Publications
Heterogeneity in Labor Market Returns to Master’s Degrees: Evidence from Ohio
This Annenberg Institute working paper provides up-to-date causal evidence on labor market returns to master’s degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics, and initial labor market conditions.
Healthcare Training Programs in Community Colleges: A Landscape Analysis of Program Availability and Student Completions
This report uses IPEDS data to better understand healthcare training programs and the current role that community colleges play in training healthcare workers, including public health workers.
Assessing College-Credit-in-High-School Programs as On-Ramps to Postsecondary Career Pathways for Underrepresented Students
This brief examines research on five programs—AP, IB, dual enrollment, ECHSs and P-TECHs, and high school CTE with articulated credit—and assesses their potential as large-scale on-ramps to high-quality postsecondary programs for underrepresented students.
Understanding Experiential Learning Through Work-Based College Coursetaking: Evidence From Transcript Data Using a Text Mining Technique
Using an innovative text mining technique on transcript data from a large public college system, this paper examines patterns and post-degree labor market outcomes of taking work-based courses at two-year and four-year colleges in that system.
The Effect of Job Displacement on College Enrollment: Evidence From Ohio
Using employer-employee-student matched administrative data from Ohio, this paper provides the first direct evidence of workers' enrollment responses following mass layoffs in the United States.
Does Taking a Few Courses at a Community College Improve the Baccalaureate, STEM, and Labor Market Outcomes of Four-Year College Students?
Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study and a propensity score matching approach, this paper compares outcomes of four-year college students who earned either 1–10 credits or no credits at a community college.
Preparing for Tomorrow's Middle-Skill Jobs: How Community Colleges Are Responding to Technology Innovation in the Workplace
Based on fieldwork at eight institutions, this report describes how community colleges are responding to workplace technology innovation by adapting their workforce programming, diversifying pathways to certificates and degrees, and addressing equity concerns.
Patterns of Community College Use Among Working Adults
This brief describes results from a nationally representative survey of American workers aged 24–64 to learn what training providers they have used and what their experiences have been with these providers.
Strategies for Improving Postsecondary Credential Attainment Among Black, Hispanic, and Native American Adults
This set of three studies examines what states and community colleges can do to address the needs of racially minoritized adult learners who are pursuing postsecondary education and training as a path to re-employment, better jobs, and higher incomes.
Strengthening Community College Workforce Training
This brief describes the substantial role community colleges play in workforce education, what innovative colleges are doing to improve programming and labor market outcomes for participants, and how the federal government can support these efforts.
Labor Market Trajectories for Community College Graduates: New Evidence Spanning the Great Recession
This paper examines returns to terminal associate degrees and certificates up to 11 years after students initially entered a community college in Ohio. The authors use an individual fixed-effects approach that controls for students’ pre-enrollment earnings and allows the returns to credential completion to vary over time.
The Labor Market Returns to For-Profit Higher Education: Evidence for Transfer Students
This paper examines the labor market gains for students who enrolled at for-profit colleges after beginning their postsecondary education in community college.
The False Dichotomy Between Academic Learning and Occupational Skills
This essay compares broad academic and vocational program goals, embodied skills, tasks, and jobs, with a focus primarily on community college students.
The Evolving Mission of Workforce Development in the Community College
This paper describes how community colleges became a major resource for the nation's workforce development requirements and discusses how this role continues to evolve to meet the needs of students, employers, and local communities.
Timing Matters: How Delaying College Enrollment Affects Earnings Trajectories
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper compares the academic and labor market outcomes of high school graduates who delay college enrollment and those who enroll in college immediately up to 13 years after high school completion.
Credential Production by Field and Labor Market Alignment at Minority-Serving Institutions: A Descriptive Analysis
This CAPSEE working paper compares credential production patterns of minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and non-MSIs by field of study and examines the extent to which they correspond to employment industry clusters in Alabama and California.
KCTCS Enhancing Programs for IT Certification (EPIC)
This report evaluates the implementation and impacts of Enhancing Programs for IT Certification (EPIC), a program that aims to expand access to computer and medical information technology credentials at six Kentucky community colleges.
The Impact of Occupational Licensing on Labor Market Outcomes of College-Educated Workers
This paper identifies the effects of licenses on a set of labor market outcomes for the college-educated workforce using newly available national Current Population Survey data merged with data from the U.S. Department of Labor on state-level, occupation-specific licensing requirements.
Responding to Divergent Trends: Vocational and Transfer Education at Community Colleges
In this article for Change: The Magazine for Higher Learning, CCRC Founding Director and Teachers College President Thomas Bailey outlines the tradeoff between degrees and short-term credentials offered to community college students and describes how the colleges themselves may be able to help resolve this conflict.
Stackable Credentials: Do They Have Labor Market Value?
Using national, survey, and college-system-level datasets, this paper estimates the association between stackable credentials and earnings, finding weakly positive and inconsistent gains from these award combinations.