Gaps in Research

While the body of research on certificate programs has grown in recent years, many questions remain unanswered. Particularly given the rapid growth in short-term programs, and policymakers’ fast-growing interest in vocational programs within the postsecondary education market, these questions have never been more important.

The most central of those questions is: what is the true labor-market value of short-term certificate programs? The research, as described above, is contradictory, but finds a small return on investment to short-term programs, at best. Past studies have also found that benefit to vary considerably, depending on the occupation for which the program prepares students, with far poorer labor-market outcomes for students of color and women in most fields. If students and policymakers are to make wise decisions about attending and financing postsecondary education, it is essential to learn more about which programs carry labor-market value, from which institutions, and for which students.

That includes ensuring future research is more detailed. For instance, short-term certificates are generally described as those that take less than a year. But there is likely significant variation between very-short-term programs (such as those that take fewer than four months to earn a credential) and short-term programs that take nine or 12 months to complete. One effort to narrow the scope of outcomes data to only very-short-term programs by The Institute for College Access and Success found that states often lumped together data on programs of the same field of study in calculating outcomes, regardless of the length of those programs, or collected too little information from the institution about its programs to reliably identify very-short-term programs that could be compared consistently.¹ Future research should also consider the costs of financing short-term certificate programs, relative to their labor-market value, both to students and (where financed by state or federal subsidies) to taxpayers.

Additionally, it is clear that not all short-term certificates are created equal. Programs in certain fields of study or occupations have very different outcomes across those occupations as well as within occupations and from different providers. Yet available data often collapses those programs, leading to generalizations about fields of study that obscure disparities across programs, such as speaking broadly about allied health fields without separating out the health-based programs that lead to particularly positive outcomes (like registered nursing) from those that lead to poverty-level wages (such as certified nursing assistant). In part, this is a result of the large number and wide range of programs that institutions offer, resulting in relatively small numbers of graduates from each.²

Further research is also needed to parse the value of short-term certificates based on the prior education of students. Many participants in short-term programs have previously earned a degree and are topping off that education with the short-term credential.³ But graduates of an associate or bachelor’s degree program, on average, already earn more than graduates of certificate programs. The labor-market value of stand-alone, short-term certificates is an important question both for policymakers and for prospective students.

In short, it is critical to understand the outcomes of students in these programs. Future research—as well as future policy—should emphasize rigorous analysis of students’ labor-market returns of their programs and transparency into the typical earnings of graduates. This is particularly true in fields where, in contrast to the promise that postsecondary education will serve as a springboard to the middle class, graduates are unable to earn a family-sustaining wage.

Consistent with a substantial body of research that suggests institutions of higher education have very different outcomes for their students,⁴ there is also research that suggests providers have different outcomes.⁵ One report suggests that this could be related to “programs designed around clear local labor needs and with links to local employers.”⁶ This has major implications for higher education, which (unlike many federal workforce programs) the federal government has historically financed without regard to the need for a particular program, the local context of labor-market demands, or the effectiveness of the provider in achieving its intended outcomes.

Additionally, much of the existing research has been pieced together from state data systems, most of which exclude student-level information on for-profit institutions. A TICAS analysis of three states’ data on very-short-term programs—Texas, Missouri, and Iowa—found that only one of those states, Missouri, held any information about its for-profit providers.⁷ Yet data on for-profit institutions suggest that their outcomes for certificate programs are even worse than those at public institutions.⁸ Given that Pell Grants, student loans, and other federal aid are provided to for-profit, nonprofit, and public institutions alike, largely without added restrictions on for-profit colleges, more research into the outcomes of for-profit institutions with very-short-term certificates would provide essential information to policymakers.

Though the returns of short-term certificates for Black and Hispanic workers remain understudied, available data are enough to give rise to serious concerns that certificates could reify and exacerbate long-standing inequities in higher education. As white students increasingly concentrate in colleges and programs where they can earn degrees that provide substantial returns and staying power in the labor market, the gap in postsecondary educational attainment will widen unless students of color are able to enroll in and complete degree programs at higher rates.⁹ Even among students who enroll in certificate programs, students of color, and women of color, in particular, experience different returns, in part because of higher enrollment in programs that lead to low-earning occupations.

Too much of the literature on postsecondary certificates and short-term programs turns a blind eye to the equity implications of these programs, failing to identify where students of color may only see a fraction of the benefit—or no benefit—as compared with their white peers, and glossing over the systemic inequities that such programs could compound. For instance, while an Urban Institute study notes significant variability in the labor-market value of short-term credentials, it deemphasizes the fact that the variance is highly stable and predictable, with almost all of the benefits of short-term credentials accruing to men or workers in male-dominated occupations. They also do not explore whether people of color experience different or lower returns, although their report does acknowledge that women of color are disproportionately represented among the holders of the least valuable credentials. Policymakers must be cautious not to argue for expanding Pell Grant funding to very-short-term programs despite strong evidence of negative impacts for women, especially without clarity around the racial equity impact.¹⁰ Greater study is needed into the variation in enrollment in short-term programs by race/ethnicity and gender, the selection of programs that lead to low-wage jobs, and the labor-market value of credentials from those programs. And policymakers must adopt this research agenda to inform their work in supporting postsecondary education, or lawmakers could end up magnifying existing socioeconomic disparities rather than helping mitigate them.