When a worker skilled through alternative routes (STARs) lands in a predatory training program or wastes months pursuing a credential that doesn’t connect to an actual job opportunity, it's not only frustrating, it's financially costly, it erodes trust in the workforce development system, and it delays their career progress. Unfortunately, most career navigation organizations don't have the capacity to dig through and vet thousands of training options and job listings, and they shouldn't have to.
At SkillUp, we develop our jobs and training catalogs to provide the highest yields for the lowest investment, removing the barriers of cost, time, and misinformation that our users face. Our strong quality standards reflect our commitment to economic mobility and real-world outcomes.
To multiply the potential impact of our quality standards, we built an API infrastructure that makes these pre-vetted catalogs available and usable as a public good — to anyone, free of charge. An API (application programming interface) allows other platforms to pull SkillUp's data directly into their own systems in real time, which means partners don't have to manually update their catalogs or build verification processes from scratch. We do the heavy lifting once and make our work accessible to whoever needs it through turnkey API integration.
From Concept to Scale
The approach is straightforward. "We provide a technical foundation that lets organizations focus on what they do best," said Pam Portman, Senior Vice President of Product at SkillUp. "They can integrate our data and immediately offer their users access to our quality-vetted catalogs. It creates a multiplier effect of access, reach, and impact."
Eight organizations currently leverage SkillUp's API capabilities to enhance their offerings: American Student Assistance / Britebound, Kuder, Inc., Willow Ed PBC, Educational Results Partnership, Project Access, Overgrad, Inc., Level, and CampusEvolve. Each brings SkillUp's quality standards directly to the people they serve, whether those are high school students exploring career options, adults considering upskilling, or job seekers navigating their next move.
The Data as Public Good Model
The philosophy behind offering this access at no cost positions workforce data as infrastructure, something that we think is too important to be siloed within single organizations or locked behind competitive barriers. When quality career and training information flows freely to tools that STARs already use, access expands without requiring workers to learn new platforms or duplicate effort across multiple systems.
Our ambition, starting in 2026, is to use our API capabilities to serve an additional 1 million individuals each year. We recognize that accurately tracking users across our diverse partner systems is an ongoing effort that requires continuous partner collaboration and refinement of our data collection processes.
Building for What's Next
We prioritize reach and impact over credit, and we don’t charge organizations to use our API. If a workforce development organization, a nonprofit, a community college or even a competitor wants to integrate SkillUp’s rigorously vetted catalogs, the answer is always yes.
This approach enables saturation rather than segmentation. “The more organizations that take advantage of our free API capability, the more STARs benefit from high-quality sources of nondegree training and job options, and expanded access to high-opportunity career pathways,” said Portman.
The workforce development field has spent decades operating in silos, with each organization often building its own version of the same infrastructure. SkillUp's API partnerships demonstrate that another approach is viable: build once, share freely, multiply impact. Quality data works better as public infrastructure than proprietary assets. There’s no question whether this model scales; rather, it's how quickly the ecosystem will adopt it. For STARs navigating a system that wasn't designed with them in mind, that shift from fragmentation to saturation can't happen fast enough.
