Half of associations now say employers hold more sway over what their members do. Association Laboratory put that figure at 50% in 2026, up from 37% in 2021, across 206 membership and trade associations. In the same survey, 48% named for-profit companies as competition, up from 32%.
Here is what those two numbers look like together.
Say one of your members needs 20 continuing education hours to renew her license this year. She used to earn most of them at your annual conference. This year her manager won't approve the travel, because the professional development budget was cut, so she buys the hours from another provider that her board also approves, on demand, at 9pm, for less than your member rate. She renews her license on time without opening your catalog.
Ground lost in the continuing education market is expensive; 39.3 million employed Americans held a professional certification or license in 2025, or 24.0% of everyone working. Of those, 35.3 million hold a license and 4.0 million hold a certification without a license. Every credentialed worker eventually renews, and as the ones nearing retirement leave, someone behind them needs that first credential to take the job.
So your education has to be the thing she reaches for first, which means she needs to understand the value that an association provides.
What the credential market actually rewards
A 2025 study on the market value of non-degree credentials read 54.3 million credentials off 37.7 million US worker resumes, and found that a worker's first job-relevant credential carried a 3.8% wage premium, more than double the 1.8% on one unrelated to the job. Certifications kept paying: among workers without a bachelor's degree, a first job-relevant certification carried a 7.06% premium, and each additional one added 3.49%.
An accredited certification tied to a real occupation, with renewal behind it, is where the value lies, and your association is a gateway to getting (and keeping) that credential.
But not the only gateway. So how do you build better continuing education programs that reach more learners who need them?
What only an association can offer
The nurse buying CE hours at 9 pm is making a rational call: same credit, lower price, no travel, no approval needed from a manager.
Your association does three things across their whole career: it defines the standard, revises it when practice changes, and stands behind the credential she earns.
- You decide what counts. Your association writes the certification blueprint, holds a seat on the board that approves providers, or both. Right now, many associations define the market and then compete in it on price, which is a strange place to stand. The practical move is to become the place she checks first to find out what her hours have to satisfy, before she goes shopping for them.
- Your content changes when the profession does. When a practice standard gets revised, your members are the people who revised it. A vendor rebuilds its catalog on a release schedule, and last year's version keeps selling until then. This shows up as an advantage to any association that can turn a standards change into updated coursework in weeks.
- You hold her record for a career. Most licenses renew on a cycle, and 35.3 million employed Americans hold one. A vendor sells a transaction, but you can show her the certification she earned in 2019, everything she's added since, what's expiring, and what's next, in one place, instead of a blank page at every renewal.
How Canvas Career turns those three into a member experience
Instructure built Canvas Career for continuing education and industry-aligned skill development, which is a different starting point from a degree platform. Against those three association-specific assets:
- To show what counts, a skills taxonomy your team owns and controls, plus skills alignment that maps every course and program to the competencies in your blueprint. Your definition of the profession becomes the structure of the catalog. Digital badges can be issued through Parchment Digital Badges, which connects to Canvas Career in the same ecosystem.
- To stay current, IgniteAI drafts course content, so a standards revision turns into updated modules without a quarter of instructional design work. The same skills extraction keeps your taxonomy aligned as the blueprint changes.
- To hold the record, Skillspace gives the member one running view of the skills she's built and what's recommended next, and role-based pathways show her the route through your programs rather than a list of offerings. On the staff side, dashboards show who stalled and when, while you can still reach them.
Plus, the training delivery has to survive her actual work week. Self-paced, mobile-first courses with estimated time on each unit and a progress tracker let her start something between shifts.
Other Canvas Career features help you compete with modern, digital continuing education vendors.
- Continuous enrollment instead of academic terms, with enrollment by role and team,
- Learner-led experiences.
- Role-based pathways, so a member sees a route through your programs instead of just a course catalog.
- Collections, for micro-learning between formal programs.
- The IgniteAI Creation Agent, which drafts lessons, modules, and assessments, so a small team can refresh a certification prep course without starting over.
- Credentialing and reporting capabilities, so issuing, tracking, and renewing credentials no longer runs on a spreadsheet.
- Integration with HRIS and CRM systems for employers buying training.
Build a credentialing program members stick with
Forty-two percent of association members say continuing education is one reason they joined. The Association Learning and Credentialing Playbook covers how to design credential pathways, price and sell your courses, fit learning into a member's real week, and report numbers a board will accept. Read it here.
