Why we built Practica.
A short story about the gap between what students learn and the experience employers actually trust, and what we are doing to close it.
Our story
Practica started with a frustration almost every student runs into on the way out the door.
“You can’t get a job without experience. But you can’t get experience without a job.”
A degree proves you studied. It rarely proves you can do the work. At the same time, local businesses and nonprofits have real projects that need doing and no simple way to reach the talent down the street, and faculty want to bring real work into their courses without taking on a second job to run it.
So we built Practica to connect those three, students, organizations, and educators, around a single piece of real work, and to make the result something an employer can actually verify.
Our mission
Make verified work experience part of every education.
What we believe
A few principles guide everything we build.
Experience over credentials.
A transcript says you showed up. Verified work shows what you can actually do.
Verified, not self-reported.
Every project is co-signed by faculty and the organization, so it holds up to a recruiter.
Real work, real value.
Students take on projects that genuinely move an organization forward, never busywork.
Built around the course.
Experience should fit into education, not pile a second job on top of professors or students.
Local first.
The best first project is often with an organization a few blocks from campus.