Noncredit Task Force

Noncredit education now represents about 40% of community college enrollments nationwide, yet its outcomes remain largely invisible.

These courses play a critical role in helping learners and working adults quickly gain in-demand skills and industry-recognized credentials, while supporting employers’ immediate workforce needs. At the same time, limited data on student demographics, employment outcomes, earnings, and subsequent degree attainment makes it difficult to assess the full value and quality of noncredit offerings.

Washington’s community and technical college system is well positioned to strengthen data, clarify pathways to credit, and more intentionally align noncredit education with its mission, vision, and strategic priorities—ensuring these offerings deliver meaningful, measurable benefits for learners and employers alike.

The system’s Noncredit Task Force will identify systemwide ways to better align noncredit learning and credentials with system goals and structures. This work will support a range of learners and purposes, including skill building, non-degree credentials, and connections to credit-bearing pathways. Membership is limited to representatives from councils and commissions operating under the leadership of the Washington Association of Community and Technical Colleges (WACTC) and the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

Focus

The task force is focused on the following two concurrent tracks:

How might the system recognize noncredit education and credentials as integral contributors to workforce education throughout the system?

The work of recognizing noncredit offerings may include elements such as data about courses, enrollment, and students; accurate inventories of current noncredit offerings; and including noncredit offerings in how the system presents its workforce and economic development contributions to Washington.

What systemwide strategies and shared practices can be used to bridge noncredit to credit on pathways of higher attainment?

The work of bridging to degree attainment may include elements such as shared equitable practices in prior learning assessment (PLA); developing and demonstrating promising models for competency-based education; and creating predictable, visible credit equivalencies for industry recognized credentials.

Invitation to Submit Promising Practices

Colleges are encouraged to submit promising practices in bridging noncredit education and training to degree pathways to the system’s Noncredit Task Force through the Promising Practices Submission Form. We are especially interested in how colleges are helping continuing education learners link to degree pathways but will accept any type of initiative.

What do we mean by “bridging noncredit to degree pathways”?

Bridges to credit pathways are specific, applied strategies and practices that allow students to convert learning from noncredit into credit-bearing programs. Key types of bridges include:

Academic credit for prior learning.
Articulation agreements.
Course equivalencies.
Noncredit competency-based training.
Noncredit Certificates (C00) as defined in SBCTC’s PAR guidelines.
Transcription of noncredit courses.

This form collects information about efforts that bridge noncredit education and training into credit-bearing pathways. These may occur within a single institution or across multiple institutions. The goal is to identify models that make these transitions smoother and more consistent for learners. Submissions will be shared with the community and technical college system’s Noncredit Task Force as they scan for frameworks and models that can be learned from and, potentially, replicated.

Please use one copy of the form per initiative. It should take about 5 minutes to complete the basic information on the form.