Enrollment and Attainment Patterns

The variability of labor-market outcomes for students who complete certificate programs raises particular concern given the makeup of students enrolled in these programs. The share of both Black and Hispanic students is larger in subbaccalaureate programs than in bachelor’s degree programs, despite greater returns from a bachelor’s degree.¹ Those disparities have led to continued gaps in postsecondary attainment, since, while 40 percent of non-Hispanic white American adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, just 26 percent of Black Americans and 19 percent of Hispanic Americans do.² State-specific studies also found that short-term certificate programs, in particular, enrolled a larger share of Black students, and one state reported a larger share of low-income students in short-term certificates.³ The implications are significant: given inequities in which wealthier and whiter students attend longer-term and higher-credential-level programs that lead to stronger labor-market outcomes, while lower-income students of color disproportionately attend shorter-term and lower-credential-level programs, a Community College Research Center report states, “then growth in certificates will lead to a further stratification of the higher education system.”⁴

Even within short-term certificates, there is significant variation across programs. Women disproportionately enroll in programs that lead to low-earning occupations, for instance (like education, administrative support, and health), as compared with men, who disproportionately enroll in high-earning occupations (like computers, construction, and engineering). Even with the same type of credential—a certificate—the fields in which women most often enroll and graduate lead to lower-wage work and higher rates of unemployment.⁵ More students in subbaccalaureate programs are women (60 percent) than men, and women are enrolled in even larger concentrations in service-related fields compared to technical fields.