Nondegree credentials, work-based learning, and the American working class

Key Points

• Accounting for nondegree credentials and training—sub-baccalaureate certificates, industry certifications, professional licenses, work-experience programs, and apprenticeships—provides a more complete portrait of credential and skills attainment than regular measures of educational attainment do.
• Thirty-two percent of the working class—defined as adults 25–64 with a high school degree but no bachelor’s degree and who reported incomes between $20,000 and $40,000—has a license, certification, or certificate. Surprisingly, nondegree credentials in health care are more common than credentials in the trades for working-class credential-holding adults, while credentials in the trades are more prevalent for upper-income credential-holding adults. This suggests that credentials in the trades may present viable pathways to higher earnings.
• Nondegree credentials and work-experience programs are often presented as alternatives to postsecondary education. However, these credentials and programs supplement college degrees for higher-educated adults more often than serving as alternatives to degrees for less-educated adults.

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Introduction

Technological advances and globalization are benefiting the economy at large. But along the way, many working-class Americans have experienced declines in position and prospects. Many jobs available to working-class adults in the past have disappeared, and the new and growing sectors and occupations seem to require more skills and education than before.¹

For decades society has regarded a bachelor’s degree from a traditional higher education institution as one of the surest paths to prosperity.² But a bachelor’s degree program at a traditional college is not always the best option for everyone, nor is it the only avenue for people to receive training and skills that will pay off in the job market.³ After years of policymakers and advocates advancing a broad “college for all” agenda, many Americans are questioning this sweeping and singular approach to human capital development.⁴ Even so, it remains unclear what other viable education and training alternatives exist to build necessary skills and secure employment.

A broad spectrum of researchers and policy thinkers have argued for expanding alternatives to the traditional postsecondary system. Economist Harry Holzer argues that society must “offer students a wider range of high-quality pathways into the labor market besides just [associate of arts] or [bachelor’s of arts] programs by expanding effective career and technical education and apprenticeships.”⁵ Similarly, Andrew Kelly recommends that policymakers must “look beyond higher education as traditionally conceived—the two- or four-year degree-granting college—and create space for new options that can provide additional pathways to the middle class.”⁶

These experts have in mind programs that offer components of a traditional degree program but that are shorter, more affordable, more skills- or work-intensive, and highly responsive to both trainees’ and employers’ needs. Their recommendations appear to be gaining traction on Capitol Hill, as evidenced by recent legislative proposals to expand federal funding for short-term training programs.⁷

A high school degree no longer guarantees working-class adults sure footing in the labor market.⁸ But a four-year college experience may seem too long, costly, or risky. If not a bachelor’s degree program, then what other options can help working-class Americans get a leg up?

Community colleges offer two-year associate degree programs in technical and occupational fields that are associated with substantial earnings for graduates.⁹ Less familiar, though, are the nondegree credentials and work-based learning experiences currently offered by community colleges, trade schools, private providers, four-year colleges, employers, and industry associations. These options include postsecondary certificates, industry certifications, professional licenses, work-experience programs, and apprenticeships. Individuals often earn these credentials in concert (e.g., a certificate program that includes work experience and leads to licensure).

Nondegree credentialing and training has existed for many years.¹⁰ Reasons for pursuing nondegree education vary, from wanting to pick up in-demand skills, meet a job requirement, or get a pay raise to exploring a new occupational area or engaging in lifelong learning.¹¹ Having a nondegree credential is not unusual, either; one 2014 analysis by the US Census Bureau found that a quarter of all adults have a postsecondary certificate, industry certification, or professional license.¹² Until recently, however, nationally representative information on nondegree credentials and training opportunities was sparse, a result of the federal government’s long-standing focus on traditional educational sectors and degrees.¹³

This report—commissioned by the Opportunity America–AEI–Brookings Institution Working Class Study Group—explores new data from the US Department of Education’s 2016 Adult Training and Education Survey (ATES) on nondegree credentials and work-experience programs for American adults. The report describes the prevalence and characteristics of nondegree education for the working class and the adult population at large. It explores questions such as: How widespread is nondegree education? Do adults complete nondegree credentials instead of or in addition to college degrees? What occupational fields are most common for these credentials? Do completers view their credentials as useful for getting a job or increasing skills and pay?

