Evidence on CCB Student Outcomes

From the start of CCB degrees in the United States, researchers and practitioners have written about the importance of applied degrees that prepare graduates for employment, going so far as to label these degrees “workforce baccalaureates.”¹ Some studies have solicited the opinions of employers on the value of CCB degrees and their willingness to hire CCB graduates. Malcolm Grothe interviewed students and employers about these degrees in Washington and found students expected CCB degrees to result in employment in well-paying, training-related jobs.² Employer views were similarly linked to the workforce, including expressing a goal of retaining students in communities that might otherwise lose the talent needed to operate local businesses.

Echoing these results, a later qualitative study found that student and employer perceptions of CCB degrees were generally positive.³ Employers say CCB graduates who work for their companies possess knowledge and skills immediately applicable to their jobs and also career advancement.

Contrasting with these findings, Bragg and Soler found university personnel were much more skeptical of CCB degrees, questioning their comparability to university baccalaureate degrees and wondering if CCB graduates would struggle to get jobs or experience lower wages. How students access CCBs and what they—and potential employers—expect to gain from these programs is a worthy focus of research.

Students who earn a CCB degree show strong program completion outcomes. Analysis of Washington State using the last three years of available data shows that 68 percent of students who started a CCB program completed within four years of beginning the program.⁴ Comparing this completion rate to that of students who transferred to public universities in Washington in the same years produced similar results: the completion rate of students after they transferred was 70 percent, compared to the 68 percent for CCB graduates, both favorable rates of completion.⁵ In California, CCB pilot students were more likely to graduate than CSU transfer students.⁶ Once admitted to a CCB program to begin upper-division coursework, 67 percent of students obtain a bachelor’s degree in two years; 78 percent complete in three years.⁷

Evidence in Florida seems to calm worries about employment for CCB graduates.⁸ CCB graduates showed strong rates of employment and continuing education that were similar to peers with associate degrees in similar areas of study. In fact, 83 percent of baccalaureate graduates were employed four quarters after graduation. However, the employment rate varies by credential level and program of study.⁹ When looking at Florida graduates’ employment rates by race and ethnicity four quarters after graduation, Ivy Love observed similar rates between associate graduates and baccalaureate graduates. Black baccalaureate graduates had employment rates three percentage points higher than their peers who earned associate degrees, the greatest difference between associate and bachelor’s level for any racial/ethnic group. While differences between credential levels are relatively small for all groups, Indigenous, Asian American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students had lower employment rates than peers at both credential levels. More research is needed to understand this discrepancy and suggest ways to better support these graduates’ trajectories into the labor market.

Looking at the employment of CCB students in Washington compared to university graduates’ employment in similar programs, Meza and Bragg found CCB graduates had a higher employment match rate than university graduates in the first and fourth quarters after graduation, and a comparable match rate by the 12th quarter.¹⁰ Research from the Washington SBCTC also showed high employment of CCB graduates, with the highest levels of employment for nursing and other health care graduates.¹¹ Data show the employment rate of CCB graduates was 75 percent, compared to 69 percent of university graduates. In the fourth quarter, CCB graduates showed a 77 percent match rate, compared to the 70 percent match rate of university graduates. By the 12th quarter, however, the gap between the groups had closed, with both groups of graduates showing a match rate of approximately 70 percent. It is possible that CCB students graduated with more labor experience, which boosted their wages in initial measured periods. Findings from these two states demonstrate that overall employment rates for CCB graduates are strong. In addition, CCBs seem to be a good access point for students of color, though these degrees do not rectify long-standing inequities of pay in the labor market.

In one of the few studies examining employment and earnings for CCB graduates, New America, in 2020, secured data from the Florida Department of Education to compare wages for CCB and associate degree graduates in similar programs of study.¹² Love compared the earnings of CCB graduates to associate degree graduates in the fourth quarter after graduation, learning that CCB graduates earned about $10,000 more in annual wages.¹³

Here, too, earnings gains varied by program and race/ethnicity, as well as by gender. A larger wage gain was found from the associate degree to baccalaureate degree for men than for women in computer and information sciences, communications technologies, business, and health care, including nursing. A similar wage gain was found for men and women in visual and performing arts. Black and Latinx graduates demonstrated a higher associate to baccalaureate wage gain than Whites in education and nursing, but all three groups showed a similar wage gain in computer and information sciences and business. These results show that employment and earnings vary by program, race/ethnicity, and gender, pointing to the need to analyze labor market outcomes by program and demographic characteristics. However, we do not know how CCB graduates’ earnings compare to those of baccalaureate graduates from primarily-baccalaureate-granting institutions.

