Durable skills – such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving – are consistently ranked among the most in-demand competencies by employers. Recent data show that 76% of all job postings request at least one durable skill. However, many institutions lack the infrastructure to teach and validate these skills. As a result, community college students, adult learners, and high school students in career-connected pathways who develop these skills through school, work, and lived experience often have no clear way to demonstrate them to employers.

To increase access to validated durable skills, Education Design Lab (“the Lab”) is partnering with Axim Collaborative to launch the Democratizing Durable Skills Initiative. Through this initiative, the Lab is adapting, modularizing, and deploying its employer-validated durable skills curriculum and assessments on the Open edX platform. The curriculum is aligned to the Lab’s Durable Skills Competency Framework, which has been developed over more than a decade and is used by over 800 higher education institutions and 125 K-12 districts.

By moving the curriculum to the Open edX platform as open educational resources, colleges and workforce providers can incorporate durable skills into career and technical education pathways, continuing education, and advising structures. Institutions can include the curriculum as part of existing degree programs, non-degree credentials, or employer upskilling efforts, making durable skill development a more integrated part of the learner experience.

By providing a scalable, low-friction model, this project democratizes durable skills for any institution – regardless of budget or staff capacity – seeking to develop and validate their learners' unique talents. The work is launching with 3,700 learners across nine partners – including Maricopa Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Arkansas’s statewide workforce system, and veteran-serving nonprofits – and aims to reach nearly 60,000 learners across 120 institutions within five years. 

Through this initiative, learners gain recognized skills valued in the labor market, institutions gain a cost-effective solution for in-demand durable skills content tailored to their needs, and the field gains a scalable, replicable model for democratizing durable skills.