Publications

This report uses IPEDS and College Scorecard data to classify the credentials awarded by community colleges in 2022-23 and to assess which credentials are and are not likely to enable students to secure a living-wage job or transfer efficiently in a major.

Using administrative data, this paper analyzes Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3)—a free community college initiative that Virginia implemented in 2021—and shows that both institutions and students responded to the tuition-free messaging and eligibility criteria.

This program classification guidebook and accompanying data analysis and visualization tools from the Aspen Institute and CCRC can be useful for community colleges seeking to increase the number of students in high-value programs and decrease the number in lower value pathways.

This ARCC Network brief uses enrollment and outcome data as well as interview data from eight colleges implementing the Get A Skill, Get A Job, Get Ahead (G3) program to examine college-level G3 outreach, recruitment, and enrollment strategies and the process for awarding G3 aid.

In this Call to Action, CCRC shares five insights from a recent symposium on the role community colleges can play in addressing climate change, with the goal of supporting work currently underway and galvanizing further efforts to prepare workers for the green economy.

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.

Using administrative data from CUNY, this brief explores the role that community colleges play in contributing to degrees awarded in education, and it considers how the transfer experience for students interested in pursuing careers as teachers can be improved.

This report argues that a more inclusive definition of STEM that accounts for STEM-oriented technical training programs would better represent the contribution community colleges make to STEM education and the STEM workforce.

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.

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.

Using administrative data from the City University of New York (CUNY), this paper examines the impact of the summer Pell program on community college student persistence, completion, and employment outcomes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper examines the labor market gains for students who enrolled at for-profit colleges after beginning their postsecondary education in community college.

This essay compares broad academic and vocational program goals, embodied skills, tasks, and jobs, with a focus primarily on community college students.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this CAPSEE working paper examines nonpecuniary labor market outcomes associated with different levels of postsecondary educational attainment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper addresses empirical challenges in identifying stackable credentials, distinguishes three types of stackable awards, and estimates the number of persons who earn such awards. It then discusses the utility of these awards in meeting labor market demands and needs of students.

This CAPSEE working paper reviews results from fixed effects models of the earnings gains from completing an associate degree and compares them with ordinary least squares model estimates.

This CAPSEE working paper and accompanying brief review recent evidence from eight states on the labor market returns to credit accumulation, certificates, and associate degrees from community colleges using large-scale, statewide administrative datasets.

This CAPSEE working paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to provide new, nationally representative, non-experimental estimates of the returns to degrees, as well as to assess the possible limitations of single-state, administrative-data-based estimates.

This NBER working paper uses state administrative data and unemployment records to construct a variety of possible institution-level labor market outcome metrics to explore how sensitive institutional ratings are to the choice of labor market metric, length of follow-up, and inclusion of adjustments for student characteristics.

Using proximity to the closest four-year college as an instrumental variable, this CAPSEE working paper analyzes public higher education data from an anonymous state to examine how enrolling in summer credits can impact college and labor market outcomes.

This book chapter replicates and extends analyses completed in other statewide studies and estimates returns to credentials and credit accumulation for first-time college students who enrolled in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) in 2004–2005 using a classic Mincerian approach.

This paper utilizes two complementary quasi-experimental strategies to identify causal effects of the WV PROMISE scholarship, a broad-based state merit aid program, up to 10 years post–college entry and examine important outcomes that have not previously been examined, including homeownership, neighborhood characteristics, and financial management.

Using national data on baccalaureate recipients in 1993 and 2008, this CAPSEE working paper examines labor market and debt outcomes four years after students graduate, with a focus on exploring heterogeneity by institution type and major, as well as trends over time.

This CAPSEE working paper provides a classification scheme for sub-baccalaureate STEM programs and, using data from Virginia, analyzes short-term earnings returns to community college STEM credentials.

This study documents the specific ways that community college career-technical programs are structured to support student success, and it provides a framework for examining structure to inform practice and guide future research efforts.

Using longitudinal student-unit record data linked to wage record data, this paper estimates the labor market returns to developmental credits versus college-level credits in two states.

This CAPSEE working paper examines the effects of four-year to two-year college transfer on “struggling” students, or those who earned less than a 3.0 grade point average in the first term.

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this CAPSEE working paper examines how and why the community college pathway to a baccalaureate influences students’ degree attainment and short-term labor market performance.

This paper introduces a piecewise growth approach to analyzing labor market outcomes of students, and it discusses how insights gained from the approach can be used to strengthen econometric analyses of labor market returns.

Based on administrative data from two state community college systems, this paper explores the relationship between earning a certificate and students’ post-college earnings and employment status.

This CAPSEE working paper examines the returns to education for large numbers of young workers in Arkansas over the period before, during, and after the Great Recession.

This CAPSEE working paper examines the returns to math courses relative to the returns to other courses for students who started their postsecondary education at community college.

