Today, fewer people see college as a sure bet. Some graduates step into jobs that barely use their degree. Others wonder if the years in school were worth the cost. The path that once felt assured now looks more uncertain.
Employers are shifting mindsets, too. Instead of screening primarily by a diploma, many job ads solely list desired skills. This change is creating space for professional certificates to stand alongside four-year degrees. Coursera, for instance, has leaned into the shift with short, industry-designed programs and credit-bearing modules developed in partnerships with universities.
To explore changing expectations, this article explores how Coursera’s certificates and traditional degrees each fit into the modern job market, including practical, affordable examples to gain skills and strengthen career prospects.
The Higher Education Crisis of 2025
A college degree in 2025 is still a significant achievement, but one that costs more and adds to mounting doubts each year.
For example, student loan debt climbed past $1.6 trillion in the U.S., spread across about 42.7 million people.1 According to the Federal Reserve’s 2024 Economic Well-Being report, the median education debt among borrowers falls between $20,000 and $25,000.2
What you owe depends a lot on where you studied: public college students are less likely to take on debt, while private nonprofit students are more likely to. For-profit students face the heaviest burdens, with the highest debt incidence and repayment struggles.
As the CollegeBoard Trends in College Pricing 2024 report shows, tuition isn’t shrinking either.3
- Public four-year colleges (in-state): Students face an average tuition of $11,610, up a few hundred dollars from the previous year.
- Public four-year colleges (out-of-state): Out-of-state pricing averages nearly $31,000, up close to $1,000.
- Private nonprofit four-year colleges: Average tuition is around $43,500, an increase of more than $1,500 from the prior year.
- Two-year colleges: Tuition also increased for two-year degrees, surpassing $4,000.
With growing costs, skepticism follows. In 2024, the Pew Research Center found that half of Americans see fewer benefits in a four-year degree than they did 20 years ago.4
Employers aren’t fully convinced either. A 2024 YouScience workforce report showed that 40% think educational institutions aren’t sending employers workers who are ready for the job.5 Many new hires need extra training, with fast-changing industries like AI or advanced manufacturing making that gap look even wider.
A degree brings higher lifetime earnings on average, according to Bureau of Labor data.6 Even so, graduates question the value of a degree when the skills learned don’t match employers’ needs or expectations.
Employers & the Skills-Based Hiring Movement
In early 2024, Indeed’s Hiring Lab found that fewer than one in five U.S. job postings listed a four-year degree as a requirement. In contrast, more than half of job ads didn’t list any formal education requirement at all.7
The trend isn’t only on job boards. SHRM, the world’s largest HR association, reported in a 2023 study that 73% of employers were already using skills-based hiring, and more than a quarter had adopted it within the past year.8 HR leaders in that same report said the approach helped widen talent pools and bring in candidates who better matched the work.
One of the biggest names implementing this change is International Business Machines Corporation, better known as IBM. In 2021, the company announced it had removed bachelor’s degree requirements from more than half of its U.S. job postings—adding that it would continue to rethink the utility of degree requirements in the future.9
The Burning Glass Institute calls this “downcredentialing”, or a “degree reset,” reversing the so-called “degree inflation” that followed the Great Recession.9 According to WorldatWork, Accenture, Dell, Google, Delta Airlines, and Bank of America have all been adjusting qualifications for certain jobs.10
The non-partisan Brookings think-tank, through the voice of fellow economic geographer Annelies Goger, adds that removing degree requirements is often the first step in a broader skills-based hiring shift.11
For job seekers, online certificates for jobs and other short-form credentials are becoming more powerful. They don’t erase the role of a degree, but they show employers the abilities they’re actually trying to hire for.
The stakes of a skill-based labor market are also significant, with Annelies Goger adding, as “failure to make hiring more inclusive could result in an ever-shrinking pool of talent from traditional sources, continued reliance on outdated hiring practices that screen out qualified candidates, and missed opportunities for economic growth and individual advancement.”11
What Are Professional & MasterTrack Certificates?
Some pathways to new jobs are shorter than a degree, but still carry weight with employers. Increasingly, they’re appearing in job postings and on resumes.
Coursera, for example, offers these in the form of Professional Certificates (designed with employers) and MasterTrack Certificates (developed in collaboration with universities).12,13
Professional Certificates
Coursera’s Professional Certificates are job-ready credentials, created as programs with industry partners such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon, and Meta. They focus on the tools and tasks used in entry-level roles. Coursera describes these certificates as career-aligned training you can finish in under a year, with programs starting around $49/month and a 7-day free trial.12
For instance, a Google Cloud Data Analytics professional certificate can be obtained in two months at 10 hours per week, preparing you for an entry-level job as a data analyst for only $98, whereas their Project Management certificate takes six months, thus costing you $294.14,15
Since professional certificates are short and subscription-priced, often finished in a few months, they are an accessible option if you need fast, job-focused skills with low cost up front. Many entry-level certificates also don’t require a prior degree to start.
MasterTrack Certificates
MasterTrack Certificates are credit-bearing, graduate-level modules designed by universities. Coursera’s MasterTrack page explains that this is a portion of a master’s program delivered online. If you are later admitted to the full degree, completed MasterTrack coursework can count toward the degree at that featured university, and the university issues the certificate itself.
