Publications
Search our database of publications.
This database brings together published research on noncredit programs, including journal articles, briefs, research reports, working papers, and blogs
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Finance, Policy, State Data Infrastructure
- Michelle Van Noy, Mark D’Amico, and Monica Kerrigan
States are beginning to implement the new Workforce Pell Grant program, but only a small number of short-term training programs have been approved so far as states and institutions work through new eligibility, approval, and data-reporting requirements. The authors emphasizes that it is too early to judge the program’s impact, with experts expecting adoption to increase gradually as implementation processes mature and more programs qualify.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes
Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes state that with nearly two million nondegree credentials available, measuring quality requires a multidimensional framework that considers program design, demonstrated competencies, learner and employer outcomes, and the market systems that make credentials recognizable and valuable. They emphasize that quality information must be communicated clearly—through accessible, consumer-friendly metrics—to help learners, employers, and policymakers make informed decisions and strengthen accountability as Workforce Pell expands.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Dan Douglas, Justin Vinton, and Michelle Van Noy
Michelle Van Noy and her co-authors explain that defining completion and success in nondegree workforce programs is much more complicated than in traditional degree programs because program lengths, stackable credentials, and student goals vary widely. They believe states and institutions should develop more nuanced definitions of progress and completion—especially in light of Workforce Pell requirements—that recognize meaningful milestones while supporting accurate measurement of student outcomes and labor market success.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Program Quality
- Di Xu, Kelli A. Bird, Michael Cooper, Benjamin L. Castleman
Di Xu explores how industry-recognized credentials influence workers’ earnings and career mobility. Published in the Journal of Public Economics, the study examines data from approximately 36,000 learners enrolled in Virginia’s FastForward program. Di Xu and her coauthors found that learners who earned an industry-recognized credential increased their quarterly earnings by an average of nearly 10 percent compared to their earnings before enrolling in the program. They were also more likely to transition into higher-paying industries than participants who completed training but did not earn a credential.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Publications, Reports
- Policy, State Data Infrastructure
- Michelle Van Noy and Mark D’Amico
Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy explain that Workforce Pell should be viewed as more than a new financial aid program—it is an opportunity for states and community colleges to strengthen the data systems, governance, and accountability needed to support high-quality noncredit workforce education. They urge college trustees to use Workforce Pell as a catalyst for building long-term infrastructure that improves student outcomes, workforce alignment, and the value of short-term credentials beyond the program’s initial implementation.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Peter Bahr, Mark D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, and Di Xu
Workforce Pell expands federal aid eligibility to some short-term and noncredit programs, but only those that meet strict requirements related to program length, outcomes, and demonstrated value. These criteria create significant barriers, meaning many existing noncredit programs will not qualify without improved data systems and stronger alignment with workforce and credit pathways. As a result, the policy’s impact on access will depend on institutions’ ability to meet these accountability standards.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Colorado (CO), New Jersey (NJ)
- Tom Hilliard and Mark D’Amico
The authors state that Colorado and New Jersey are developing different approaches to evaluating the quality of nondegree credentials, reflecting each state’s policy priorities, workforce needs, and available data. They highlight how these early efforts can inform other states by demonstrating the importance of aligning quality measures with learner outcomes, employer demand, and strong data systems.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Tom Hilliard and Michelle Van Noy
the authors argue that states and colleges lack critical data on whether learners actually earn many nondegree certifications and licenses because credential attainment is often held by third-party issuers rather than education providers or state agencies. They describe the CredLens initiative as a national data trust designed to securely connect credential attainment, education, and employment data, enabling policymakers and institutions to better evaluate program quality, student outcomes, and the labor market value of nondegree credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Tom Hilliard and Michelle Van Noy
How are accreditors are adapting to the growing role of nondegree credentials as federal policy changes, including Workforce Pell, increase demand for quality assurance beyond traditional degree programs? Authors Michelle Van Noy and Thomas Hilliard argue that accreditors will likely play a larger role in evaluating the quality and effectiveness of nondegree offerings while balancing innovation, accountability, and the diverse purposes these credentials serve.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Noah Geisel, Scott Cheney, Michelle Van Noy, Hironao Okahana, and Melanie Gottlieb
The authors, including Michelle Van Noy, propose creating a standardized “nutrition label” for credentials that clearly communicates what learners gain from a credential—including skills, cost, duration, quality indicators, transferability, and employment outcomes—rather than focusing primarily on what the credential is called. It argues that greater transparency and consistent information would help learners, employers, and policymakers compare credentials, make informed decisions, and better understand their value in the labor marke
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy
Nondegree credentials serve many different purposes—from preparing learners for entry into an occupation to helping incumbent workers build targeted skills or meet continuing education requirements—so they should not be treated as a single category. According to author Michelle Van Noy, because programs are designed with different goals in mind, policymakers and educators should evaluate them using expectations and outcome measures that align with each credential’s intended purpose rather than applying one standard to all.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Program Quality
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D’Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Jackson Yan
The authors, including Peter Bahr and Mark D’Amico, examine whether community college students who start in noncredit programs later transition into credit coursework in the same field of study, finding that while relatively few students make the transition overall (6% in Iowa and 23% in California), many who do are able to “bridge” into related credit programs—29% of transitioners in Iowa and 53% in California. It concludes that bridging is most common in occupational fields in Iowa and precollege remediation fields in California, suggesting that programs with high enrollment, transition, and bridge rates are promising targets for strengthening pathways from noncredit to credit education.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Peter Bahr
Millions of community college students enroll in noncredit programs every year—most in occupational training—but there are few large-scale studies of how these programs affect students’ labor market opportunities. Here, we estimate returns to community college noncredit occupational training by applying individual fixed effects models to longitudinal administrative data from Texas. We find a modest but statistically significant increase in average quarterly earnings of approximately $2,000 per year (2019 dollars), emerging during the 2 years after training. This is a 3.8% increase over average pre-training earnings and is commensurate in magnitude with the typically short duration of the training, averaging about 90 hours. Returns vary by field of study, training type, training duration, and number of training spells. Our findings speak directly to ongoing policy discussions and rulemaking regarding the implementation of Workforce Pell Grants, which provide funding for short-term training, potentially including some community college noncredit programs. Our findings also inform state-level policy initiatives aimed at strengthening workforce readiness in priority industries—efforts that often rely on community colleges as central partners.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
With the passage of H.R. 1 on July 4, 2025, Workforce Pell, which authorizes Pell Grants for programs as short as 150 hours and 8 weeks, is now a reality. Workforce Pell will open the door for many students to use federal need-based aid for noncredit community college education programs that meet the many articulated guardrails. Over time, literature on short-term programs and related credentials have shown modest labor market gains, which necessitates discussions of quality and value established through data. Findings presented from the State Noncredit Data Project show how community college noncredit course/programs often fall short of the mandated duration for Workforce Pell, and many state data repositories do not capture all of the data needed to identify noncredit offerings that are potentially eligible. The Noncredit Data Taxonomy 2.0 may help states and institutions consider data elements needed for Workforce Pell and better document the community college noncredit mission and outcomes.
Read the summary.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Recordings
- Enrollment
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
The brief examines enrollment patterns among noncredit and credit students in Iowa and California community colleges and finds that most students remain in the type of program where they initially enroll, with relatively few transitioning from noncredit to credit coursework. Transition rates are substantially higher in California than Iowa, reflecting differences in how the states use noncredit education, and the authors suggest that stronger pathways between noncredit and credit programs could improve students’ opportunities for continued education and credential attainment.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D'Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
Based on the brief, the authors found that students who begin in noncredit community college programs rarely transition into credit-bearing programs, although transition patterns differ substantially between states, with California showing much higher rates than Iowa due to differences in how noncredit education is structured. The findings suggest that while noncredit education serves an important role for workforce training and basic skills development, colleges and policymakers could improve student outcomes by strengthening pathways, articulation agreements, and credit-for-prior-learning policies that make it easier for students to move from noncredit to credit programs.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, State Data Infrastructure
- Maryland (MD), New Jersey (NJ), Oregon (OR), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN)
- Michelle Van Noy, Mark D’Amico, Eliza K. Peterson, Justin Vinton, Tom Hilliard, Anjali Srivastava, Di Xu, Pete Riley Bahr
Interest in noncredit education has been mounting as many Americans seek pathways for social mobility other than a four-year college degree. Noncredit education and the non-degree credentials (NDCs) to which noncredit education can lead (e.g., certificates, certifications, licenses, badges, and microcredentials) are increasingly viewed as possible alternative pathways. Recent surveys have found that 29% of adults think that getting a four-year college degree is not worth the time, money, and effort involved, and that more than two-thirds of adults interested in a postsecondary option want to pursue a non-degree pathway—up from about one-half in the year prior. At the same time, state funding for short-term educational programs has been increasing, approaching $4 billion in investments.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- Maryland (MD)
- Di Xu, Eliza K. Peterson, Ann Kellogg, Hongjiao Li, Xunfei Li, Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- Tennessee (TN)
- Eliza K. Peterson, Mark D'Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decisionmaking. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- South Carolina (SC)
- Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision-making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Anjali Srivastava and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Justin Vinton and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Anjali Srivastava, Michelle Van Noy, Thomas Hilliard
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision- making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings with tates will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- State Data Infrastructure
- Oregon (OR)
- Peter Riley Bahr, Eliza Peterson, KC Andrew, Kelly Zinck, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision-making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types award noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- South Carolina (SC)
- Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
With support from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics/National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center (EERC) and key partners
at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Michigan, and University of California–Irvine are working with state leaders from across the country to examine noncredit data in the service of three key goals:
- Develop an inventory of and consistent operational definitions for state-level noncredit data elements to better understand the noncredit data infrastructure.
- Collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to better understand those offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and funding arrangements.
- Uncover the drivers of noncredit offerings and produce relevant policy implications.
In addition to this analysis, the project convenes a National Learning Community of states on data for noncredit education and non-degree credentials. This project seeks to lay the groundwork for a common definitional language for future data collection and analysis efforts to improve the understanding of the value and quality of noncredit programs and non-degree credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance
- Virginia (VA)
- Betsy L. Tessler, Kelsey Brown and Di Xu
Across the country, as technology continues to advance rapidly, the labor market exhibits a growing need for workers who receive frequent and ongoing skill development. Employers in many fields struggle to find adequately trained workers to meet their needs. Community college noncredit career and technical education (CTE) programs are an important contributor to skill and workforce development and help to close this “skills gap.”
This brief summarizes early findings from a study of FastForward, which uses a pay-for-performance model to fund noncredit CTE programs at the 23 colleges in the Virginia Community College System. FastForward aims to increase the supply of workers who receive credentials for high-demand occupations in Virginia. The FastForward study is focused on identifying institutional and programmatic factors that may influence learners’ academic and labor market outcomes. This brief presents findings on the different approaches used by colleges and programs to deliver training, student and staff experiences in these CTE programs, and students’ academic and labor market outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D’Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
We use administrative data on millions of noncredit and credit students in Iowa and California community colleges to examine the most common enrollment patterns among community college entrants, students who first enrolled exclusively in noncredit education, and students who first enrolled in noncredit education and then later enrolled in credit coursework.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Working Papers
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Di Xu, Kelli A. Bird, Michael Cooper, Benjamin L. Castleman
Many public workforce training programs lead to industry-recognized, third-party awarded credentials, but little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of these credentials in the labor market. This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market returns to industry-recognized credentials connected to community college workforce noncredit training programs. Based on novel data that includes approximately 24,000 working-age adults enrolled in noncredit workforce training programs at the Virginia Community College System, we employ a comparative individual-level fixed effects model to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes and earnings time-trends. Our results indicate that earning an industry-recognized credential, on average, increases quarterly earnings by approximately $1,000 and the probability of being employed by 2.4 percentage points, although there is substantial heterogeneity in economic return across different program fields. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the earnings gains associated with the industry credential obtained through the noncredit workforce training would exceed program costs in just over half a year on average.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Michelle Van Noy, Sam Scovill and Nicole Sandelier Boyd
Noncredit education and non-degree credentials (NDCs) are increasingly valued by students and policymakers. Yet data in this field is scarce and findings on student outcomes are limited and difficult to interpret and compare. This study reviews a core group of articles on noncredit and NDC outcomes, focusing on completion, wages, and employment.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Blog, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, Student Voices/Perspectives, State Data Infrastructure
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Benjamin Castleman, and Betsy Tessler
With rapid technological advances, the U.S. labor market exhibits a growing need for more frequent and ongoing skill development. Community college noncredit career and technical education (CTE) programs that allow students to complete workforce training and earn credentials play an essential role in providing workers with the skills they need to compete for jobs in high-demand fields. Yet, there is a dearth of research on these programs because noncredit students are typically not included in state and national postsecondary datasets. In this guest blog for CTE Month, researchers Di Xu, Benjamin Castleman, and Betsy Tessler discuss their IES-funded exploration study in which they build on a long-standing research partnership with the Virginia Community College System and leverage a variety of data sources to investigate the Commonwealth’s FastForward programs. These programs are noncredit CTE programs designed to lead to an industry-recognized credential in one of several high-demand fields identified by the Virginia Workforce Board.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Blog
- Outcomes, Student Voices/Perspectives
- Meni Sarris and Peter Bahr
This is the trancription of Dr. Peter Bahr’s conversation with Meni Sarris his podcast, The Education Beyond Degrees. Read their conversation about Dr. Bahr’s research and how the overlap of serving our communities and higher education has become critical as the needs of our students change.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Program Quality, Student Voices/Perspectives
- Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, Peter Bahr, Di Xu
With support from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics/ National Science Foundation, the Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center (EERC) and key partners at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Michigan, and University of California, Irvine, are working with state leaders across the country to examine noncredit data. Our study is guided by four key goals: increase understanding of noncredit data infrastructure by developing an inventory of and consistent operational definitions for state-level noncredit data elements; collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to explore noncredit offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and financial arrangements; Uncover the operational and policy drivers of noncredit offerings; Provide relevant policy implications.
In addition, the project is convening a learning community of states on data for noncredit education and nondegree credentials. This project lays the groundwork for developing a common definitional language for use
in future data collection and analysis efforts with the overarching
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper and Benjamin Castleman
Industry-recognized certificates are one of the most common credential types associated with public workforce training programs, but little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of these credentials in the labor market. This paper provides one of the the first quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market returns to industry-recognized credentials connected to community college workforce noncredit training programs. Based on a novel data that includes approximately 24,000 working-age adults enrolled in noncredit workforce training programs at the Virginia Community College System, we estimate an individual-level fixed effects model to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes and earnings time-trends. Our results indicate that earning an industry-recognized credential on average increases quarterly earnings by approximately $1,000 and the probability of being employed by 2.4 percentage points, although there is substantial heterogeneity in economic return across different fields of study. We also find that the noncredit workforce training programs enroll a different segment of the population than credit-bearing programs at community colleges, thus providing an important alternative pathway to workforce opportunities for populations traditionally underrepresented in the credit-bearing sector.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Sabrina Solanki, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper and Benjamin Castleman
This report presents initial findings from a comprehensive study being undertaken to examine noncredit CTE programs offered within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). In 2016, the Virginia legislature, through HB66, passed legislation to expand participation in community college noncredit CTE programs. These programs are commonly known in Virginia as “FastForward” programs. A key component of this initiative is an innovative funding mechanism, the New Economy Workforce Credential Grant (WCG), which is a cost-sharing pay for-performance model (described in more detail below). The programs covered under this initiative are those that lead to an industry-recognized credential in a high-demand field; our analyses focus on this subset of eligible “FastForward programs.” We capitalize on this data to generate additional robust evidence about the academic and labor market outcomes of students enrolled in FastForward programs. In this report, we focus on our analyses related to participant composition, program success, and the relationship between noncredit and credit enrollment.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- California (CA), Iowa (IA)
- Bahr, P.R., Christensen, C., Columbus, R. May-Trifiletti, J. & Yan, J.
We use administrative data on hundreds of thousands of noncredit and credit students in Iowa and California community colleges to examine the demographic characteristics of those who first enroll in noncredit or credit education as well as those who transition from noncredit to credit education and those who do not.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Bahr, P. R., & Columbus, R
Millions of students enroll in community colleges noncredit programs every year—most in occupational training—but there are few large-scale studies of their effectiveness in increasing students’ employment opportunities and earnings. In this study, we applied individual fixed effects models to state longitudinal administrative data from Texas to estimate the labor market returns to community college noncredit occupational education. We find a modest but statistically significant increase in average quarterly earnings exceeding $500 per quarter (2019 dollars). Returns vary by duration of training, field of study, and number of training spells. Our findings speak to ongoing national policy debates about expansion of Pell Grant eligibility to include some community college noncredit programs, as well numerous state efforts to increase workforce readiness.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Texas (TX)
- Peter Bahr, Rooney Columbus, Samuel Kaser, ,Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Cody Christensen and Kennan Cepa
We leverage administrative data on over 1.6 million students who initially enrolled in noncredit or for-credit programs at Texas community colleges between academic years 2013-14 and 2017-18. We address the following research questions: who enrolls in noncredit education in Texas? How are noncredit enrollees different from for-credit students? What types of courses do noncredit students take? What kinds of enrollment behaviors and academic outcomes do noncredit students experience? Do noncredit students later participate in for-credit programs of study?
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- State Data Infrastructure
- Iowa (IA), Louisiana (LA), Virginia (VA)
- Mark D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, Anjali Srivastava, Peter Bahr, and Di Xu
This report follows a series of state-level reports on Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia that explored the noncredit data infrastructure and presented descriptive analyses of data at the course/program level for each individual state.