This CAPSEE working paper examines student outcomes at six community colleges in North Carolina that had co-located American Job Centers on their campuses.

Using matched college transcript and earnings data on over 80,000 students entering community college during the 2000s, this CAPSEE working paper examines the returns to math courses.

Using a novel method for linking non-completers with completers, this paper calculates the labor market returns to programs of study, accounting both for those who obtain an award and those who do not.

In this study, the authors examine medium-term returns to diplomas, certificates, and degrees for first-time college students who enrolled in the North Carolina Community College System in 2002–03.

This study provides one of the first estimates of the returns to different types of community college credentials across different fields of study.

Using data on credit accumulation, award receipt, and earnings, this paper examines whether it is better for students to earn an associate degree before transferring to a four-year college.

Thomas Bailey and Clive Belfield consider the role of community colleges, with particular attention to the benefits to workers (as measured by earnings) of certificates and degrees by field of study.

This study examines the structure of community college career-technical programs and its association with program completion.

This NCPR working paper compares outcomes of students who participated in dual enrollment courses through the Concurrent Courses Initiative with those of similar students who did not participate.

Based on fieldwork in two distinct labor markets, this paper compares how associate and bachelor's degrees are perceived by employers seeking to hire IT technicians.

This National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper examines working patterns among traditional-age college students from 1970–2009, considers several explanations for the long-term trend of rising employment, and examines whether the upward trend is likely to resume when economic conditions improve.

This paper uses administrative data from Washington State to compare the outcomes of young career-technical students across both technical colleges and comprehensive community colleges

The I-BEST program at Washington State's community and technical colleges integrates basic skills education with vocational training and has increased completion rates for participating students.

This article reviews the existing literature on the economic and other benefits of attending community college and considers the methodological challenges associated with calculating earnings gains from attending a community college.

Using data on students in Washington State who pursued IT coursework at community colleges and then entered the labor market, this paper presents findings on the employment outcomes of IT students by the type of preparation they completed, and on the types of employers that hired these students.

CCRC examined educational and labor market outcomes of participants in I-BEST, which aims to help adult basic skills students succeed in postsecondary occupational education and training.

This brief describes how state workforce agencies can link education and workforce data to monitor how well their education and workforce development investments are meeting labor market needs.

Prepared for a Human Resources Development Group Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), this paper discusses a range of issues relevant to the community college mission of helping prepare a skilled workforce for jobs offering reasonable wages.

This paper makes the case for the training hour as the basic unit of measurement for noncredit workforce education programs and proposes a taxonomy of community college noncredit activities.

Drawing on a national review of state policies and case studies of 20 community colleges, this article examines trends in noncredit courses connected with workforce instruction and contract training.

This article elaborates on the increased importance of community colleges in training, retraining, and providing higher education in the recent economic downturn.

This paper presents findings from a study on the outcomes of students participating in Washington State's I-BEST program, which combines basic skills instruction with career-technical instruction.

This report provides detailed findings on state policies and community college practice from CCRC's study of community college noncredit workforce education.

This guide offers strategies for providing adults with education and training to help them access opportunities for social mobility and secure jobs that pay wages sufficient to support a family.

This paper presents a typology of the institutional partnerships in which community colleges engage so that policymakers can develop fiscal and regulatory policy to support such activities.

In this paper, the author argues for a new paradigm in federal workforce education policy, one that privileges capacity-building over compliance.

This guide aims to help community colleges and state agencies analyze the labor market outcomes of their programs and identify opportunities for improving students' employment outcomes.

This essay describes the characteristics of community college students and discusses the role of the community college in increasing access to higher education by traditionally underserved students.

This paper analyzes how effective ATE regional centers, which work with community colleges and businesses in a single region to improve technical education, have been in meeting their goals.

This article explores the evolution of the workforce development role of the community college, its interactions with other missions of the college, and the current crisis facing workforce development.

This article calls for community colleges, on behalf of their students, to join the national discussion of how income and wealth are created.

This article reports on a study that tracked the academic progress of a cohort of nursing aspirants over a three-year period.

This article examines horizontal and vertical workforce transitions and how a global economy and the need to train new subpopulations of future workers will cause community colleges to approach their roles in workforce training differently.

This report identifies ways in which state policies can support students’ academic and labor market success by creating coherent systems of preparation for students entering technical fields.

This paper discusses how economic, political, social, and demographic factors are changing in ways that will likely increase educational inequality in the United States and hamper productivity growth.

This chapter in Career Pathways: Education With a Purpose explains the differences between articulation (which is predominant in typical Tech Prep consortia) and dual enrollment.

The authors examine whether postsecondary occupational students, particularly sub-baccalaureate students, are more likely than other types of postsecondary students to achieve educational goals.

This article discusses the economic effects of a community college education using the latest available nationally representative dataset. The authors find substantial evidence that a community college education has positive effects on earnings among young workers, especially those who earn an associate degree.