Typical timelines and prices are published on each program page. For example, the University of Illinois Instructional Design MasterTrack estimates four to five months with a commitment of eight to 12 hours/week and a total cost of $2,384. Credits are applicable toward the school’s online Master of Education (Ed.M) in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership.16
MasterTrack Certificates have a similar length to most Professional Certificates, but they are priced per program by the university, provide graduate credit, and potentially advance students toward a full master’s after admission.
Certificates vs. Degrees: Employer Perceptions
In an analysis from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the NACE Job Outlook 2025, nearly 90% of employers say they look for evidence of problem-solving on resumes, and nearly 80% look for teamwork, signals of specific capability rather than pedigree.17
A certificate carries weight when it demonstrates clear, job-ready skills, and much of its value depends on how credible it appears to employers. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 found that more than half of companies plan to invest in short-form training and credentials to close skills gaps, especially in areas like digital skills and business operations, making these proofs of ability more visible in hiring.18
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Degrees are still essential in certain fields, particularly when there are federal and state regulations involved. The Bureau of Labor Statistics details that physicians must complete medical school and obtain a state license, while lawyers need a law degree and bar admission before they can practice.19,20
At the same time, employers continue to use traditional degree-linked filters. NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 survey further shows that 47% of companies plan to screen applicants by GPA, up from 37% in 2023 and 38.3% in 2024.21 This shows a renewed reliance on academic signals even as alternative pathways expand.
Public-sector hiring, however, is moving in a different direction. In May 2025, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a Merit Hiring Plan requiring agencies to get rid of unnecessary degree requirements and instead use assessments tied to the actual work.22
Taken together, employer behavior shows two lanes:
- Roles judged by what you can do (where a professional certificate is fast proof of technical ability)
- Roles governed by what the law requires (where degrees remain non-negotiable).
For job seekers, the value of each path depends less on the credential itself and more on the hiring rules of the sector they hope to enter.
Who Should Choose Which Path?
The decision between professional certificates vs college degrees often comes down to timing and goals, with certificates usually being the better choice for people who need speed and affordability.
Coursera’s program pages show professional certificates ranging from two months at ten hours a week to six months at a lighter pace, with costs tied to a monthly subscription. They’re advantageous to workers shifting into fields like data analytics or project management because they provide access to hiring networks without requiring years away from the job market.
Degrees, conversely, are tied to careers that need formal accreditation or advanced standing. Aside from the aforementioned medicine and law, other fields, such as architecture and accounting, need university-level study to qualify for licensing exams, which a short-form credential cannot replace.23,24
There is also a middle option that blends flexibility with recognition.
For example, Coursera’s MasterTrack modules are for-credit portions of a master’s degree. This means, if a student later gains admission to the complete program, the work counts toward graduation—lowering upfront commitment while keeping the door open to graduates.
Future Outlook: The Coexistence Model
Workforce analysts see the future not as a contest between certificates and degrees, but as a system where both play roles.
The National Skills Coalition points out that many workers, especially in healthcare and manufacturing, don’t stop with a single certificate.25 They stack one credential on top of another, turning short courses into building blocks for steady career growth instead of treating education as a one-time initiative.
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) adds that certificates and associate degrees can serve as stepping stones to jobs in high-paying middle-skills occupations. But they also point out a catch: many of these programs are still clustered in fields where there isn’t much hiring.26
That’s why short-form credentials on Coursera or similar must line up with real job growth if they’re going to hold long-term value.
Additionally, stackable credentials can be added and refreshed as people move through different stages of their careers, while degrees will remain essential in industries where regulations and skill ceilings require them.27
Image: Pathways to Career Readiness and Advancement
Document: Introduction to Stackable Credentials28
Author: Center for Occupational Research and Development
For: U.S. Department of Education
Rethinking Professional Certificates vs College Degrees
The old mindset of “get a degree or get left behind” carries less weight in 2025. Today, the conversation is broader: professional certificates and college degrees each have value.
Certificates can provide fast, job-ready skills that open doors in fields like data analytics or project management. Degrees, meanwhile, remain non-negotiable in professions such as law or medicine. Increasingly, people combine the two—earning short credentials while working, or stacking certificates as stepping stones toward larger qualifications.
Rather than competing, certificates and degrees are becoming complementary tools. Education is no longer a one-and-done milestone but a resource people return to throughout their careers, choosing what fits the moment and where they want to go next.
Sources:
3 https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing/highlights
4 https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/
5 https://resources.youscience.com/rs/806-BFU-539/images/2024_WorkforceReport.pdf
6 https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2025/data-on-display/education-pays.htm
7 https://www.hiringlab.org/2024/02/27/educational-requirements-job-postings/
9 https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/research/emerging_degree_reset_020922.pdf
10 https://worldatwork.org/publications/workspan-daily/dropping-degree-requirements-is-a-growing-trend
12 https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates
13 https://www.coursera.org/mastertrack
14 https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-cloud-data-analytics-certificate
15 https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-project-management
16 https://www.coursera.org/mastertrack/instructional-design-illinois
18 https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf
19 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm#tab-4
20 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm#tab-4
21 https://www.naceweb.org/research/reports/job-outlook/2025
22 https://www.opm.gov/chcoc/latest-memos/merit-hiring-plan.pdf
23 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/architects.htm#tab-4
24 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/accountants-and-auditors.htm#tab-4
26 https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/cew-bridging_the_middle-skills_gap-fr.pdf
27 https://www.coursera.org/articles/stackable-credentials
28https://s3.amazonaws.com/PCRN/file/introduction-to-stackable-credentials.pdf
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