Ohio uses Gates funding to require credential data enrichment at all 22 community colleges

Ohio higher-education leaders described a coordinated, Gates-funded effort to expand credential transparency across community colleges and beyond.

Shree Vithya Upalapathy, of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), said Ohio has engaged with Credential Engine since 2019 and performed statewide bulk uploads from the state27s higher-education information system. Those bulk uploads exposed data inconsistencies and gaps because the state27s HEI collects a narrower set of fields than the registry requires. "The bulk upload that we did sets a very, very minimal baseline," Upalapathy said, explaining why local institutions needed to add richer details.

Upalapathy said ODHE received a Gates-funded grant and partnered with the Ohio Association of Community Colleges to require participation from all 22 community colleges, providing stipends to recognize that data enrichment is time-consuming. Crystal Jones, OACC, said the enrichment window ran May through August to align with catalog updates and marketing cycles and noted monthly office hours and targeted technical support for participating campuses.

The state highlighted concrete data elements being added: credit vs. noncredit distinctions, program duration and cost, financial aid eligibility, support services, and competency/learning objective tags. Zane State27s cybersecurity associate example and Lorraine Community College27s pilot role were cited as early demonstrations of the credential finder and stackable pathways representation.

Panelists acknowledged operational challenges: institutional data living across offices (institutional research, marketing, academic affairs), the need to coordinate many stakeholders, and cases where some data (student support services or certain labor-market mappings) are harder to extract centrally. Upalapathy said ODHE used webinars, office hours and guidance documents to help institutions meet "quality of best practice as Credential Engine has defined it."

Next steps include awarding stipends to colleges that completed enrichment (planned for January), launching statewide and regional marketing, and scaling similar efforts to public universities and Ohio technical centers. The presenters also noted the Eligible Training Provider List is managed by Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, which may require separate coordination for public labor-market listings.