The dashboard and report are intended to encourage community colleges and state systems to consider what awards they are giving, which of those awards enable students to secure good jobs directly or transfer efficiently to a bachelor’s degree program, and whether certain demographic groups are underrepresented among graduates of programs that have strong post-completion value for employment and transfer or overrepresented among lower value program graduates.
This dashboard uses IPEDS data to classify the more than 1.425 million credit program degrees and certificates that community colleges awarded in academic year 2022-23 by award type. We classify community college awards into seven award types: (1) community college bachelor’s degrees, (2) transfer associate degrees, (3) workforce associate degrees, (4) workforce long certificates, (5) workforce short certificates, (6) general education long certificates, and (7) general education short certificates.
The dashboard also provides data on the median College Scorecard earnings two years post-completion associated with particular awards and the gender and race/ethnicity of awardees. In addition, users can compare community college transfer associate degrees with bachelor’s degrees awarded by public four-year institutions by program area. All the data are available at the national, state, and individual institution levels.
What types of awards do community college students complete, and what are their associated earnings after graduation?
For community colleges and state systems that want to examine the post-completion value of their awards, it helps to organize data by program area and award level. The dashboard includes a treemap (tab 1) that shows the number of awards by program area and award type, as shown below, and a bar graph (tab 2) with the number of awards by program area and award type, also shown below. In both cases, hovering the cursor over one of the boxes shows the associated median College Scorecard earnings two years post-completion.
For example, the image of the dashboard below, which includes data on all awards conferred by community colleges nationally in 2022-23, shows the median earnings for graduates of transfer associate degrees in liberal or general studies, the most common credential awarded by community colleges annually. The median is around $24,000 (in 2019 dollars), which is equivalent to $12 per hour full-time—well below a living wage. In general, transfer associate degrees are not associated with earnings near or above a living wage. Thus, they are mainly valuable to the extent that students are able to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree with few excess credits.
Community College Awards (2022-23) by Program Area and Award Type With Associated College Scorecard Earnings (2019 dollars) Two Years Post-Completion
As you can see below, the largest type of community college awards in 2022-23 is transfer associate degrees (about 500,000 nationally), followed by workforce short certificates and workforce associate degrees. Liberal or general studies are the most common program area for transfer associate degrees and general education certificates. Many workforce awards are in healthcare, industrial technology and trades, and business. Hovering the cursor over a given box shows the number of awards and median earnings associated with the award.
Community College Awards (2022-23) by Award Type and Program Area With Associated College Scorecard Earnings (2019 dollars) Two Years Post-Completion
Tab 3 of the dashboard includes a table showing the number of awards by program area, field, CIP program name, and award type. Tab 4 includes a table with the number of awards by program area, field, program name, and award type with the associated earnings two years post-completion, plus the share of awardees by gender and race/ethnicity.
How well aligned are community college transfer associate degrees with four-year bachelor’s degree program majors?
Research shows that community college transfer programs that are not aligned with students’ bachelor’s programs can lead students to take more credits than they need.
The dashboard includes a two-panel bar graph (tab 6, shown below) and a table (tab 5) that allow users to compare the number of community college transfer associate degrees with bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2022-23 by public four-year institutions, broken down by major. Users can choose to show the data nationally, by state, or for pairs of community colleges and public four-year institutions.
Community College Transfer Associate Degrees Compared to Public Four-Year Bachelor’s Degrees by Program Area (2022-23)
Over 300,000 (about 60%) of the transfer associate degrees community colleges awarded in 2023-24 are in liberal and general studies, compared with just over 47,000 (or about 3.5%) of bachelor’s degrees awarded by public four-year institutions. In contrast, just over 51,000 (or about 10%) of community college transfer associate degrees are in STEM fields, compared with over 324,000 (or 24%) of bachelor’s degrees awarded by public four-year institutions.
The data presented in this dashboard and the companion report are designed to encourage college and system leaders to ask questions about whether their programs are worth completing and whether graduates of higher value programs are representative of their larger student bodies and the communities they serve. These data are admittedly high level. For colleges and systems that want to do a more in-depth assessment of the post-completion value of their workforce and transfer programs using their own data, CCRC and the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program have developed a more detailed guide and data tool.
Funding for this work was provided by Ascendium Education Group.
