shared data standards, LERs risk becoming isolated, proprietary systems. Open, interoperable infrastructure ensures that records issued by one institution or state can be understood and trusted across education and employment systems nationwide.
- Federal leadership can accelerate adoption. The federal government can lead by example in federal hiring, invest in decentralized, interoperable infrastructure, and remove barriers preventing institutions from issuing and sharing verifiable digital records.
Why LERs Matter for AACRAO Members
For registrars and admissions professionals, these themes carry clear implications. LERs represent not just a technological change but an expansion of responsibility and influence in shaping the future of trusted academic credentials.
Registrars have long served as stewards of academic records, ensuring accuracy, integrity, privacy, and portability. LERs extend this responsibility into a digital, skills-aware environment. As institutions move from static PDFs toward machine-readable records, registrars will play a central role in setting data standards, validating learning outcomes, and ensuring that digital credentials retain institutional trust.
Admissions professionals face increasing pressure to evaluate learning that occurs outside traditional degree pathways. LERs provide clearer, more consistent signals about prior learning, competencies, and credentials, supporting fairer admissions decisions, smoother transfer and articulation, and more transparent recognition of learning wherever it occurs.
This shift moves from transcripts that primarily document time and place to records that communicate verified learning outcomes in ways that are meaningful across both education and employment.
AACRAO in Action: Turning LER Vision into Reality
The congressional hearing represented a milestone in the LER movement, bringing together policymakers, educational leaders, workforce experts, and technology providers to chart a course toward a more transparent, efficient, and equitable credential ecosystem. Much of the conversation mirrored work already underway across higher education, including AACRAO-led learning mobility lab initiatives focused on making LERs usable, trustworthy, and scalable in real institutional contexts.
Project Infuse is a collaborative national initiative designed to democratize access to digital credentials by addressing one of the biggest barriers institutions face: the lack of shared, affordable infrastructure for issuing and exchanging verifiable digital records. Kaplan specifically noted in his testimony that the AACRAO work with Infuse aims to allow any institution, regardless of technical capacity, to convert existing academic records, like PDF transcripts, into structured digital objects.
Complementing this effort, the LER Accelerator, led by AACRAO and a coalition of 12 national organizations, supports institutions navigating LER adoption through awareness-building, usage guidelines, collaboration, and demonstration of successful models. The initiative includes over 20 institutions designing innovative LER solutions centered on universal access, learner agency, and skills-based recognition.
Together, these initiatives provide the infrastructure, guidance, and support institutions need to ensure digital credentials are accessible, verifiable, and interoperable.
Looking Ahead
The hearing made clear that LERs are not a replacement for degrees, transcripts, or holistic review, but an evolution responding to changing learner pathways, employer needs, and technological realities.
As Kaplan noted, the technical foundations are largely in place. What remains is coordinated leadership, thoughtful policy, and continued engagement from institutions that understand records best. AACRAO and its members have an opportunity to help ensure that LERs are built in ways that uphold academic values, protect learners, and make learning truly portable.
The conversation is moving quickly. Registrars and admissions professionals will not just be affected by LERs; they will help define what trusted academic records look like in the decades ahead.