The findings presented in each of these reports, including the current report that synthesizes results across the three states, were derived through a collaborative approach involving leaders from all three partner states. Research team members worked closely with state leaders to identify data elements pertaining to community college noncredit offerings at the course/program level, which is our unit of analysis for this project, captured at the state level. Further, the research team gathered information on the policy context for noncredit offerings, including state-level data collection that frame what data are available and why. By examining the data elements on noncredit education available in each state, the research team compared these findings both to develop a set of common operational definitions and data inventory as well as to better understand the similarities and differences in noncredit programming and data availability.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Louisiana (LA)
- Peter Bahr, Amy Cable, Mark D'Amico, and Michelle Van Noy
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- Iowa (IA)
- Bahr, P. R., Columbus, R., and May-Trifiletti, J
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy, Katherine Hughes, and Genevive Bjorn
Community colleges are a major source of non-degree credentials (NDCs) through their noncredit workforce education offerings. NDCs include certificates, certifications, licenses, badges, and micro-redentials (Credential Engine, 2019). Colleges award certificates and also prepare students to obtain certifications and licensure. Noncredit education has long been a part of community colleges across the nation, with enrollment levels almost matching credit enrollments (AACC, 2021; Jacoby, 2021). Credentials earned in noncredit programs are gaining increasing attention for their potential to provide swift access to career opportunities. Some have argued that noncredit programs may also expand the accessibility of higher education for students who have not attended college before and need shorter and more flexible postsecondary opportunities (Grubb, Badway, & Bell, 2003; Van Noy et al., 2008; D’Amico et al., 2019). Since the pandemic, increasing numbers of adults nationally report they prefer non-degree pathways that can be completed quickly to degree programs (Strada, 2020; Cengage, 2022). At the same time, a rising number of states have become interested in supporting NDCs. In this context, it is imperative to better understand if these programs and credentials are a worthwhile investment of time and resources.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Catherine Finnegan, Marina Bagreev, XunFei Li, Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Today, more than two-thirds of US adults considering further education report that they prefer a non-degree option—up from about one-half prior to the pandemic. With growing interest and investment in opportunities for short-term flexible options to prepare individuals for the workforce, it is essential to cultivate a better understanding of noncredit education and non-degree credentials. Despite the importance of this information, multiple analyses have shown that only about three-quarters of states collect data on their noncredit programming.
Furthermore, state-level data collection on non-degree credentials (such as certificates, certifications, licensure, badges, and microcredentials) varies widely and is still under development in many locations.
Key findings on noncredit offerings and enrollment include the following:
- Occupational training represented around 80 percent of all noncredit offerings and enrollments in VCCS.
- Females represented higher enrollments in noncredit education overall (54% vs. 39%), as well as in each specific type of noncredit education (e.g., occupational training, pre-college), with the largest gender gap in pre-college (66% vs. 28%).
- When removing those for whom sex/gender data were missing, females comprised 58 percent of noncredit enrollments. By comparison, females comprised 57 percent of for-credit community college students in Virginia, thus showing near equal representation.
- The strong focus on occupational training among noncredit enrollees was consistent in each gender and racial subgroup.
- Approximately 7 percent of noncredit enrollees in 2020–2021 did not have a reported sex/gender in the state data system, and more than two-thirds had missing values for race on average. The level of missingness for race was especially high for pre-college, where more than 90 percent of the enrollees were missing race information. There are many potential reasons for missingness, including a simplified admission process for noncredit training that might not require students to report demographics and contract training designed for employers who may not provide demographics for all participants.
- With the majority of enrollments not having a specified race in the system, it is difficult to draw conclusions on enrollment patterns. However, for those records including race, the enrollments seemed to be somewhat similar to credit enrollments in the VCCS, where 70 percent of credit enrollees were White, 15 percent Black, 7 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Ben Castleman, Kelli Bird, Sabrina Solanki, and Michael Cooper
This article discusses the significance of Community College noncredit Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in addressing the skills gap in the workforce, a concern that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the state of Virginia, which implemented a pay-for-performance funding mechanism called the New Economy Workforce Grant (WCG) to expand participation in noncredit CTE programs.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance
- Di Xu and Florence Xiaotao Ran
Objective: This study examines the characteristics, course enrollment patterns, and academic outcomes of students who started their college careers in noncredit courses. Method: Drawing upon a rich dataset that includes transcript and demographic information on both for-credit and noncredit students in multiple institutions, this study explores the demographic and academic profiles of students enrolled in various fields of noncredit education, their course performance in noncredit programs, their educational intent upon initial enrollment, and their transition to the for-credit sector among degree-seeking students. Results: Our results support recent evidence from qualitative studies and studies from a single institution that students enrolled in noncredit programs tend to be adult learners and are typically from a lower socioeconomic background than credit students at community colleges. Yet, more than half of the noncredit students drop out of college after their initial term, even among students who expressed intent to transition to credit-bearing programs. The idiosyncratic patterns of course enrollment and transition to credential programs seem to suggest that there is no general structured pathway or institutional support for credential-seeking noncredit students. Contributions: This article is among one of the first attempts that use student transcript data from multiple institutions to provide a comprehensive understanding of noncredit students and their academic outcomes. Results from this study highlight the importance of future research in exploring institutional services and structures that may effectively facilitate the academic progression and success of noncredit students.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy
Rising interest in shorter-term pathways to good careers drives interest to alternatives to traditional degree programs, fed further by rising costs of higher education and a recognition of the hurdle that completing a degree program poses for many individuals, particularly for adults seeking new opportunities. The alternative pathways found in noncredit education and non-degree credentials offer distinct flexibility and adaptability, which can better meet student and employer needs in quick, affordable formats. At the same time, the recent flood of these new pathways runs the risk that these alternative pathways might perpetuate longstanding unequal outcomes while diverting individuals onto untested paths that the job market does not yet value. Given these broad questions, we must examine and evaluate exactly how these forms of education and credentials may serve the needs of learners, as well as employers and educational institutions.
This brief provides an overview of various noncredit education and non-degree credentials, including basic definitions
and the career goals they seek to further.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- California (CA), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Louisiana (LA), Texas (TX)
- Peter Bahr, Rooney Columbus, Samuel Kaser, ,Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Cody Christensen and Kennan Cepa
Community college noncredit education is a substantial yet sorely understudied segment of American higher education, enrolling millions of students each year, many in occupational courses. There is growing interest in understanding the extent to which noncredit programs support students’ future educational attainment and workforce preparation, but data limitations at the state and national levels have inhibited intensive research. In this study, we present the most exhaustive empirical portrait of community college noncredit education to date. Using administrative data on millions of community college students from Iowa, California, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana, we investigate who enrolls in noncredit education, the types of courses they take, and the academic and employment outcomes they experience. Our results both support and temper growing enthusiasm about the contributions of noncredit education to students’ academic and employment goals. Our study offers new and timely insights into community college noncredit education, addressing pressing policy questions regarding articulation between noncredit and for-credit education, the labor market value of noncredit education, and the collection of data on noncredit education.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Iowa (IA)
- Mark M. D’Amico, Vlad Bassis, Paula Nissen and Michelle Van Noy
Key findings on noncredit student outcomes in Iowa include the following:
- The majority of noncredit offerings did not include data on non-degree credentials. However, given the importance of workforce success for those in occupational offerings, as well as the reporting requirements often associated with funding for those programs, it is not surprising that the availability of non-degree credential data is most prevalent for Occupational Training.
- Among Occupational Training offerings, more than half included industry certification and nearly 80 percent were associated with a college-issued certificate.
- Data availability on outcomes was consistent across noncredit types, with completion data available on all offerings and labor market outcomes data available on nearly 43 percent of Occupational Training offerings.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy
The rising interest in short-term training leading directly to employment has raised the profile of noncredit education among both policymakers and the public. Yet, despite this interest, data on noncredit educational offerings have not been systematically collected. The lack of data has limited the ability to examine important questions about noncredit education, such as its value to individuals, employers, and the economy at large. Policymakers need access to research that explains how noncredit is working (or not) in their area if they are to create sound policies to support or make changes to this increasingly popular form of education. To begin to address this issue, several states have begun building a noncredit data infrastructure.