The authors reveal the allure and the fallacy of the American belief that more schooling for more people is the remedy for all our social and economic problems.

This report presents findings from a first-of-its kind study on the experience and outcomes of low-skill adults in community colleges.

This report estimates the returns to a sub-baccalaureate education in response to the debate centered on whether vocational education restricts access to a four-year college.

This brief presents a profile of the enrollment, demographic, and educational characteristics and educational goals of community college students in occupational programs.

Institutionalization and Sustainability of the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education Program

This literature review examines research on the effectiveness of school-based career guidance and development programs.

This book explores the potential for using work-based learning as part of a broad education reform strategy.

This paper discusses the process and impact of the ATE innovation from several different dimensions by examining instructional and institutional factors that affect the process of curriculum integration.

This paper discusses the economic returns to education for African American and Hispanic students and the performance of community colleges in increasing college access for ethnic minority students.

This article discusses the potential of noncredit education in community colleges as a bridge to college for the most disadvantaged youth and adults.

This report, commissioned by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) of the U.S. Department of Education, examines the rationale for federal involvement in occupational education.

This report is a quantitative analysis of postsecondary occupational education students using national datasets.

This report examines community colleges' successes and failures in their role as a bridge to opportunity for disadvantaged students and discusses changes they could make to be more effective in this role.

This book chapter examines the rise of the school-to-work movement in the late 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s, and discusses work-based learning pedagogies.

This monograph explores the nurse licensure debate, what is known about the programmatic differences between pre-licensure programs, and research on the job performance of ADN- and BSN-educated nurses.

This report reviews the available evidence on the economic benefits of postsecondary education below the level of the baccalaureate degree, concentrating on the effects of community colleges.

This nine-part series presents case material from a study of curriculum and pedagogy for integrated instruction in seven community colleges across the country.

This book chapter features a credible discussion of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act.

This book chapter discusses issues pertaining to tech prep programs, which link students’ secondary and postsecondary education experiences and help ...

This book chapter, published in Higher Education in the United States: An Encyclopedia, provides an overview of occupational education in higher education.

This book chapter discusses changing labor demands in the information economy and how workforce development at community colleges can meet those demands.

This book chapter examines pedagogical complexity and institutional diversity within vocational and occupational education.

This paper discusses how the potential richness and complexity of vocational instruction are often undeveloped within the classroom and unrecognized by academic instructors and administrators.

This article in New Directions for Community Colleges discusses the Workforce Investment Act and its impact on workforce development at community colleges.

This journal, edited by former CCRC affiliate Debra Bragg, reveals how "new vocationalism" in community colleges plays an increasingly prominent role in the new economy.

This article in New Directions for Community Colleges examines emerging systems of workforce development and the role of community colleges.

This journal article discusses partnerships between community colleges and local communities that aim to enhance workforce development.

This journal article provides definitions, principles, and models to illuminate the meaning and importance of the new vocationalism in American community colleges.

This article discusses how postsecondary occupational education must become more responsive to contemporary labor market needs through redesigning workforce development.

This journal article argues that integrating academic and occupational education has potential as an educational reform in community colleges but needs to be systematically evaluated.

This book chapter, published in Learning.Now: Skills for an Information Economy, discusses the increasing need for information-based workforce preparation in community colleges.

This report presents case studies of seven community colleges that used curriculum and pedagogy to integrate academic and occupational education.

This article analyzes the content, origins, and impact of the community college's growing involvement in contracting with employers to train current or prospective employees in job and academic skills.

This paper analyzes the new economic role of the community college by examining its role in workforce development for five different industries.

This paper examines four community colleges in the United States and Europe and their role in local economic development.

This book addresses the why and how of vocational education evaluation, and discusses the use and abuse of available evaluation results in policymaking.

This CCRC brief discusses labor market outcome findings from five states that are in the lead in using Unemployment Insurance (UI) data.

While community colleges serve many goals and missions, their occupational purposes are central. This brief uses national data to evaluate the economic benefits of sub-baccalaureate education.

Drawing on site visits to four community colleges, this paper examines how community colleges are responding to workforce preparation pressures.

This paper outlines an agenda for research on postsecondary vocational education that can be carried out with existing data.

This study looks at workforce development activities at seven community colleges and outlines priorities for future research.

This paper presented at the Independent Advisory Panel Meeting, National Assessment of Vocational Education, examines how vocational education differs at the secondary and postsecondary levels.

This book chapter, published by the American Youth Policy Forum, discusses shaky prospects for successful passages to productive adult lives.

This monograph describes and provides examples of exemplary career preparation programs that avoid the separation between theory and practice.

This paper discusses the rise of the entrepreneurial college and tensions within the comprehensive community college.

This monograph describes two innovations—curriculum integration and Tech Prep—that emerged independently of federal funding and that have widespread support.