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Supporters of teaching high school students 鈥渟oft鈥� skills such as communication, critical thinking and teamwork usually tout how they can help succeed in a job or even help students get into college.

Starting this fall, there鈥檚 a new, more tangible benefit 鈥� college credits. 

All seven schools in the University of Maine system, plus two community colleges in Kansas, will give new students credits toward a diploma for soft skills credentials earned in high school through the nonprofit Jobs for Maine Graduates and its national spinoff GenUS, just as most colleges do for strong scores on Advanced Placement exams.

Jobs for Maine Graduates leaders, as well as other experts, believe it is the first time colleges have given credit for soft or durable skills developed in high school, not as part of their own courses.

鈥淲e had to really prove the rigor that鈥� durable skills meet the rigor of college level courses,鈥� said Kimberley Acker Lipp, CEO of the nonprofit. 鈥淣ow that we’ve established that here in Maine… I think it opens up the doors to bring to other states.鈥�

Colleges offering credits for soft skills is a major step in their rise toward being treated as equal to academic skills. Some experts say increased use of Artificial Intelligence will make soft skills  even more important to harnessing and directing use of that technology than specific skills AI can handle.

It鈥檚 also a step in their ongoing evolution from undefined concepts into skills that can be broken down into sub-skills that students can demonstrate and that teachers can teach, measure, grade and verify to employers and colleges. The XQ Institute, a nonprofit seeking to modernize high schools, earlier this year listed developing measurements of soft skills as one of its 10 keys to adapting high school education for the future. 

The Jobs for Maine Graduates and GenUS 鈥渃ompetency to credentials鈥� program awards 30 micro-credentials to students who can prove they have skills such as work ethic, self-advocacy, persistence and initiative, through classes offered at their high schools.

Those can then be bundled together into eight credentials 鈥� Leadership Development, Personal Growth, Job and Career Readiness, and Financial Literacy among them 鈥� they hope colleges nationally will count for credit, as the Maine university system will.

All University of Maine schools will give students up to eight credits of the 120 needed for a bachelor鈥檚 degree for the credential bundles, though the number of credits and which will count toward majors or just as electives will be determined by each school.

University of Maine Chancellor Dannel Malloy said universities have given students credit for prior learning for years, often for training through the military or through jobs. Malloy, the former two-term governor of Connecticut, said the universities consider the credentials rigorous enough to prove 鈥渃ollege-level learning and skill development in critical areas necessary to their future success.鈥�

Just as importantly, Malloy said, awarding credit to students in the Jobs for Maine Graduates program, many of whom are low-income and who would be the first in their family to attend college, will make them less intimidated by college and more likely to attend.

鈥淭his is a way to introduce students to college and to have them come with credits, just like other students are coming with credits,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t is an important leap for us.鈥�

Olivia Sirois, who just graduated from high school in Fort Kent, Maine, this spring, took several early college classes but never expected credits for the Jobs for Maine Graduates classes she took at the end of senior year.

鈥淎t first, I thought it was just going to be like an easy class I didn’t really have to worry about, but the more I got into it, the more I was like, 鈥極h, this is kind of important.鈥� she said. 鈥淭his is really useful, actually. I’m going to build more life skills that I didn’t know I was going to need.鈥�

She only recently learned she鈥檇 receive one credit each for her Leadership and Development, Job and Career Ready, and Pathway Navigation credentials toward her occupational therapy program at the University of Southern Maine.

鈥淚f I knew that I was going to get college credits from it, I definitely would have done it at the beginning of the year,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 feel like I would have gotten a lot more.鈥�

In Kansas, where a growing number of middle schools and high schools have adopted the Jobs for Maine Graduates/GenUS program, Cloud County Community College and Pratt Community College have also agreed to award credits for students who earn some of the credentials.

The two small, rural schools will give credit for the GenUS Job and Career Ready and Financial Literacy credentials as replacements for their personal finance and interpersonal communication courses.

Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Community College Association, said she is promoting the credentials because they give students the same skills the college classes do. 

鈥淵our learning outcomes and the learning outcomes of that class are matching each other, so why would we not allow that student to receive that college credit?鈥� Morgan asked.

鈥淵es, it’s soft skills, but it’s also more than that,鈥� she added. 鈥淭here are some hard skills about communication, about writing, and those sorts of things, so we treated the鈥�program just as we would a military credential, for example.鈥�

A third GenUS credential offered in Kansas schools does not match up with any community college courses, Morgan said, so schools will not give credit for it. As GenUS and Jobs for America鈥檚 Graduates 鈥� Kansas roll out all eight credentials in Kansas and expand to more schools from the 72 high schools and 17 middle schools offering them today, colleges will have to evaluate each separately.

GenUS is also pitching the program to other states and will host representatives from a dozen states in Kansas in September to learn about its program, with Wisconsin and Kentucky among those with high interest.

Several other organizations are trying to promote ways to teach and measure soft skills to employers or colleges. The America Succeeds nonprofit has broken down 10 skills into subskills it believes businesses most want from applicants while the Skills For the Future partnership between the Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation is trying to create tests for soft skills that schools anywhere can use.

And an AI technology company is developing its own ways to measure student work 鈥� from written papers to artwork to spoken presentations 鈥� and rate both the academic and soft skills students demonstrate after taking over the Mastery Transcript Consortium this year. That partnership of private and public schools has its own report cards that skip A-F grades and rate student progress toward mastery toward dozens of academic and soft skills instead.

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