Texas State partnered with Coursera, a global online learning platform, to give students access to career-building opportunities to take alongside their semester classes.
Coursera’s Career Academy currently offers 81 professional certificates free of cost to faculty and students with a txstate.edu email address. Micro-credentials are focused certificates showing that someone has mastered a specific skill that aligns with the needs of employers.
Texas State provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, Pranesh Aswath, said Coursera created a market for credentials of value, ranging from subjects like real estate to project management.
“This is not just for computer science students, but it’s for students with a variety of disciplines to get credentials of value,” Aswath said.
Alumni can participate in Coursera’s programs through the Texas State Alumni Association.
Amanda Ritter, assistant director for internship connections at Texas State Career Services, said with Coursera, employers like Google and Microsoft are the ones creating the micro-credentials they believe students need.
“[Employers] already see the need to give students something else in terms of training,” Ritter said. “I think other employers may need to be told how [micro-credentials] are important, but that’s an opportunity for the student to sell themselves.”
Scot Chadwick, Coursera for Campus senior director, said in the Inside TXST press release that 87% of employers have hired at least one micro-credential holder in the past year.
According to Aswath, faculty can use Coursera for personal certificates, and can also embed some Coursera content into their courses.
Ritter said micro-credentials could be most useful in helping students’ careers if the pairings are not the most obvious with the major, as well as exploring other interests.
“If a student is in a certain major but is interested in another topic that they’re not going to gain knowledge in through their classes, getting the micro-credential at the end will help [students] stand out for that career path,” Ritter said.
Aswath said students usually get two to three professional certificates during their college career, as they are self-paced courses.
“Micro-credentials actually add to the existing degree; they do not replace your degree, these are all add-ons of value,” Aswath said.
Ritter stated that students have limited time on their hands before graduation, so they should be intentional about what they want to gain from micro-credentials.
Aswath said the top five professional courses in demand currently are: foundations of project management, foundations of data everywhere, design fundamentals with artificial intelligence, personal fitness trainer, and data-driven decisions.
According to the press release, Texas State has a second phase planned for the future, which will include more opportunities for students to earn career-building credentials.
Aswath said students have unlimited access to the Coursera micro-credentials; however, alumni will have a limited number of how many they can take.
“[Alumni association] will probably give [the micro-credentials] out to the first number of people who ask for it, and then after they’re gone, they’re just gone,” Aswath said.
Aswath said the Provost’s office plans on rolling out a campaign about Coursera to inform students and faculty.
“The two major partners that we have are LinkedIn learning and Coursera,” Aswath said. “We are now encouraging our own faculty to develop micro-credentials so we can offer that directly to the students.”
Coursera plans on adding more professional certificates in the future.
