The Burning Glass Institute (BGI) is a nonprofit research organization working to expand economic mobility and opportunity through a better understanding of skills, work, and labor market changes. At the nexus of education, employment, and public policy, BGI uses data-driven research to help workers, learners, employers, educators, and policymakers navigate the rapidly evolving world of work.
The Challenge:
As the job market changes rapidly, workers increasingly need to upskill to advance, switch fields, or stay competitive. At the same time, the non-degree credential market has become massive and difficult to navigate, with more than one million certifications, bootcamps, short-term courses, and other programs available.
Without clear evidence on which credentials lead to better jobs or higher wages, learners are often left to make high-stakes decisions based on unsubstantiated claims rather than transparent outcomes.
The Solution:
To bring greater transparency to the non-degree credential market, the Burning Glass Institute (BGI) developed the Credential Value Index (CVI) — a first-of-its-kind navigation tool designed to map the value of credentials.
In partnership with the Bright Initiative by Bright Data, the Burning Glass Institute completed more than 300,000 Search Engine requests to collect publicly available information on credential providers at scale. This allowed them to strengthen the data foundation behind the Credential Value Index.
A key goal of the partnership was to support BGI’s provider deduplication work: building a canonical taxonomy of credential providers across the U.S. In a fragmented credential market, the same provider may appear in multiple sources under slightly different names. For example, “National Center for Construction Education & Research (NCCER)” and “NCCER Center for Construction Education and Research” may be listed separately, even though they refer to the same organization.
Resolving these variations is essential. If BGI wants to measure outcomes for a specific provider, it must have confidence that all records associated with that provider are being grouped correctly. When working with over 6 million entries, this capability is essential.
To improve accuracy, BGI needed up-to-date provider descriptions that could help its deduplication model determine when to rely on name matching alone and when to incorporate additional context. Bright Data made it possible to gather this information cost-effectively and at scale, strengthening the data foundation behind the CVI.
The CVI analyzes millions of credentials, covering virtually every certification in America and providing deeper data on more than 20,000 additional non-degree programs. Using a data-driven methodology, it tracks the real-world career histories of millions of workers to understand how professional trajectories change after earning specific credentials.
By connecting credential data with career outcomes, the CVI helps answer a critical question for learners: “Is this credential right for me?”
The tool supports individuals at different stages of their career journeys, including:
- Career advancement: Identifying certifications that may help workers progress within their current industry
- Career transition: Helping individuals identify skill gaps, pursue relevant credentials, and discover new career pathways
- ROI assessment: Comparing the time and cost of a program against potential earnings gains
- Program selection: Helping learners navigate a crowded marketplace and find programs aligned with their goals
The Impact:
The CVI shifts the credential market from a “buyer beware” environment toward one defined by transparency, evidence, and accountability. The Burning Glass Institute aims to serve millions of opportunity seekers across America, from people with a high school diploma to adult learners whose careers are at risk of stalling or being disrupted by AI. By helping users identify credentials that support stronger pathways to higher wages and economic mobility, the CVI gives learners the evidence they need to make more informed career decisions.
The Bright Initiative partnership has helped strengthen the CVI’s underlying data, supporting 590 new and returning users, with the following month on track for approximately 380 users, an estimated 12% month-over-month increase in engagement.
“Entity resolution at our scale of operations would have been incredibly difficult without this partnership. It made the process faster, more scalable, and gave our models the additional context they needed to resolve providers with greater confidence.” – Aditya Rathi, Machine Learning Engineer at the Burning Glass Institute