Turning to Washington State, where longitudinal data have been gathered on graduates since the time CCB programs were implemented, Darby Kaikkonen found high employment for CCB program graduates from 2009 to 2017, ranging from 80 percent to 92 percent by program area.¹⁴ Of all CCB graduates, health care graduates showed the most consistent and high employment rate and also exhibited the highest median earnings, approximately $92,000 annually in the seventh and eighth year after CCB completion. Though computer and information sciences was a relatively new CCB program at the time of Kaikkonen’s study, these graduates ranked second to health care on median earnings at two years after completion, at nearly $58,000 in median annual earnings. Business CCB completers lagged behind the other two program areas in early post-graduation earnings but showed median earnings of nearly $63,000 by the eighth year after graduation. This study did not compare labor market outcomes of CCB graduates to university bachelor’s graduates.

Drawing on a subset of data from the 2017 Kaikkonen study for additional analysis, Darby Kaikkonen and Christopher Quarles studied employment and earnings among Washington CCB graduates compared to associate degree graduates in the same program a year after completion.¹⁵ Using propensity score matching, they found a difference in earnings between CCB and associate graduates in all three program areas, with the highest earnings gain in health care for CCB graduates, at $23,848. The CCB graduate earnings gain was more modest in technology and social science.

Using longitudinal data from Washington, Cominole estimated the causal effect of earning a CCB degree on employment and earnings one year past graduation.¹⁶ Her dissertation compared labor market outcomes for CCB and university baccalaureate graduates while accounting for geographic proximity. Among other variables, Cominole found CCB nursing graduates were about 33 percent more likely to be employed than university baccalaureate nursing graduates at one year after graduation. CCB business graduates were about 8 percent more likely to be employed than university business graduates during this same time period. Fixed effects regression results show no significant differences between CCB and university graduates in hourly wages one year after graduation for nursing and business. Seeing no negative effect to earning a bachelor’s degree from a community college on employment or earnings, Cominole concluded that there is little evidence supporting claims of CCB degrees as inferior to university degrees on the basis of measured labor market outcomes.

Meza and Bragg were interested in how CCB graduates fared compared to students who graduated from one of seven regional universities in Washington in a similar program. Comparing programs by six-digit Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) code and drawing on data from UI wage records, we found earnings tended to be higher for CCB graduates in the first quarter post-graduation than university graduates of similar programs of study, perhaps due to their older age or greater work experience. However, follow-up data over three years suggest university graduates catch up and sometimes slightly exceed CCB graduates in some fields. The researchers did not find statistically significant differences in wages between graduates of universities and CCB programs in any of the four program areas studied at either one quarter, one year, or three years after graduation.¹⁷

Looking more deeply at health care, a field of study that was identified from the start of Washington CCB policy as critical to growing the state’s labor force, we saw that the earnings of CCB graduates were slightly lower than university graduates based on the three quarters of UI wage data we had available. This result may be influenced by the fact that the university group included a large number of nursing graduates, whereas the CCB group included a substantial number of nurses but also graduates of programs in radiation and imaging, dental hygiene, respiratory care, public health, and community health. This difference in health care program composition might contribute to wage differences between CCB graduates and university graduates,¹⁸ though more research is needed for a more definitive conclusion.

In Florida, earning a CCB provides students with a substantial wage boost over those who earn an associate degree in a similar program,¹⁹ a finding consistent with other analysis.²⁰ CCB graduates also show strong employment rates and wages, a finding consistent with previous research.²¹ CCB graduates initially earn slightly more than university graduates in similar programs, but the gap seems to narrow over time. The concern that CCB programs may not be viewed in the labor market as of the same quality as university programs is not obvious in the data examined.²²

In California, no official wage data are available to link CCB graduates to employment, but a survey of graduates show students who completed degrees in 2018 reported their salary as of September 2019 to be $28,000 higher than their salary prior to enrolling in their bachelor’s degree programs. For students who graduated in 2019, their current annual salary was on average $12,000 higher than prior to their enrollment in the pilot programs. Two-thirds of graduates reported that their bachelor’s degree helped them to obtain their current position.²³ Another group of researchers looked at students after the pilot programs and found that 2020 graduates reported a significant increase in income after earning a bachelor’s degree; on average, students earned $18,400 more, a 37 percent increase.²⁴