Through an ongoing effort to better understand the state-level noncredit data infrastructure, we have engaged in a project with partners from Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia to achieve the following:
- Develop an inventory of, and develop consistent operational definitions for, state-level noncredit data elements to better understand the noncredit data infrastructure;
- Collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to explore noncredit offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and financial arrangements; and
- Uncover the drivers of noncredit offerings and produce relevant policy implications.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Policy
- Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes
Noncredit workforce education conveys workrelevant skills in a wide range of industries. Courses and programs are provided by community and technical colleges to an estimated five million students annually (American Association of Community Colleges, 2021), and national survey data show that as much as one-quarter of adults hold a noncredit certificate, license, or other vocational award (Cronen, McQuiggan & Isenberg, 2017). Noncredit programs vary in length, and they may or may not lead to a non-degree credential. When credentials are granted, they are either awarded by the college through which the program was offered (often the case with certificates) or earned through an industry sponsored assessment (more common in the cases of certifications or professional licenses). While there has been a substantial increase in interest in these programs among both students and policymakers in recent years, little research is available on their value or economic return.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano and Mark D’Amico
A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures for noncredit courses are reported to IPEDS but enrollments are not. This exclusion inflates any per FTE student figure calculated from IPEDS, in particular expenditures and revenues. A 2021 IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP #62) acknowledged this problem and moved campus institutional research offices a step closer to reporting noncredit enrollment data (RTI International, 2021). This article is the first to provide some numbers on the magnitude of this problem. It covers eight states—California, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Data on noncredit community college enrollments were made available from system offices in all states. In addition, discussions were held at both the system level and the campus level to verify the data and assumptions. Figures provided by states were merged with existing IPEDS data at the campus and state levels, and then were adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments. The results provide evidence that calculations using IPEDS data alone overestimate the resources that community colleges have to spend on each student, although distortions vary greatly between states and among colleges in the same state. The results have important implications for research studies and college benchmarking.
Keywords: community college spending, noncredit enrollments, IPEDS
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Reports
- Finance, Policy
- Iowa (IA), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN), Virginia (VA)
- Richard Romano, and Mark D’Amico
Objective: This study extends prior work on a distortion in IPEDS data brought about by the exclusion of noncredit enrollments. This affects a commonly used metric, expenditures per FTE student. The problem is that expenditures for noncredit courses are reported to IPEDS but the enrollments are not. Previous research covered 4 states— New York, New Jersey, California, and North Carolina. The current study adds four more states—Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Method: Data on noncredit enrollments were made available from system offices in our four new states. In addition, discussions were held on both the system and the campus level to verify the data and assumptions. Data were merged with existing IPEDS data at the campus and state level and were adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments.
Results: Evidence supports the argument that IPEDS data overestimates the resources that community colleges have to spend on each student, although distortions vary greatly between states and among colleges in the same state.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Working Papers
- Demographics
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Sabrina Solanki, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper, and Benjamin Castleman
This report presents initial findings from a comprehensive study being undertaken to examine noncredit CTE programs offered within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). In 2016, the Virginia legislature, through HB66, passed legislation to expand participation in community college noncredit CTE programs. These programs are commonly known in Virginia as “FastForward” programs. A key component of this initiative is an innovative funding mechanism, the New Economy Workforce Credential Grant (WCG), which is a cost-sharing pay-for-performance model (described in more detail below). The programs covered under this initiative are those that lead to an industry-recognized credential in a high-demand field; our analyses focus on this subset of eligible “FastForward programs.”
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano and Mark D’Amico
Multiple studies show that outcomes, whether they be better degree completion rates or successful short-term workforce training, are negatively affected by inadequate funding (Kahlenberg, 2015). To bolster their case for underfunding, researchers and college advocacy groups produce studies that rely on an important federal dataset–the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)–which attempts to standardize input and output measures among colleges and make comparisons over time possible. This article is about how the use of this national database can lead to a distorted picture of community colleges that can produce incorrect and possibly counterproductive public policy. IPEDS, or sometimes the way that it is used, shortchanges the community college in several ways. This article will discuss three of them, which result in an undercounting of student enrollment at community colleges and, therefore, either directly or indirectly, have a negative impact on funding. The three problems with common uses of IPEDS data are: (1) measuring enrollments using full-time equivalents (FTEs) rather than headcounts; (2) defining the community college sector in a way that undercounts enrollment; and (3) the exclusion of noncredit course enrollments that makes community colleges look better funded than they really are. Correcting the first two of these would not require colleges to collect more data but the third one would. The article gives brief attention to the first two points, reserving the most attention for the third.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Student Voices/Perspectives
- Michelle Van Noy
This paper examines the literature on career decisions, how findings might vary in studies across the life course, and how the literature applies to noncredit programs. The paper begins with a broad overview of theoretical ideas about career decision-making that draws on literature from multiple fields. This is followed by a discussion of a framework based in pragmatic rationality that is aimed at providing a decision-making roadmap for noncredit students. The paper then examines the literature on career transitions focused on stages in the life course from youth through adulthood, decision-making about educational pathways, and what is known specifically about learners in community college noncredit education. The paper concludes by examining the implications of its findings for community college noncredit education programs and suggesting future directions for research.
- Publication Year
- 2020
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Iowa (IA)
- Mark D'Amico and Grant Morgan
- Publication Year
- 2020
- Blog, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Policy
- Mark D'Amico
This article discusses the challenges and opportunities related to mobility and pathways in community college education, particularly in the context of workforce education programs. It highlights the need for a more flexible and holistic approach that allows students to transition between various types of educational offerings, including credit-based career education, noncredit occupational training, and traditional transfer degrees. The “TECH Approach” is proposed, which includes principles of transparency, equity, career orientation, and a holistic approach to create clearer and more accessible pathways for students. The article provides examples of institutions that have successfully implemented such pathways, emphasizing the importance of educational and economic mobility and the role of workforce needs in driving these efforts. The ultimate goal is to make innovative agreements the norm within community colleges and state systems of higher education, offering students and employers greater transparency and opportunities for higher-level credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2020
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D'Amico, Grant Morgan, Zoë Mercedes Thornton and Vladimir Bassis
Representing approximately two in five community college students, noncredit education is an important but understudied segment of the higher education population. In an effort to help open the “black box” of noncredit education in community colleges, the present study uses an established noncredit course typology (occupational training, sponsored occupational training, personal interest, and precollege remediation) to better understand the predictors of noncredit enrollment and outcomes in Iowa. Using a sample of more than 181,000 records, we employed a series of regression analyses to discuss variables associated with enrollment in the noncredit course types, the number of completions, and the number of contact hours. Nuanced findings and implications were associated with race/ethnicity, gender, institutional mission as captured through Carnegie Classifications, and career fields based on the 16 career clusters.
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- Publication Year
- 2019
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano, Rita Kirshstein, Williard Horn, Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
Objective: In the first study of its kind, the impact of excluding noncredit enrollments in calculations of spending in community colleges is explored. Noncredit enrollments are not reported to Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), but expenditures for these efforts are. This study corrects for this omission and provides new estimates of spending on community college students in four states. Method: Data on noncredit enrollments were made available from four states—New York, New Jersey, California, and North Carolina. Interviews with campus and state officials within each state helped us verify the findings. In addition, Delta Cost Project data were analyzed and adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments. Results: Our analysis indicates that the expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student measure, which researchers typically use, seriously overstates the resources that community colleges have to spend on educating students; however, great variations exist within and across states. Conclusion: Community colleges are underfunded to an even greater extent than standard IPEDS analyses indicate.
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- Publication Year
- 2019
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Mark D’Amico, Cameron M. Sublett, and James E. Bartlett II
Serving more than 12 million students each year (AACC 2019), community colleges have an undeniable impact on American higher education, state workforces, local communities, and the individuals they serve. This issue brief offers higher education leaders research-based perspectives on the workforce education role of community colleges. For community college leaders, this report documents and contextualizes important pieces of the comprehensive community college mission related to workforce development and connects them with current movements in the field. Additionally, this issue brief offers an overview to leaders not presently working in the community college setting who may be less familiar with community college functions other than college transfer.
The brief is organized into four primary sections: First, it describes the workforce skills gap and the relevance to community college education. Second, it offers a description of the two primary delivery mechanisms for workforce education in the community college: credit-based career and technical education and noncredit occupational training. Third, it contextualizes the two primary functions through a discussion of three important movements associated with community colleges: registered apprenticeships, associate of applied science articulation to the university sector, and credit for prior learning.
- Publication Year
- 2018
- Briefs, Publications
- Program Quality
- Renee Edwards and Michelle Van Noy
In 2010, the Northern NJ Health Professions Consortium (NNJHPC) received a Health Professions Opportunity Grant from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The 10 college consortium from across Northern NJ had a mission to create pathways in Health Professions education leading to gainful employment. In 2014, The Consortium received a TAACCCT grant from the USDOL and became known as the New Jersey Health Professions Consortium (NJHPC). At this time the Consortium grew to 12 colleges1 across the State of NJ and broadened its career pathways focus to include non-credit – credit credentials, prior learning assessment and employment. Overall, NJHPC has represented and continually connects with the community colleges in the State. Its focus is to build, develop and foster communication and collaboration to ensure students enter and complete educational programs in the health professions leading to family sustaining wages in this high demand sector. The TAACCCT grant ended in 2018 after serving 3,500 New Jersey residents. NJHPC has commissioned Rutgers to prepare this brief describing lessons learned throughout the Consortium.
