  This study investigates the labor market value of credentials obtained from
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and shared on business networking
platforms. We conducted a randomized experiment involving more than 800,000
learners, primarily from developing countries and without college degrees, who
completed technology or business-related courses on the Coursera platform
between September 2022 and March 2023. The intervention targeted learners who
had recently completed their courses, encouraging them to share their
credentials and simplifying the sharing process. One year after the
intervention, we collected data from LinkedIn profiles of approximately 40,000
experimental subjects. We find that the intervention leads to an increase of 17
percentage points for credential sharing. Further, learners in the treatment
group were 6\% more likely to report new employment within a year, with an 8\%
increase in jobs related to their certificates. This effect was more pronounced
among LinkedIn users with lower baseline employability. Across the entire
sample, the treated group received a higher number of certificate views,
indicating an increased interest in their profiles. These results suggest that
facilitating credential sharing and reminding learners of the value of skill
signaling can yield significant gains. When the experiment is viewed as an
encouragement design for credential sharing, we can estimate the local average
treatment effect (LATE) of credential sharing (that is, the impact of
credential sharing on the workers induced to share by the intervention) for the
outcome of getting a job. The LATE estimates are imprecise but large in
magnitude; they suggest that credential sharing more than doubles the baseline
probability of getting a new job in scope for the credential.
