Sixty percent of employers said they would choose a less experienced candidate with a generative AI credential over a more experienced candidate without one.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Liudmila Chernetska and RODWORKS/iStock/Getty Images
Both students and employers say microcredentials are valuable assets in today’s tough job market, new data shows.
That’s the upshot of Coursera’s 2026 Micro-Credentials Impact report, published Thursday. Among other things, the report shows that 87 percent of graduates who hold microcredentials report securing a job aligned to their field within one year, and 83 percent of employed graduates say that having microcredentials played a significant factor in getting a job. Meanwhile, 94 percent of employers say they’re inclined to offer higher starting salaries to candidates with microcredentials. A similar share of employers (92 percent) also report that entry-level workers with microcredentials perform better in their first year.
Those and the report’s other findings are based on a survey of 3,500 students, employers and higher education leaders from seven countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines—that Coursera, a course-sharing platform that offers a variety of microcredentials, conducted in February and March of this year.