- Publication Year
- 2017
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Stephen G. Katsinas, J. Lucas Adair and Michael T. Miller
Noncredit community college enrollment accounts for approximately 40% of all enrollment in the two-year sector, or five million students (American Association of Community Colleges, 2016). Yet, this population is seldom discussed in the higher education literature due to inconsistent definitions, funding, and data reporting at the state level. Many of the structural elements (e.g., funding, enrollment) have not been documented recently or completely. This study used data from the 2015 Survey of Access and Finance Issues, administered annually to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. The authors calculated noncredit enrollment by function and frequencies on funding mechanisms, funding by function, noncredit data reporting, and the measures captured at the state level. The study also employed polychoric and polyserial correlations examining the relationships among structural, contextual, and perspective-based items. This was done to capture the national landscape on this important community college function through the lens of state-level community college leaders.
- Publication Year
- 2017
- Book/Chapters, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Mark D'Amico
This chapter discusses an often neglected aspect of the community college mission: noncredit courses that address local service area needs.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Demographics
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Stephen G. Katsinas, J. Lucas Adair & Michael T. Miller
Noncredit community college enrollment accounts for approximately 40% of all enrollment in the two-year sector, or five million students (American Association of Community Colleges, 2016). Yet, this population is seldom discussed in the higher education literature due to inconsistent definitions, funding, and data reporting at the state level. Many of the structural elements (e.g., funding, enrollment) have not been documented recently or completely. This study used data from the 2015 Survey of Access and Finance Issues, administered annually to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. The authors calculated noncredit enrollment by function and frequencies on funding mechanisms, funding by function, noncredit data reporting, and the measures captured at the state level. The study also employed polychoric and polyserial correlations examining the relationships among structural, contextual, and perspective-based items. This was done to capture the national landscape on this important community college function through the lens of state-level community college leaders.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard M. Romano, Rita J. Kirshstein, Mark D’Amico, and Willard Hom
Community college practitioners are quick to note that official IPEDS analyses of expenditures and revenues per FTE overstate the amount they spend on each student. This results from the fact that enrollments in their non-credit courses are not included in the FTE count but expenditures for these courses are. While this situation may also occur in four-year colleges, the extent to which it occurs is thought to be less of a problem in determining costs per student. Using data from three states, this is the first study of its kind that examines this measurement issue. With it comes an invitation to readers to participate (crowd sourcing) in the study as joint authors(s) by contributing data and their analysis.
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Book/Chapters, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Mark D'Amico
This chapter provides a discussion of the workforce development role of community colleges and the influence of the “success agenda.” Some of the primary themes from the extant literature that are discussed include: the traditional workforce development role of community colleges; aspects of the completion and/or success agenda relevant to workforce development; recent efforts to frame community college workforce development in the accountability movement (e.g., performance-based funding); implications relevant to the Workforce Investment Act; and, opportunities and constraints through for-credit career-preparation programs, noncredit education, and developments in transfer including articulation and the applied baccalaureate. The chapter also includes a discussion of how these related themes have been approached in the scholarly literature and directions for advancing inquiry.
- Publication Year
- 2014
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Shun Robertson and Carlie Houchins
Nearly 40% of all public community college enrollment is in noncredit courses. While there have been several recent reports on the noncredit function at community colleges, little has been done in terms of large-scale studies and/or statewide analyses on this population. The purpose of this study was to explore one state’s community college noncredit student data to identify course types, relationships with demographics, and multi-term enrollment patterns. The authors employed a Cramer’s V to identify relationships between enrollment by course type and demographics and conducted a multi-term course analysis on a sample of 122,886 noncredit student records.
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- Publication Year
- 2026
- Publications, Reports
- Policy, State Data Infrastructure
- Michelle Van Noy and Mark D’Amico
Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy explain that Workforce Pell should be viewed as more than a new financial aid program—it is an opportunity for states and community colleges to strengthen the data systems, governance, and accountability needed to support high-quality noncredit workforce education. They urge college trustees to use Workforce Pell as a catalyst for building long-term infrastructure that improves student outcomes, workforce alignment, and the value of short-term credentials beyond the program’s initial implementation.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Program Quality
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D’Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Jackson Yan
The authors, including Peter Bahr and Mark D’Amico, examine whether community college students who start in noncredit programs later transition into credit coursework in the same field of study, finding that while relatively few students make the transition overall (6% in Iowa and 23% in California), many who do are able to “bridge” into related credit programs—29% of transitioners in Iowa and 53% in California. It concludes that bridging is most common in occupational fields in Iowa and precollege remediation fields in California, suggesting that programs with high enrollment, transition, and bridge rates are promising targets for strengthening pathways from noncredit to credit education.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
With the passage of H.R. 1 on July 4, 2025, Workforce Pell, which authorizes Pell Grants for programs as short as 150 hours and 8 weeks, is now a reality. Workforce Pell will open the door for many students to use federal need-based aid for noncredit community college education programs that meet the many articulated guardrails. Over time, literature on short-term programs and related credentials have shown modest labor market gains, which necessitates discussions of quality and value established through data. Findings presented from the State Noncredit Data Project show how community college noncredit course/programs often fall short of the mandated duration for Workforce Pell, and many state data repositories do not capture all of the data needed to identify noncredit offerings that are potentially eligible. The Noncredit Data Taxonomy 2.0 may help states and institutions consider data elements needed for Workforce Pell and better document the community college noncredit mission and outcomes.
Read the summary.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D'Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
Based on the brief, the authors found that students who begin in noncredit community college programs rarely transition into credit-bearing programs, although transition patterns differ substantially between states, with California showing much higher rates than Iowa due to differences in how noncredit education is structured. The findings suggest that while noncredit education serves an important role for workforce training and basic skills development, colleges and policymakers could improve student outcomes by strengthening pathways, articulation agreements, and credit-for-prior-learning policies that make it easier for students to move from noncredit to credit programs.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, State Data Infrastructure
- Maryland (MD), New Jersey (NJ), Oregon (OR), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN)
- Michelle Van Noy, Mark D’Amico, Eliza K. Peterson, Justin Vinton, Tom Hilliard, Anjali Srivastava, Di Xu, Pete Riley Bahr
Interest in noncredit education has been mounting as many Americans seek pathways for social mobility other than a four-year college degree. Noncredit education and the non-degree credentials (NDCs) to which noncredit education can lead (e.g., certificates, certifications, licenses, badges, and microcredentials) are increasingly viewed as possible alternative pathways. Recent surveys have found that 29% of adults think that getting a four-year college degree is not worth the time, money, and effort involved, and that more than two-thirds of adults interested in a postsecondary option want to pursue a non-degree pathway—up from about one-half in the year prior. At the same time, state funding for short-term educational programs has been increasing, approaching $4 billion in investments.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Michelle Van Noy, Sam Scovill and Nicole Sandelier Boyd
Noncredit education and non-degree credentials (NDCs) are increasingly valued by students and policymakers. Yet data in this field is scarce and findings on student outcomes are limited and difficult to interpret and compare. This study reviews a core group of articles on noncredit and NDC outcomes, focusing on completion, wages, and employment.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes, Program Quality, Student Voices/Perspectives
- Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, Peter Bahr, Di Xu
With support from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics/ National Science Foundation, the Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center (EERC) and key partners at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Michigan, and University of California, Irvine, are working with state leaders across the country to examine noncredit data. Our study is guided by four key goals: increase understanding of noncredit data infrastructure by developing an inventory of and consistent operational definitions for state-level noncredit data elements; collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to explore noncredit offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and financial arrangements; Uncover the operational and policy drivers of noncredit offerings; Provide relevant policy implications.
In addition, the project is convening a learning community of states on data for noncredit education and nondegree credentials. This project lays the groundwork for developing a common definitional language for use
in future data collection and analysis efforts with the overarching
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Bahr, P. R., & Columbus, R
Millions of students enroll in community colleges noncredit programs every year—most in occupational training—but there are few large-scale studies of their effectiveness in increasing students’ employment opportunities and earnings. In this study, we applied individual fixed effects models to state longitudinal administrative data from Texas to estimate the labor market returns to community college noncredit occupational education. We find a modest but statistically significant increase in average quarterly earnings exceeding $500 per quarter (2019 dollars). Returns vary by duration of training, field of study, and number of training spells. Our findings speak to ongoing national policy debates about expansion of Pell Grant eligibility to include some community college noncredit programs, as well numerous state efforts to increase workforce readiness.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Outcomes
- Texas (TX)
- Peter Bahr, Rooney Columbus, Samuel Kaser, ,Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Cody Christensen and Kennan Cepa
We leverage administrative data on over 1.6 million students who initially enrolled in noncredit or for-credit programs at Texas community colleges between academic years 2013-14 and 2017-18. We address the following research questions: who enrolls in noncredit education in Texas? How are noncredit enrollees different from for-credit students? What types of courses do noncredit students take? What kinds of enrollment behaviors and academic outcomes do noncredit students experience? Do noncredit students later participate in for-credit programs of study?
