APA at the 2025 NCAN National Conference

A first look at our Outcomes Transparency for Nondegree Pathways Initiative and Measurement Framework

By Sarah Place, Vice President of Postsecondary Pathways, and Andrea Glauber, Director of Collective Action

This month at the 2025 NCAN National Conference in New Orleans, we debuted our Outcomes Transparency for Nondegree Pathways initiative—a new Collective Action initiative designed to empower students to make more informed decisions, help nonprofits and schools confidently integrate pathways into their advising models, and position high-quality programs as credible, viable postsecondary options.

Central to this initiative is a new measurement framework for students and advisors that was co-designed by 15 leading postsecondary organizations from our Alliance Community.

A Growing Need

As interest in nondegree pathway programs grows, students, advisors, and employers alike still lack a consistent, accessible source of outcomes data to assess program quality and determine which programs lead to meaningful employment. The current lack of visibility hinders student decision-making, limits the ability of nonprofits and schools to advise confidently, and prevents employers from fully valuing these credentials.

The Perfect Opportunity for Collective Action

Postsecondary organizations have an opportunity to build the data infrastructure needed to meet the demand across the field—from advisors, employers, and providers—for greater transparency into program quality, completion rates, and long-term outcomes. But no single organization can create a dataset large or diverse enough to bring true transparency to the nondegree space.

After conducting two national landscape analyses to understand what measurement efforts were already in place in the field and to learn from the experience of others, we convened 15 of our member orgs to co-design a new measurement framework that (1) can be applied to a wide range of pathway programs and (2) utilizes a set of data that we can reliably acquire in diverse communities across the country. 

Adaptable, Scalable, and Practical

By working across our Alliance Community of 150+ leading nonprofits, many of which are nationally recognized leaders in postsecondary success, we have an opportunity to generate outcomes data at the scale needed to build trust and support informed decision-making across programs and geographies. Together with our members, we can test this model in different local contexts, ensuring it’s adaptable, scalable, and practical for real-world use.

We’re grateful to the Alliance leaders who joined us in presenting about this work at NCAN, and looking forward to sharing more about this powerful #CollectiveAction initiative in the coming weeks.