| 摘要 | Key Points
The earnings associated with postsecondary education vary significantly based on one’s major and career path, among other things.
Some certificate and associate degree programs in technical and allied health fields at community colleges can result in higher earnings than some bachelor’s degree programs.
Despite evidence that vocational subbaccalaureate certificates and degrees have a relatively high payoff, liberal arts and general studies programs have experienced the most rapid growth in community college enrollments and credentials. This may partially explain the mismatch between graduates’ skills and the skills employers demand.
Community colleges face tremendous structural and policy barriers when trying to create new or expand existing vocational programs, including funding allocation formulas, accreditation requirements, federal regulations, transfer-of-credit policies, and stigmatization of occupational and vocational programs.
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Executive Summary
At a time when employer demand is high for middle-skills workers and employment outcomes for individuals in those jobs are relatively strong, it seems only logical that students would be in hot pursuit of the credentials that qualify them for that work. Education policy analysts have gone to extremes to provide information on post-college earnings and other relevant outcomes to drive students toward programs and majors that result in the best outcomes.
The belief that students will choose better programs if they have access to this information assumes that they have equal access to seats in high-value programs and that the power of choice lies in their hands. For many students, neither assumption holds true. High-value programs may be unavailable to most students because their local community college does not offer them or offers them at times that do not align with a working adult’s schedule. High-value programs also typically have high admissions requirements, so most students have little chance of being accepted.
Economists have provided abundant evidence that holding a certificate or associate degree in general studies (also called liberal arts or the humanities) has little to no economic value, yet these programs are growing at community colleges at a faster rate than vocational or occupational programs with higher market value. Why is this so?
At most institutions, at least part of the answer can be found in state and local funding formulas that ignore the added cost of administering occupational or vocational programs, which can cost four or five times more to run than general studies programs cost. Funding, though, is only part of the problem. A number of structural and policy barriers make it far more difficult for community colleges to start or expand vocational programs. For example, accreditation requirements that favor terminal academic degrees make it challenging to identify qualified vocational instructors, and low wages paid to adjunct faculty make hiring them even more difficult.
In some fields, programmatic accreditation requirements are a problem because they ration the number of institutions that can offer a particular program and sometimes the number of students each program can serve. Programmatic accreditation—and its partner, professional licensure or certification—is a primary reason why, for instance, many students who enter college dreaming of a job in a high-paying field, such as nursing, end up in a lower-paying nursing assistant or patient care program by default.
Federal regulations can also dissuade institutions from expanding vocational programs. For example, the “gainful employment” (GE) regulation designed to sanction proprietary institutions applies to community college certificate programs as well. While the graduate debt-to-income ratios set by the GE rule may not be a problem for community colleges given that taxpayer subsidies keep tuition low, student tracking and reporting requirements add to the administrative cost and burden of offering these programs.
Transfer-of-credit policies also put institutions in a bind when deciding program offerings. Despite their lower market value, four-year institutions are most likely to accept general studies courses in transfer— not applied or vocational courses. Advising a student to enroll in a vocational program could be harmful if the student then decides to transfer and pursue a four-year degree.
Many factors contribute to the mismatch between information on students’ economic outcomes and the proliferation of general studies programs at community colleges. This review highlights these factors and offers suggestions for policy changes that would enable community colleges to more easily fulfill their vocational education mission.
Introduction
At the same time employers lament the difficulty of finding qualified workers to fill well-paying, middle-skills jobs, opportunities to prepare for those jobs at the nation’s community colleges may be growing harder to find.1
According to the National Skills Coalition, middleskills jobs—jobs that require education beyond high school, but below the baccalaureate level—account for 53 percent of the US labor market, while only 43 percent of the country’s workers have education and training that qualify them as a middle-skills workers.2 The argument is then that, if we could just convince more students to enroll in vocational programs at their local community colleges, employers would have the workers they need, workers would have the jobs they need, and the problem would be solved. Naturally, the situation is more complex, especially considering the steadfast emphasis that educators and policymakers have put on attaining a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or university.
Much of the current preoccupation with bachelor’s degrees was born from research such as the 2002 US Census Bureau report The Big Payoff, which used synthetic wage projections to predict that college graduates earn an average of $1 million more over their lifetime than their high school–educated peers.3 While the report’s title captured tremendous attention among policymakers, educators, and journalists, those who cite the report as an impetus for greater investment in higher education typically ignore the qualifying information provided by the authors, including that earnings vary based on factors such as choice of major, geographic location, personal ambition, and decisions about family and work-life balance.
As Mark Schneider, former commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics, has pointed out in prior research,4 college majors matter a great deal to earnings after graduation, perhaps most for students who attend community colleges and are pursuing certificates or associate degrees.5 In a recent study of post-college earnings among graduates of Florida’s public colleges,6 Schneider found that those who completed an associate-level physician assistant (PA) program, on average, were the highest earners five years after graduation—even among bachelor’s degree recipients—with median wages of $112,200 per year. That said, PA programs are highly competitive and most require students to already hold a bachelor’s degree and have considerable health care experience before enrolling.7 To the student who has little chance of being admitted to a PA program, knowing about its high payoff is of little value.
Interestingly, Schneider’s paper also shows that Florida community college graduates with an associate degree in engineering technology8 earn higher median wages ($91,700) than those who hold a bachelor’s degree in aerospace or aeronautical engineering ($80,800), engineering technology ($80,000), or chemical engineering ($78,800). Yet median earnings for those with an associate degree in liberal arts is only $40,800. More generally, some estimates reveal that earning an associate degree in general studies (also called liberal arts or arts and humanities; hereafter referred to as general studies) may have little to no market value above a high school diploma, especially if the student does not go on to earn a bachelor’s degree.9 Indeed, most students who enroll in community colleges expect to transfer to a four-year institution and receive a bachelor’s degree, but only 14 percent actually do.10
Many benefits are associated with higher education other than higher wages—better health outcomes, increased civic participation, more advanced problem-solving capabilities—so it is hard to conclude that the general studies degree is of no value.11 But if a student is pursuing higher education primarily to increase lifetime earnings—and most students report getting a good job and earning higher wages as the primary impetus for going to college12—perhaps admissions letters and college catalogs should include a prominently placed warning that a two-year general studies degree is unlikely to yield any financial return on investment for students who do not go on to complete a bachelor’s degree.
Recognizing that far too many community college students are earning credentials with little to no labor market value, economists Harry Holzer and Sandy Baum recommend in their recent book Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students that more students enroll in vocational programs in lieu of general studies to realize higher earnings premiums.13 The problem is that to heed their sound advice, students must have sufficient vocational programs in which to enroll. Yet these programs— especially in fields with the highest earnings, such as nursing, engineering technology, mechanical and repair technologies, and advanced manufacturing— are actually in relatively short supply.
Some observers have blamed funding mechanisms for the growing abrogation of the career and technical education mission as community colleges shift their emphasis to transfer programs, and funding has undoubtedly affected programming significantly.14 But a more careful examination of the higher education ecosystem reveals that the funding challenges may be secondary to other policies and practices that create barriers to developing responsive career and vocational education programs. Unintended consequences from many well-intentioned policy initiatives and quality-assurance regimes may prevent, or at least distract, community colleges from meeting the education and training needs of their students and communities.
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