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- State Data Infrastructure
- Iowa (IA), Louisiana (LA), Virginia (VA)
- Mark D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, Anjali Srivastava, Peter Bahr, and Di Xu
This report follows a series of state-level reports on Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia that explored the noncredit data infrastructure and presented descriptive analyses of data at the course/program level for each individual state.
The findings presented in each of these reports, including the current report that synthesizes results across the three states, were derived through a collaborative approach involving leaders from all three partner states. Research team members worked closely with state leaders to identify data elements pertaining to community college noncredit offerings at the course/program level, which is our unit of analysis for this project, captured at the state level. Further, the research team gathered information on the policy context for noncredit offerings, including state-level data collection that frame what data are available and why. By examining the data elements on noncredit education available in each state, the research team compared these findings both to develop a set of common operational definitions and data inventory as well as to better understand the similarities and differences in noncredit programming and data availability.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Louisiana (LA)
- Peter Bahr, Amy Cable, Mark D'Amico, and Michelle Van Noy
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- Iowa (IA)
- Bahr, P. R., Columbus, R., and May-Trifiletti, J
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy, Katherine Hughes, and Genevive Bjorn
Community colleges are a major source of non-degree credentials (NDCs) through their noncredit workforce education offerings. NDCs include certificates, certifications, licenses, badges, and micro-redentials (Credential Engine, 2019). Colleges award certificates and also prepare students to obtain certifications and licensure. Noncredit education has long been a part of community colleges across the nation, with enrollment levels almost matching credit enrollments (AACC, 2021; Jacoby, 2021). Credentials earned in noncredit programs are gaining increasing attention for their potential to provide swift access to career opportunities. Some have argued that noncredit programs may also expand the accessibility of higher education for students who have not attended college before and need shorter and more flexible postsecondary opportunities (Grubb, Badway, & Bell, 2003; Van Noy et al., 2008; D’Amico et al., 2019). Since the pandemic, increasing numbers of adults nationally report they prefer non-degree pathways that can be completed quickly to degree programs (Strada, 2020; Cengage, 2022). At the same time, a rising number of states have become interested in supporting NDCs. In this context, it is imperative to better understand if these programs and credentials are a worthwhile investment of time and resources.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Catherine Finnegan, Marina Bagreev, XunFei Li, Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Today, more than two-thirds of US adults considering further education report that they prefer a non-degree option—up from about one-half prior to the pandemic. With growing interest and investment in opportunities for short-term flexible options to prepare individuals for the workforce, it is essential to cultivate a better understanding of noncredit education and non-degree credentials. Despite the importance of this information, multiple analyses have shown that only about three-quarters of states collect data on their noncredit programming.
Furthermore, state-level data collection on non-degree credentials (such as certificates, certifications, licensure, badges, and microcredentials) varies widely and is still under development in many locations.
Key findings on noncredit offerings and enrollment include the following:
- Occupational training represented around 80 percent of all noncredit offerings and enrollments in VCCS.
- Females represented higher enrollments in noncredit education overall (54% vs. 39%), as well as in each specific type of noncredit education (e.g., occupational training, pre-college), with the largest gender gap in pre-college (66% vs. 28%).
- When removing those for whom sex/gender data were missing, females comprised 58 percent of noncredit enrollments. By comparison, females comprised 57 percent of for-credit community college students in Virginia, thus showing near equal representation.
- The strong focus on occupational training among noncredit enrollees was consistent in each gender and racial subgroup.
- Approximately 7 percent of noncredit enrollees in 2020–2021 did not have a reported sex/gender in the state data system, and more than two-thirds had missing values for race on average. The level of missingness for race was especially high for pre-college, where more than 90 percent of the enrollees were missing race information. There are many potential reasons for missingness, including a simplified admission process for noncredit training that might not require students to report demographics and contract training designed for employers who may not provide demographics for all participants.
- With the majority of enrollments not having a specified race in the system, it is difficult to draw conclusions on enrollment patterns. However, for those records including race, the enrollments seemed to be somewhat similar to credit enrollments in the VCCS, where 70 percent of credit enrollees were White, 15 percent Black, 7 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- California (CA), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Louisiana (LA), Texas (TX)
- Peter Bahr, Rooney Columbus, Samuel Kaser, ,Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Cody Christensen and Kennan Cepa
Community college noncredit education is a substantial yet sorely understudied segment of American higher education, enrolling millions of students each year, many in occupational courses. There is growing interest in understanding the extent to which noncredit programs support students’ future educational attainment and workforce preparation, but data limitations at the state and national levels have inhibited intensive research. In this study, we present the most exhaustive empirical portrait of community college noncredit education to date. Using administrative data on millions of community college students from Iowa, California, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana, we investigate who enrolls in noncredit education, the types of courses they take, and the academic and employment outcomes they experience. Our results both support and temper growing enthusiasm about the contributions of noncredit education to students’ academic and employment goals. Our study offers new and timely insights into community college noncredit education, addressing pressing policy questions regarding articulation between noncredit and for-credit education, the labor market value of noncredit education, and the collection of data on noncredit education.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Iowa (IA)
- Mark M. D’Amico, Vlad Bassis, Paula Nissen and Michelle Van Noy
Key findings on noncredit student outcomes in Iowa include the following:
- The majority of noncredit offerings did not include data on non-degree credentials. However, given the importance of workforce success for those in occupational offerings, as well as the reporting requirements often associated with funding for those programs, it is not surprising that the availability of non-degree credential data is most prevalent for Occupational Training.
- Among Occupational Training offerings, more than half included industry certification and nearly 80 percent were associated with a college-issued certificate.
- Data availability on outcomes was consistent across noncredit types, with completion data available on all offerings and labor market outcomes data available on nearly 43 percent of Occupational Training offerings.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy
The rising interest in short-term training leading directly to employment has raised the profile of noncredit education among both policymakers and the public. Yet, despite this interest, data on noncredit educational offerings have not been systematically collected. The lack of data has limited the ability to examine important questions about noncredit education, such as its value to individuals, employers, and the economy at large. Policymakers need access to research that explains how noncredit is working (or not) in their area if they are to create sound policies to support or make changes to this increasingly popular form of education. To begin to address this issue, several states have begun building a noncredit data infrastructure.
Through an ongoing effort to better understand the state-level noncredit data infrastructure, we have engaged in a project with partners from Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia to achieve the following:
- Develop an inventory of, and develop consistent operational definitions for, state-level noncredit data elements to better understand the noncredit data infrastructure;
- Collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to explore noncredit offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and financial arrangements; and
- Uncover the drivers of noncredit offerings and produce relevant policy implications.
- Publication Year
- 2022
- Publications, Reports
- Policy
- Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes
Noncredit workforce education conveys workrelevant skills in a wide range of industries. Courses and programs are provided by community and technical colleges to an estimated five million students annually (American Association of Community Colleges, 2021), and national survey data show that as much as one-quarter of adults hold a noncredit certificate, license, or other vocational award (Cronen, McQuiggan & Isenberg, 2017). Noncredit programs vary in length, and they may or may not lead to a non-degree credential. When credentials are granted, they are either awarded by the college through which the program was offered (often the case with certificates) or earned through an industry sponsored assessment (more common in the cases of certifications or professional licenses). While there has been a substantial increase in interest in these programs among both students and policymakers in recent years, little research is available on their value or economic return.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Reports
- Finance, Policy
- Iowa (IA), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN), Virginia (VA)
- Richard Romano, and Mark D’Amico
Objective: This study extends prior work on a distortion in IPEDS data brought about by the exclusion of noncredit enrollments. This affects a commonly used metric, expenditures per FTE student. The problem is that expenditures for noncredit courses are reported to IPEDS but the enrollments are not. Previous research covered 4 states— New York, New Jersey, California, and North Carolina. The current study adds four more states—Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Method: Data on noncredit enrollments were made available from system offices in our four new states. In addition, discussions were held on both the system and the campus level to verify the data and assumptions. Data were merged with existing IPEDS data at the campus and state level and were adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments.
Results: Evidence supports the argument that IPEDS data overestimates the resources that community colleges have to spend on each student, although distortions vary greatly between states and among colleges in the same state.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Student Voices/Perspectives
- Michelle Van Noy
This paper examines the literature on career decisions, how findings might vary in studies across the life course, and how the literature applies to noncredit programs. The paper begins with a broad overview of theoretical ideas about career decision-making that draws on literature from multiple fields. This is followed by a discussion of a framework based in pragmatic rationality that is aimed at providing a decision-making roadmap for noncredit students. The paper then examines the literature on career transitions focused on stages in the life course from youth through adulthood, decision-making about educational pathways, and what is known specifically about learners in community college noncredit education. The paper concludes by examining the implications of its findings for community college noncredit education programs and suggesting future directions for research.
