Are badges worth it?

Hello, Reader!

If you’ve been in career services for more than a minute, you will likely agree:
badging has a branding problem.

You hear the word and you picture… what?
A digital gold star?
A certificate for showing up?
Another well-meaning initiative that quietly dies in a Google Sheet?

Yeah. Same.

They’re disconnected from real outcomes.
Students don’t know why they matter.
Employers don’t know how to interpret them.
And your team is left managing yet another system that goes nowhere.

But badges and credentials should be one of the most powerful tools we have.

Done right, they connect experiences to skills, motivate students to stay engaged, and give employers something tangible to trust.

So… are badges worth it?
Spoiler: yes—but only when they’re done right.

And that’s why I’m featuring Guided Pathways by Suitable in this edition.

Featuring...

Guided Pathways by Suitable turns scattered student experiences into a clear, personalized journey—scaffolded, skill-aligned, and easy to track.

Ready to see what smart badging and credentialing actually looks like?

Let's go!

Why I said YES to this partnership

I get a lot of product pitches. Most end up in my digital recycling bin.

But this one? It stuck. Because the problems it tackles are very real—and the solution actually works.

Too many badging & credentialing systems are built with features in mind, not strategy.
Guided Pathways is built differently.

It’s:

Clear for students
Transparent for employers
Measurable for leadership
And not a spreadsheet-based survival project for staff

It’s not just a system.
It’s the infrastructure to make career readiness visible and scalable.

Are badges worth it?

You’ve heard the hype. Maybe you’ve even tried it.

If your last badging and credentialing initiative is buried somewhere in your SharePoint graveyard, you’re not alone.

Let’s talk about what usually goes wrong—and what happens when you do it differently.

The badges feel meaningless

Badges for attending a pizza party? Sure.

Skills and competencies? Not so much.

What Guided Pathways does:

Ties each badge to a specific competency
Uses clear levels of engagement
Allows for reflection and evidence

This isn’t about participation trophies. It’s about credentialing experiences with substance and helping students turn their engagement into career mobility.

After implementing Guided Pathways in their Outside the Classroom Curriculum (OCC) initiative, the University of Pittsburgh increased their graduation rates by 20 percentage points.

Students don’t care

They’ve got enough going on.

If the badge doesn’t connect to something that matters, it’s just another checkbox.

What Guided Pathways does:

Adds structure with points, milestones, and visual progress
Helps students track and understand their development
It’s like a Fitbit but for a student’s learning and development

At Vanderbilt, first-year students said it made them more motivated—because they could see how it all connected.

Staff can’t manage it

If your badge program lives in a spreadsheet called “FINAL_final_THISONE_really,” it’s time for a better system.

What Guided Pathways does:

Gives students a mobile dashboard to track their progress in real-time
Automates tedious administrative workflows and student communications/nudges
Makes the system scalable—without burning out your team

Montclair State University was tired of using card swipers and outdated systems to track first-year student participation.

With Guided Pathways, they were able to implement a first-year experience milestone that students can track on their phones. Over 50 percent of first-year students participated in their first semester.

No one’s in alignment

Your office hosts events. So does student life. So does Pre-Law. So does Greek Life.

Everyone’s doing their own thing, and students are caught in the middle looking for support.

What Guided Pathways does:

Provides a shared structure that departments can plug into to centralize experiential learning
Allows for custom credentials tied to core competencies, achievements, certificates, and more
Recommends experiences and activities to help students chart their future engagement

Vanderbilt used this approach to bring in partners across campus—from academic departments to student orgs to employers.

Result? Less noise. More strategy.
Everyone plays a role in career readiness—and it all rolls up into something coherent.

The data goes nowhere

You know students are participating—but you can’t prove it or improve it.

What Guided Pathways does:

Tracks real-time engagement by student, cohort, and competency
Surfaces gaps and growth patterns
Helps you tell a story about student development that leadership and stakeholders will actually listen to
Provides a framework that seamlessly aligns co-curricular engagement to curricular Student Learning Outcomes

U Pittsburgh was able to increase participation in the OCC by 47 percentage points and satisfaction by 60 percentage points. The team is also seeing a 20 percentage point growth in graduation rates and higher GPAs to boot.

Employers don’t trust it

With thousands of different badge programs out there, most employers don’t know what they’re looking at—and don’t have time to figure it out.

What Guided Pathways does:

Customizes credentials based on specific feedback from their employers to
Includes metadata and optional artifacts that show the “how” behind the skill
Helps students explain what they did and why it matters
Offers exclusive access to the NACE Competency Assessment Tool to validate their students’ progress toward the 8 NACE competencies

So instead of “I have a badge,” they can say:

“This is how I built communication skills my second year; after leading a team project, getting feedback from peers, and reflecting on what I learned.”

That’s the kind of story employers value.