For years, higher education has been asked to become more “workforce aligned.” The phrase appears in strategic plans, grant proposals, legislative hearings, and employer conversations with the regularity of a campus squirrel near a trash can. It is not wrong. Students deserve programs that help them move toward meaningful work, economic stability, and civic contribution. But “alignment” can become vague very quickly.
A recent essay in Governing makes a useful distinction. Apprenticeships are powerful not simply because they are job-related, but because they braid together paid work, structured learning, mentoring, and demonstrated competence. They help solve the familiar experience trap: students need experience to get work, but often need work to get experience. Unlike many short internships, high-quality apprenticeships create a longer, more intentional relationship among learners, employers, educators, and the skills a field requires.
Apprenticeships are not the only model worth noticing. Higher education already knows how to help students move from coursework into professional practice. We see it in teacher preparation, social work, counseling psychology, pharmacy, nursing, medicine, and other clinical or practice-based fields. These programs understand that students do not become professionals simply by knowing things. They become professionals by practicing under the guidance of people who can see their work clearly and help them improve. Over time, they learn to reflect on their decisions, act with ethical judgment, and take on greater responsibility. They also begin to develop a professional identity: a sense not only of what they know, but of who they are becoming.
Professional preparation is a developmental process that requires practice, guidance, feedback, judgment, and identity formation. That insight matters enormously as universities respond to artificial intelligence and a changing labor market.
Too often, workforce preparation is treated as something added to the end of a degree: a résumé workshop, an internship search, a career fair, a credential, a badge, a short course. These can be valuable, but only if they are connected to something larger. A credential by itself is not a bridge. Sometimes it is just a sign pointing toward a bridge we have not yet built.
The stronger model connects learning to practice. Students need opportunities to use emerging tools, including AI, responsibly in real contexts, with guidance, feedback, ethical reflection, and evidence of what they can actually do. They need to learn not only which tools exist, but how to exercise judgment when tools are powerful, imperfect, biased, persuasive, and constantly changing.
This is why the APEX: AI-Prepared Experiential Credential model is so promising. APEX expands a high-quality AI and advanced data science microcredential and internship model across the University of Missouri System. Its public-facing language emphasizes hands-on learning, project-based credentials, real-world challenges, and connections among education, research, and outcomes.
That matters. The future of AI workforce preparation should not be a marketplace of isolated badges asking students to pay for hope. It should be an ecosystem: coursework, experiential learning, employer engagement, mentoring, compensation where possible, and clear evidence of value.
This is especially important for STEM. If the nation needs more STEM talent, STEM education cannot be built primarily as a sorting machine. It has to become a formation system. Rigor should not be measured by how many students we lose. Rigor should be measured by the quality of practice, feedback, judgment, and competence we help students develop.
The future of college-to-career transition may not require inventing something entirely new. It may require learning from the practice-based disciplines higher education has too often undervalued.
Students do not need credentials that stand apart from meaningful practice. They need pathways that help them develop, apply, and make visible their capabilities. If higher education is serious about preparing students for an AI-shaped labor market, the question cannot only be what students can earn. It must also be what they have opportunities to practice, demonstrate, explain, and carry forward.
That is where credentials begin to have real educational and professional value.