- Publication Year
- 2020
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Iowa (IA)
- Mark D'Amico and Grant Morgan
- Publication Year
- 2019
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Mark D’Amico, Cameron M. Sublett, and James E. Bartlett II
Serving more than 12 million students each year (AACC 2019), community colleges have an undeniable impact on American higher education, state workforces, local communities, and the individuals they serve. This issue brief offers higher education leaders research-based perspectives on the workforce education role of community colleges. For community college leaders, this report documents and contextualizes important pieces of the comprehensive community college mission related to workforce development and connects them with current movements in the field. Additionally, this issue brief offers an overview to leaders not presently working in the community college setting who may be less familiar with community college functions other than college transfer.
The brief is organized into four primary sections: First, it describes the workforce skills gap and the relevance to community college education. Second, it offers a description of the two primary delivery mechanisms for workforce education in the community college: credit-based career and technical education and noncredit occupational training. Third, it contextualizes the two primary functions through a discussion of three important movements associated with community colleges: registered apprenticeships, associate of applied science articulation to the university sector, and credit for prior learning.
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Demographics
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Stephen G. Katsinas, J. Lucas Adair & Michael T. Miller
Noncredit community college enrollment accounts for approximately 40% of all enrollment in the two-year sector, or five million students (American Association of Community Colleges, 2016). Yet, this population is seldom discussed in the higher education literature due to inconsistent definitions, funding, and data reporting at the state level. Many of the structural elements (e.g., funding, enrollment) have not been documented recently or completely. This study used data from the 2015 Survey of Access and Finance Issues, administered annually to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. The authors calculated noncredit enrollment by function and frequencies on funding mechanisms, funding by function, noncredit data reporting, and the measures captured at the state level. The study also employed polychoric and polyserial correlations examining the relationships among structural, contextual, and perspective-based items. This was done to capture the national landscape on this important community college function through the lens of state-level community college leaders.
Read the summary
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Publications, Reports
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard M. Romano, Rita J. Kirshstein, Mark D’Amico, and Willard Hom
Community college practitioners are quick to note that official IPEDS analyses of expenditures and revenues per FTE overstate the amount they spend on each student. This results from the fact that enrollments in their non-credit courses are not included in the FTE count but expenditures for these courses are. While this situation may also occur in four-year colleges, the extent to which it occurs is thought to be less of a problem in determining costs per student. Using data from three states, this is the first study of its kind that examines this measurement issue. With it comes an invitation to readers to participate (crowd sourcing) in the study as joint authors(s) by contributing data and their analysis.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- Maryland (MD)
- Di Xu, Eliza K. Peterson, Ann Kellogg, Hongjiao Li, Xunfei Li, Mark M. D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- Tennessee (TN)
- Eliza K. Peterson, Mark D'Amico, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decisionmaking. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- South Carolina (SC)
- Mark D’Amico and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision-making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Anjali Srivastava and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Justin Vinton and Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Outcomes, State Data Infrastructure
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Anjali Srivastava, Michelle Van Noy, Thomas Hilliard
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision- making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types awarded. Better data on noncredit offerings with tates will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- State Data Infrastructure
- Oregon (OR)
- Peter Riley Bahr, Eliza Peterson, KC Andrew, Kelly Zinck, Michelle Van Noy
Adults seeking further education have long shown keen interest in noncredit education. An estimated 4 million people enroll in noncredit programs annually, and surveys have found that at least half of adults interested in further postsecondary learning seek an alternative to college degree programs. Policymakers also recognize the potential value of noncredit and related programs. A 50-state scan identified state-led initiatives in 28 states, totaling at least $3.8 billion, in support for attainment of short-term credentials. Given the growing interest and public investment in short-term alternatives to college degree programs, policymakers and practitioners generally agree on the importance of a strong evidence base to inform decision-making. Yet state collection and analysis of noncredit data remains inconsistent and difficult to use for policymaking purposes, making direct comparisons across states dauntingly hard. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers regularly encounter varying definitions, an absence of educational or labor market outcomes data, and overall data quality issues. At the most basic level, very little is known about the characteristics of noncredit programs, such as their instructional time, instructional format, requirements for entry, linkages to further education, awarding agencies, cost, and credential types award noncredit offerings within states will help inform ongoing measurement efforts and ensure those efforts are more grounded in the realities of noncredit delivery, financing, and learner outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- South Carolina (SC)
- Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
With support from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics/National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center (EERC) and key partners
at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Michigan, and University of California–Irvine are working with state leaders from across the country to examine noncredit data in the service of three key goals:
- Develop an inventory of and consistent operational definitions for state-level noncredit data elements to better understand the noncredit data infrastructure.
- Collect and examine noncredit course/program-level data to better understand those offerings and their associations with enrollment rates, outcomes, instructional characteristics, and funding arrangements.
- Uncover the drivers of noncredit offerings and produce relevant policy implications.
In addition to this analysis, the project convenes a National Learning Community of states on data for noncredit education and non-degree credentials. This project seeks to lay the groundwork for a common definitional language for future data collection and analysis efforts to improve the understanding of the value and quality of noncredit programs and non-degree credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance
- Virginia (VA)
- Betsy L. Tessler, Kelsey Brown and Di Xu
Across the country, as technology continues to advance rapidly, the labor market exhibits a growing need for workers who receive frequent and ongoing skill development. Employers in many fields struggle to find adequately trained workers to meet their needs. Community college noncredit career and technical education (CTE) programs are an important contributor to skill and workforce development and help to close this “skills gap.”
This brief summarizes early findings from a study of FastForward, which uses a pay-for-performance model to fund noncredit CTE programs at the 23 colleges in the Virginia Community College System. FastForward aims to increase the supply of workers who receive credentials for high-demand occupations in Virginia. The FastForward study is focused on identifying institutional and programmatic factors that may influence learners’ academic and labor market outcomes. This brief presents findings on the different approaches used by colleges and programs to deliver training, student and staff experiences in these CTE programs, and students’ academic and labor market outcomes.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D’Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
We use administrative data on millions of noncredit and credit students in Iowa and California community colleges to examine the most common enrollment patterns among community college entrants, students who first enrolled exclusively in noncredit education, and students who first enrolled in noncredit education and then later enrolled in credit coursework.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper and Benjamin Castleman
Industry-recognized certificates are one of the most common credential types associated with public workforce training programs, but little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of these credentials in the labor market. This paper provides one of the the first quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market returns to industry-recognized credentials connected to community college workforce noncredit training programs. Based on a novel data that includes approximately 24,000 working-age adults enrolled in noncredit workforce training programs at the Virginia Community College System, we estimate an individual-level fixed effects model to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes and earnings time-trends. Our results indicate that earning an industry-recognized credential on average increases quarterly earnings by approximately $1,000 and the probability of being employed by 2.4 percentage points, although there is substantial heterogeneity in economic return across different fields of study. We also find that the noncredit workforce training programs enroll a different segment of the population than credit-bearing programs at community colleges, thus providing an important alternative pathway to workforce opportunities for populations traditionally underrepresented in the credit-bearing sector.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Sabrina Solanki, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper and Benjamin Castleman
This report presents initial findings from a comprehensive study being undertaken to examine noncredit CTE programs offered within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). In 2016, the Virginia legislature, through HB66, passed legislation to expand participation in community college noncredit CTE programs. These programs are commonly known in Virginia as “FastForward” programs. A key component of this initiative is an innovative funding mechanism, the New Economy Workforce Credential Grant (WCG), which is a cost-sharing pay for-performance model (described in more detail below). The programs covered under this initiative are those that lead to an industry-recognized credential in a high-demand field; our analyses focus on this subset of eligible “FastForward programs.” We capitalize on this data to generate additional robust evidence about the academic and labor market outcomes of students enrolled in FastForward programs. In this report, we focus on our analyses related to participant composition, program success, and the relationship between noncredit and credit enrollment.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- California (CA), Iowa (IA)
- Bahr, P.R., Christensen, C., Columbus, R. May-Trifiletti, J. & Yan, J.
We use administrative data on hundreds of thousands of noncredit and credit students in Iowa and California community colleges to examine the demographic characteristics of those who first enroll in noncredit or credit education as well as those who transition from noncredit to credit education and those who do not.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Di Xu, Ben Castleman, Kelli Bird, Sabrina Solanki, and Michael Cooper
This article discusses the significance of Community College noncredit Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in addressing the skills gap in the workforce, a concern that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the state of Virginia, which implemented a pay-for-performance funding mechanism called the New Economy Workforce Grant (WCG) to expand participation in noncredit CTE programs.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Briefs, Publications
- Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy
Rising interest in shorter-term pathways to good careers drives interest to alternatives to traditional degree programs, fed further by rising costs of higher education and a recognition of the hurdle that completing a degree program poses for many individuals, particularly for adults seeking new opportunities. The alternative pathways found in noncredit education and non-degree credentials offer distinct flexibility and adaptability, which can better meet student and employer needs in quick, affordable formats. At the same time, the recent flood of these new pathways runs the risk that these alternative pathways might perpetuate longstanding unequal outcomes while diverting individuals onto untested paths that the job market does not yet value. Given these broad questions, we must examine and evaluate exactly how these forms of education and credentials may serve the needs of learners, as well as employers and educational institutions.