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Notes

1. See Harry Holzer, Job Market Polarization and U.S. Worker Skills: A Tale of Two Middles, Brookings Institution, April 2015, www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/polarization_jobs_policy_holzer.pdf.
2. See Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2014, www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/current_issues/ci20-3.pdf; Hamilton Project, “Return on Investment to a Bachelor’s Degree,” January 15, 2013, www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/return_on_investment_to_a_bachelors_degree; and Douglas A. Webber, “Are College Costs Worth It? How Individual Ability, Major Choice, and Debt Affect Optimal Schooling Decisions,” Economics of Education Review 53 (August 2016): 296–310.
3. See Anthony P. Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, and Andrew R. Hanson, Career and Technical Education: Five Ways That Pay Along the Way to the B.A., Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, September 2012, https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CTE.FiveWays.FullReport.pdf; and Mark Schneider and Rooney Columbus, Degrees of Opportunity: Lessons Learned from State-Level Data on Postsecondary Earnings Outcomes, American Enterprise Institute, October 20, 2017, www.aei.org/publication/degrees-of-opportunity-lessons-learned-from-state-level-data-on-postsecondary-earnings-outcomes/.
4. For example: “A slim plurality of Americans, 49% believes earning a four-year degree will lead to a good job with higher lifetime earnings, compared with 47% who don’t. . . . The shift was almost entirely due to growing skepticism among Americans without four-year degrees—those who never enrolled in college, who took only some classes or who earned a two-year degree.” Josh Mitchell and Douglas Belkin, “Americans Losing Faith in College Degrees, Poll Finds,” Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/americans-losing-faith-in-college-degrees-poll-finds-1504776601. Also: “In the last seven years, Americans have grown more pessimistic about the power of education to lead to success. Even though they see going to college as a fairly achievable goal, a majority—52 percent—think that young people do not need a four-year college education in order to be successful, compared to 44 percent when the same question was posed in 2009.” Lauren Cassani Davis, “Do Americans Believe Hard Work Still Matters?,” Atlantic, January 28, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/american-dream-heartland-poll/431586/.
5. Harry Holzer, “What Do State-Level College and Labor Market Data Teach Us About Higher Education Policy?,” American Institutes for Research, June 23, 2015, www.air.org/resource/what-do-state-level-college-and-labor-market-data-teach-us-about-higher-education-policy.
6. Andrew P. Kelly, “Big Payoff, Low Probability: Postsecondary Education and Upward Mobility in America,” in Education for Upward Mobility, ed. Michael J. Petrilli (Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield, November 2015), 43.
7. Paul Fain, “Support Grows for Major Shift in Pell,” Inside Higher Ed, July 10, 2017, www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/10/support-builds-expanding-pell-eligibility-short-term-certificates; and US House of Representatives, Committee on Education and the Workforce, “PROSPER Act: Bill Summary,” January 2018, https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_prosper_act_-_short_summary_-_1.17.18.pdf.
8. See Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Jeff Strohl, Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, June 2010, https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HelpWanted.ExecutiveSummary.pdf; William C. Symonds, Robert Schwartz, and Ronald F. Ferguson, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, February 2011, www.gse.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011-1.pdf; and Holzer, Job Market Polarization and U.S. Worker Skills.
9. Mark Schneider, “A Bachelor’s Degree Isn’t the Only Path to Good Pay,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/a-bachelors-degree-isnt-the-only-path-to-good-pay-1433372775; and Harry J. Holzer and Sandy Baum, Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017).
10. See Jessie Brown and Martin Kurzweil, The Complex Universe of Alternative Postsecondary Credentials and Pathways, Ithaka S+R, 2017, https://amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/CFUE_Alternative-Pathways/CFUE_Alternative-Pathways.pdf; and Michelle Van Noy et al., The Landscape of Noncredit Workforce Education: State Policies and Community College Practices, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, January 2008, https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/noncredit-workforce-education-policy-practice.pdf.
11. Stephanie Cronen and Christina Murphy, Participation in Noncredit Occupational Education and Training, American Institutes for Research, February 2013, https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/gemena/pdf/NoncreditPaper_AIR_Final508.pdf.
12. Stephanie Ewert and Robert Kominski, “Measuring Alternative Educational Credentials: 2012,” US Census Bureau, January 2014, www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p70-138.pdf.
13. See US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, The Adult Training and Education Survey (ATES) Pilot Study: Technical Report, April 2013, iii, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013190.pdf.