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Short-term credentials are a large—and growing—business in higher education.¹ In the first decade of the millennium, the number of short-term certificates awarded by community colleges increased by more than 150 percent across the United States (see Figure 1).² By 2010, 41 percent of all credentials awarded by community colleges were non-degree certificates.³ Since that time, the number of certificates awarded by all public colleges has increased by nearly 30 percent.⁴ This trend coincides with overall increases in the postsecondary attainment of Americans.⁵ As much as one-quarter of the workforce has a noncredit certificate, license, or another vocational award.⁶

Figure 1 | The Number of Postsecondary Certificates Awarded by Public Colleges has Grown Significantly in Recent Years

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), "Degrees and Other Formal Awards Conferred" surveys, 1970–71 through 1985–86; Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), "Completions Survey" (IPEDS-C:87-99); and IPEDS Fall 2000 through Fall 2018, Completions component, prepared November 2019,

It is also critical to consider the types of credentials awarded, to whom, and what value they carry in the labor market. Research has found that bachelor’s degrees are, on average, well worth the investment, and associate degrees also provide a significant return to students in the form of earnings increases.⁷ Certificates, generally, show relatively low (albeit positive) returns, with benefits that often wane within a few years of earning the credential.⁸ While certificates that prepare workers for certain occupations see particularly positive labor-market value, many others show no—or even negative—results. Moreover, short job training programs like these may offer “no clear avenue,” according to a 2016 Brookings Institution report, for students to continue their postsecondary education later.⁹

Yet students of color and women are far more likely to earn certificates that carry those relatively lower returns. For instance, certificates make up just one in five of the postsecondary credentials that white students completed, compared with one in three for Black and Hispanic students.¹⁰ And white students are far more likely to earn a degree from a public four-year institution, where bachelor’s degrees are the predominant credential, while Hispanic and Black students are far more likely than white students to earn a degree from for-profit institutions, which award many certificates and often carry even lower labor-market value.¹¹ This phenomenon—what Anthony Carnevale of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce terms the “white flight to the bachelor’s degree”—highlights the risk that higher education reinforces such inequality by effectively tracking students of color into lower-value programs.¹²

Only recently has research started to grow on certificates, particularly on the labor-market value of such credentials.¹³ Instead, much of the research on higher education has studied the value of four-year degrees, missing a sizable portion of the population that enrolls instead in non-degree programs. As workers increasingly opt for subbaccalaureate programs and lawmakers consider policies that would invest more higher education dollars into certificate programs and very-short-term credentials,¹⁴ it is important to understand what the research does—and does not—tell us about the efficacy of that strategy in promoting equity and quality workforce development. Given concerns about equity, one study from the Community College Research Center concluded, “heavy reliance on certificates as a core higher education runs the risk of institutionalizing or at least reinforcing socioeconomic stratification.”¹⁵ Our analysis will review the rigorous research available on certificate programs and identify the significant gaps in our understanding and knowledge of such credentials’ utility in the labor market.