By Jarek Janio, Ph.D.
How many careers does one education prepare you for?
If you’re still thinking in singular terms—a “job,” a “career path,” or a “major”—you may be designing Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for a world that no longer exists.
As Robert Bajor, founder and CEO of Micro Credential Multiverse, reminded us in his Friday SLO Talk:
“Most individuals… are going to change their careers about 5 to 7 times during their working life.”
This isn’t a trend. It’s a reality. Career pivots are now the norm, not the exception. One third of adults change jobs every year. The skills required for most jobs change so rapidly that a four-year degree can’t keep pace. And employers themselves are struggling to adapt.
If this is the world learners are entering, our SLOs can’t remain static either. We must ask ourselves: Are we building outcomes to certify a task, or to cultivate resilience?
The Problem with One-to-One Outcomes
Many SLOs are still written as if a student’s destination is fixed—learn a skill, demonstrate it, enter a career. But if the average learner will switch fields five or more times, what exactly are we preparing them for?
Too often, SLOs describe narrowly defined technical competencies:
- “Demonstrate knowledge of accounting principles.”
- “Use industry-standard software to complete design tasks.”
- “Apply basic procedures for clinical intake.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these. But if this is all we measure, we are designing learning experiences that expire as quickly as the labor market changes.
“By the time you graduate, 75% of those skills that you thought you would need are completely different for the job that you’re going to try to get.”
—Robert Bajor
In this context, an SLO that points only to today’s tools misses tomorrow’s reality. That’s not just short-sighted—it’s inequitable. It locks students into a narrow version of success without preparing them to navigate change.
From Technical to Transferable: What Pivot-Ready SLOs Look Like
Let’s be clear: technical skills still matter. But they’re not enough. What learners need are transferable competencies—skills that stack, scale, and stretch across careers and industries.
Here are a few examples of SLOs designed with adaptability in mind:
- Communication: “Construct clear, well-supported arguments tailored to a specific audience and purpose.”
- Systems Thinking: “Analyze how parts of a process or system interact to produce an outcome.”
- Collaboration: “Contribute productively to team-based projects, integrating diverse viewpoints.”
- Digital Agility: “Adapt to new digital tools by transferring existing knowledge and evaluating their use in different contexts.”
- Problem Analysis: “Identify the underlying causes of a workplace or social issue and propose evidence-based solutions.”
Each of these outcomes prepares students not just for their first job, but for their fifth. They aren’t bound to a tool, a title, or a degree. They are framed around action, grounded in context, and open to growth.
Designing for Portability, Not Just Proficiency
In his talk, Bajor highlighted the importance of portability in a fast-moving skills economy:
“Those records are yours. They describe you. They should belong to you.”
The same principle should apply to SLOs. They should generate records that students can take with them—not just in transcripts, but in digital credentials, learning portfolios, and employment records that speak the language of opportunity.
This is especially important in community colleges, where many students move in and out of academic programs, careers, and life transitions. When SLOs are embedded in portable credentials (such as digital badges), they allow learners to:
- Show evidence of their skills in different job markets
- Return to education later and stack new skills
- Demonstrate learning that happened outside the classroom
Designing SLOs for portability is not just good practice—it’s a matter of fairness. If a student doesn’t finish a degree, they should still be able to show what they’ve learned. If they pivot careers, they shouldn’t have to start from scratch.
Why It Matters: SLOs Are the Foundation of Equity and Agility
It’s tempting to think that agility comes from apps, AI tools, or flashy credentials. But it starts with the outcomes themselves. If our SLOs don’t describe what learners can do in clear, transferable terms, then all the metadata in the world won’t matter.
This is not about lowering standards—it’s about raising relevance.
“This is no longer a world where a single degree is the finish line.”
—Robert Bajor
It’s also no longer a world where a fixed curriculum, designed around fixed career paths, can claim to meet the needs of lifelong learners. If our SLOs are to serve today’s students, they must anticipate tomorrow’s pivots.
That means moving away from the checkbox model of skill acquisition and toward a vision of learning that is durable, demonstrable, and designed for movement.
Final Thought: If Learners Are Moving, SLOs Must Move With Them
The age of pivot is not a future event—it’s the current operating condition. Learners are moving across industries, institutions, and identities. The question is whether our learning outcomes are moving with them.
Let’s write SLOs that recognize not just what students can do today, but how they will adapt, translate, and transfer those skills tomorrow.
Let’s write outcomes for the fifth job, not just the first.