Looking to boost your current career, impress a potential employer, or explore a new field of interest? Microcertificates can lower the cost and time barriers to earning a credential — and potentially kickstart a longer academic journey.
By earning a microcredential, you demonstrate proficiency in academic knowledge and in real-world applications, adding immense value to your experience and professional acumen.
Accelerated. Earn a Harvard credential in 2 courses.
Stackable. Apply courses toward a graduate certificate — or degree.
Actionable. Gain a new skill set for real-world impact.
This year’s microcertificate offerings offer advanced learning in a range of topics in sustainability, business management, and technology. Each set of curated course offerings seeks to help students deepen their existing knowledge and provide momentum for future growth.
No application is required for our microcertificates — you simply register for your first course.
Our business management microcertificates provide the opportunity to build specialized knowledge in financial technology, project management, and conflict resolution.
Advanced Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (New for 2024-25)
Gain a comprehensive understanding of the concepts and theories necessary to skillfully structure and execute negotiations in complex environments.
Project Management Methodologies
Learn techniques, methodologies, and frameworks to lead a complex project management process from beginning to end. You’ll gain fluency in applying Agile, waterfall, and Scrum methodologies and frameworks to a team-based setting.
Statistics (New for 2024-25)
Gain skills in statistical computing and data analysis to evaluate and interpret research data and communicate meaningful findings. Construct clear, focused research questions to inform data collection and analysis.
Sustainability is all about the long term. Our selection of microcertificates each serve to address a different facet of sustainability, leveraging essential concepts, tools, and skills needed to apply to real-life problems.
Circular Economics
Gain insight into the viability of circular economics as a solution to the issues created by natural resource depletion. In this microcertificate, you learn how to incorporate circular systems with increased resiliency for both environmental health and business profits.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) Accounting (New for 2024-25)
Learn how to analyze carbon emissions data with the goal of advising organizations on ways to measure, mitigate, and reduce their carbon footprint.
Life Cycle Assessment
Explore the increasingly important role that life cycle assessment plays in sustainable production and manufacturing. You’ll learn how to evaluate data, make key decisions, and gain proficiency using LCA analysis and software.
Sustainable Finance
Delve into how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are increasingly impacting financial decisions and gain the knowledge of key sustainability concepts and the skill to integrate them into financial decision-making.
Technology is an undeniably integral part of our world. Specialized skills in database management, application development, and data modeling are just a few of the valuable skills that can set you apart in today’s highly competitive job market. Our technology microcertificates offer the opportunity to deepen your knowledge and strengthen your skill sets.
Database Management
Interested in advancing or launching a career as a database developer, administrator, analyst, or architect? In this microcertificate, you learn to design, develop, and manage modern database systems, including relational and NoSQL databases.
Data Modeling and Ethics
Explore the ethics, governance, and laws relevant to data science and artificial intelligence, including privacy, fairness, accountability, and transparency. This microcertificate is designed to provide you with the foundational knowledge and skills required to build ethical and effective data models.
UX/UI Design (New for 2024-25)
Gain foundational knowledge and skills needed to create effective user experiences and user interfaces for digital products.
Web Application Development
As the demand for web developers continues to grow, you can gain the foundational skills required to create and maintain modern web applications, programming, and complex web applications.
A microcertificate offers a set of short, competency-based courses designed to help you build and demonstrate mastery in a given area. At Harvard Extension School, microcertificates offer a path to a credential that is shorter (only 2 courses), affordable, and highly focused on a skill set. Our microcertificates also stack toward related graduate certificates and graduate degrees.
At HES, our tuition is $3,340 a course. The whole microcertificate amounts to $6,680.
Microcertificates are designed for career accelerators who are interested in building a focused skill set in an accelerated timeframe.
Microcertificates are a great way to enhance your professional learning and development. Industries across the board are ever-changing and increasingly competitive. If you are looking to fill a skill gap and build confidence in your current field — or even explore a new one — microcertificates are a good fit.
To earn a microcertificate, you complete 2 courses from a tightly curated set of courses, at the graduate level, with a grade of B or higher, within 1 year.
This short timeline will support momentum and reinforce the learning between the 2 related courses.
Microcertificates are designed to be started in the fall semester and completed in the spring. We do not guarantee availability of microcertificate courses outside of this time frame.
Because repeating course content has limited educational value, you may not repeat a course for which you have already received undergraduate or graduate credit in order to earn a microcertificate.
Repeat courses are identified by their subject and course number (for example, MGMT E-4000 Organizational Behavior and MGMT S-4000 Organizational Behavior are the same courses) and occasionally by a notation in the course description (for example, “Students may not take both ECON E-1600 and ECON S-1615 for degree or certificate credit”).
Once you have successfully completed all requirements, you may log in to the Certificate Tracker and Request Form to request your microcertificate. You will confirm the courses that you will apply toward the credential and submit your request.
After your request is reviewed, approved, and awarded you will receive information about how to access your electronic microcertificate through our certified electronic credentials site.
Once a microcertificate has been awarded, no adjustments can be made.
Be sure to request your certificate within 30 days of the release of your final grade in your last certificate course (see calendar for dates). This will ensure that you receive your credential in a timely manner.
If you request your microcertificate after this 30-day deadline, but before the 6-month petition deadline (see below), it will be awarded as part of the next conferral cycle at the end of the subsequent semester.
Requests submitted more than 6 months after completing the last microcertificate course must be accompanied by a petition to the Harvard Extension School Administrative Board explaining the reason for the delay.
The courses featured in the microcertificates are taught by Harvard Extension School instructors who teach across Harvard and peer institutions and work as expert practitioners in their fields.
Visit our faculty page to meet some of them.
Completing a microcertificate shows proficiency in specific industry competencies and awards academic credit at the same time. In a semester or two, you can upskill or reskill to demonstrate initiative and develop new skills in your place of business. You also have the opportunity to explore new industries without a full career change — or jumpstart a longer academic journey. Learn more in our blog post about microcertificates.
We are here to help. Send us an email at Microcredentials@Extension.Harvard.edu.
