Author: Jeanne Kitchens, CTSO Credential Engine
At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Third Senior Officials Meeting (SOM3) in Lima, Peru, I participated in the Human Resources Development Working Group (HRDWG) Workshop. Nominated by the U.S. Department of Education International Affairs Office, I attended alongside Julia Funaki, Director of AACRAO – International. AACRAO is critical in evaluating international credentials and assessing equivalency with U.S. standards. Our organizations have long partnered and collaborated to improve the transparency of credentials across borders.
At the workshop, we explored how APEC economies are evolving their credentials using qualifications frameworks (QFs) to meet the challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI). A QF is a system for categorizing credentials such as diplomas, certificates, and degrees based on progression levels and defined levels of learning outcomes. Many APEC economies use QFs to classify credentials by learning levels and core competencies, facilitating their recognition across borders. By clarifying the placement of qualifications within an educational progression, QFs help learners, employers, and institutions see where specific credentials fit within a broader system, which in turn supports transparency, comparability, and mobility.
Representatives from economies including Thailand, Chile, Australia, and Peru shared details about their countries’ qualification systems, emphasizing how QFs ensure that credentials evolve in alignment with the rapidly changing demands of today’s AI-driven world. With some APEC economies having mature qualification systems and others in earlier stages, the workshop proved beneficial as a platform for sharing insights and learning from diverse experiences.
APEC, representing 21 economies with over 60% of global GDP, provides a unique platform for members to collaborate on shared challenges. The HRDWG Workshop highlighted strategies for making QFs responsive to technological shifts while promoting inclusivity, especially for groups underrepresented in tech fields. As AI can alleviate or perpetuate biases, the discussions included policy recommendations aimed at reducing AI-driven inequalities such as gender bias.
The HRDWG Workshop Report and Compendium offers valuable insights and suggests that while QFs are powerful tools within education systems, they work best when embedded in a broader system that includes supportive policies, quality assurance, and active engagement with all stakeholders. Many factors impact the effectiveness of QFs, from the flexibility of education systems to the quality and relevance of training offered. Despite these complexities, QFs provide essential information that helps bridge education and workforce needs, fostering transparency, comparability, and alignment with labor demands.
While the United States does not yet have a government-endorsed qualifications framework (QF), the United States Qualifications Framework (USQF), a non-profit initiative, is actively developing a national QF. Established by the USQF Advisory Council in 2023–2024, this effort aims to enhance recognition, mobility, and interoperability of U.S. credentials. The USQF is designed to help learners, educators, employers, and policymakers understand the value of new and existing qualifications and how credentials fit within a broader system.
Credential Engine’s role in this global landscape is to ensure that credentials, learning programs, courses, assessments, occupations, and QFs are accessible and interconnected, empowering all learners and workers to make the best decisions for their future. Utilizing the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), systems can link credentials directly to QF levels, facilitating global comparability. Back in August 2024, Credential Engine convened the Qualifications Frameworks as Data Global Task Group. The outcome will be the CTDL and Credential Registry supporting use cases for QFs as discoverable, interoperable, human- and machine-readable data. This will enable us to represent the granularity of progression levels and competencies in a QF, support aligning credentials to those levels, and allow for referencing between QFs. We expect the efforts of the Task Group to conclude by the end of 2024, with updates to CTDL and the Credential Registry publishing system launching early in 2025.
Credential Engine operates with open processes and welcomes organizations to engage with us by attending related public webinars and contributing to global transparency. We invite you to participate in publishing QFs, credentials, and other types of data as CTDL, helping to shape an interconnected and transparent qualifications landscape.
Join the upcoming QF as Data CTDL Proposal Webinar by registering here.
Contact us at info@credentialengine.org to get involved!
References: