Academic Outcomes

Another potential benefit some have identified in short-term certificates is in aiding students who wish to pursue additional education—offering them stackable credentials in which further learning and each additional educational credential contributes to career progression. Yet even the limited body of research that exists on this subject suggests students rarely use certificate programs in this way.

In total, the share of workers with stackable credentials is small—approximately 2 to 4 percent of the workforce, or 3 to 5 percent of all college students, according to one study.¹ The majority of those stackable credentials are among degree-holders who earn a certificate after receiving an associate or bachelor’s degree.² The use of stackable credentials varies across systems, as well. For instance, Virginia community colleges report that about 3 percent of awards are stacked; in North Carolina, the concentration is greater in certain fields, with 12 percent of general education, health/nursing, and protective services graduates earning stackable credentials.³ There is also some cause for concern: research into health care programs found that students of color were less likely to continue onto longer certificate programs. While a similar share of Black and white students earned short- and very-short-term (12 credit hours or fewer) certificates, 28 percent of white students earned longer-term certificates (more than one year), whereas only 17 percent of Black students and 16 percent of Hispanic students did.⁴

These relatively small percentages suggest that, even if certificate programs are theoretically stackable, they are rarely stacked in practice. One Brookings Institution report, in which the author spoke with numerous community college representatives, suggested that a barrier to stacking credentials may be institutions themselves, given that “in order for a stackable credential to benefit students, they have to be able to move between the non-credit side of the college, where they earned the initial short-term certificate, and the academic side, where they would continue a longer associate degree.”⁵ Such coordination can be difficult to arrange, given faculty approval processes, course alignment, and accreditation standards.

Moreover, available data do not suggest that students see a particular benefit to stacking credentials, aside from the benefit to each higher-level credential, though much of the research does not separate certificate-only-holders from those with associate degrees.⁶ As one study noted, the returns of stackable credentials are “indistinguishable” from those of a single award.⁷ Another study exploring stackable health care credentials found that, while students who earned certificates saw some labor-market return and those with associate degrees saw significant returns, those who earned very short-term certificates (12 credit hours or fewer) did not. And in programs for certified nursing assistants and community health workers, graduates “had significantly lower earnings than their peers who [enrolled in the programs but] earned no credential.”