This brief provides an overview of various noncredit education and non-degree credentials, including basic definitions
and the career goals they seek to further.
- Publication Year
- 2018
- Briefs, Publications
- Program Quality
- Renee Edwards and Michelle Van Noy
In 2010, the Northern NJ Health Professions Consortium (NNJHPC) received a Health Professions Opportunity Grant from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The 10 college consortium from across Northern NJ had a mission to create pathways in Health Professions education leading to gainful employment. In 2014, The Consortium received a TAACCCT grant from the USDOL and became known as the New Jersey Health Professions Consortium (NJHPC). At this time the Consortium grew to 12 colleges1 across the State of NJ and broadened its career pathways focus to include non-credit – credit credentials, prior learning assessment and employment. Overall, NJHPC has represented and continually connects with the community colleges in the State. Its focus is to build, develop and foster communication and collaboration to ensure students enter and complete educational programs in the health professions leading to family sustaining wages in this high demand sector. The TAACCCT grant ended in 2018 after serving 3,500 New Jersey residents. NJHPC has commissioned Rutgers to prepare this brief describing lessons learned throughout the Consortium.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Program Quality
- Di Xu, Kelli A. Bird, Michael Cooper, Benjamin L. Castleman
Di Xu explores how industry-recognized credentials influence workers’ earnings and career mobility. Published in the Journal of Public Economics, the study examines data from approximately 36,000 learners enrolled in Virginia’s FastForward program. Di Xu and her coauthors found that learners who earned an industry-recognized credential increased their quarterly earnings by an average of nearly 10 percent compared to their earnings before enrolling in the program. They were also more likely to transition into higher-paying industries than participants who completed training but did not earn a credential.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Peter Bahr
Millions of community college students enroll in noncredit programs every year—most in occupational training—but there are few large-scale studies of how these programs affect students’ labor market opportunities. Here, we estimate returns to community college noncredit occupational training by applying individual fixed effects models to longitudinal administrative data from Texas. We find a modest but statistically significant increase in average quarterly earnings of approximately $2,000 per year (2019 dollars), emerging during the 2 years after training. This is a 3.8% increase over average pre-training earnings and is commensurate in magnitude with the typically short duration of the training, averaging about 90 hours. Returns vary by field of study, training type, training duration, and number of training spells. Our findings speak directly to ongoing policy discussions and rulemaking regarding the implementation of Workforce Pell Grants, which provide funding for short-term training, potentially including some community college noncredit programs. Our findings also inform state-level policy initiatives aimed at strengthening workforce readiness in priority industries—efforts that often rely on community colleges as central partners.
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance
- Di Xu and Florence Xiaotao Ran
Objective: This study examines the characteristics, course enrollment patterns, and academic outcomes of students who started their college careers in noncredit courses. Method: Drawing upon a rich dataset that includes transcript and demographic information on both for-credit and noncredit students in multiple institutions, this study explores the demographic and academic profiles of students enrolled in various fields of noncredit education, their course performance in noncredit programs, their educational intent upon initial enrollment, and their transition to the for-credit sector among degree-seeking students. Results: Our results support recent evidence from qualitative studies and studies from a single institution that students enrolled in noncredit programs tend to be adult learners and are typically from a lower socioeconomic background than credit students at community colleges. Yet, more than half of the noncredit students drop out of college after their initial term, even among students who expressed intent to transition to credit-bearing programs. The idiosyncratic patterns of course enrollment and transition to credential programs seem to suggest that there is no general structured pathway or institutional support for credential-seeking noncredit students. Contributions: This article is among one of the first attempts that use student transcript data from multiple institutions to provide a comprehensive understanding of noncredit students and their academic outcomes. Results from this study highlight the importance of future research in exploring institutional services and structures that may effectively facilitate the academic progression and success of noncredit students.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano and Mark D’Amico
A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures for noncredit courses are reported to IPEDS but enrollments are not. This exclusion inflates any per FTE student figure calculated from IPEDS, in particular expenditures and revenues. A 2021 IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP #62) acknowledged this problem and moved campus institutional research offices a step closer to reporting noncredit enrollment data (RTI International, 2021). This article is the first to provide some numbers on the magnitude of this problem. It covers eight states—California, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Data on noncredit community college enrollments were made available from system offices in all states. In addition, discussions were held at both the system level and the campus level to verify the data and assumptions. Figures provided by states were merged with existing IPEDS data at the campus and state levels, and then were adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments. The results provide evidence that calculations using IPEDS data alone overestimate the resources that community colleges have to spend on each student, although distortions vary greatly between states and among colleges in the same state. The results have important implications for research studies and college benchmarking.
Keywords: community college spending, noncredit enrollments, IPEDS
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano and Mark D’Amico
Multiple studies show that outcomes, whether they be better degree completion rates or successful short-term workforce training, are negatively affected by inadequate funding (Kahlenberg, 2015). To bolster their case for underfunding, researchers and college advocacy groups produce studies that rely on an important federal dataset–the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)–which attempts to standardize input and output measures among colleges and make comparisons over time possible. This article is about how the use of this national database can lead to a distorted picture of community colleges that can produce incorrect and possibly counterproductive public policy. IPEDS, or sometimes the way that it is used, shortchanges the community college in several ways. This article will discuss three of them, which result in an undercounting of student enrollment at community colleges and, therefore, either directly or indirectly, have a negative impact on funding. The three problems with common uses of IPEDS data are: (1) measuring enrollments using full-time equivalents (FTEs) rather than headcounts; (2) defining the community college sector in a way that undercounts enrollment; and (3) the exclusion of noncredit course enrollments that makes community colleges look better funded than they really are. Correcting the first two of these would not require colleges to collect more data but the third one would. The article gives brief attention to the first two points, reserving the most attention for the third.
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- Publication Year
- 2020
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D'Amico, Grant Morgan, Zoë Mercedes Thornton and Vladimir Bassis
Representing approximately two in five community college students, noncredit education is an important but understudied segment of the higher education population. In an effort to help open the “black box” of noncredit education in community colleges, the present study uses an established noncredit course typology (occupational training, sponsored occupational training, personal interest, and precollege remediation) to better understand the predictors of noncredit enrollment and outcomes in Iowa. Using a sample of more than 181,000 records, we employed a series of regression analyses to discuss variables associated with enrollment in the noncredit course types, the number of completions, and the number of contact hours. Nuanced findings and implications were associated with race/ethnicity, gender, institutional mission as captured through Carnegie Classifications, and career fields based on the 16 career clusters.
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- Publication Year
- 2019
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Richard Romano, Rita Kirshstein, Williard Horn, Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
Objective: In the first study of its kind, the impact of excluding noncredit enrollments in calculations of spending in community colleges is explored. Noncredit enrollments are not reported to Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), but expenditures for these efforts are. This study corrects for this omission and provides new estimates of spending on community college students in four states. Method: Data on noncredit enrollments were made available from four states—New York, New Jersey, California, and North Carolina. Interviews with campus and state officials within each state helped us verify the findings. In addition, Delta Cost Project data were analyzed and adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments. Results: Our analysis indicates that the expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student measure, which researchers typically use, seriously overstates the resources that community colleges have to spend on educating students; however, great variations exist within and across states. Conclusion: Community colleges are underfunded to an even greater extent than standard IPEDS analyses indicate.
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- Publication Year
- 2017
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Stephen G. Katsinas, J. Lucas Adair and Michael T. Miller
Noncredit community college enrollment accounts for approximately 40% of all enrollment in the two-year sector, or five million students (American Association of Community Colleges, 2016). Yet, this population is seldom discussed in the higher education literature due to inconsistent definitions, funding, and data reporting at the state level. Many of the structural elements (e.g., funding, enrollment) have not been documented recently or completely. This study used data from the 2015 Survey of Access and Finance Issues, administered annually to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. The authors calculated noncredit enrollment by function and frequencies on funding mechanisms, funding by function, noncredit data reporting, and the measures captured at the state level. The study also employed polychoric and polyserial correlations examining the relationships among structural, contextual, and perspective-based items. This was done to capture the national landscape on this important community college function through the lens of state-level community college leaders.
- Publication Year
- 2014
- Journal Articles, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Mark D’Amico, Grant B. Morgan, Shun Robertson and Carlie Houchins
Nearly 40% of all public community college enrollment is in noncredit courses. While there have been several recent reports on the noncredit function at community colleges, little has been done in terms of large-scale studies and/or statewide analyses on this population. The purpose of this study was to explore one state’s community college noncredit student data to identify course types, relationships with demographics, and multi-term enrollment patterns. The authors employed a Cramer’s V to identify relationships between enrollment by course type and demographics and conducted a multi-term course analysis on a sample of 122,886 noncredit student records.
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- Publication Year
- 2017
- Book/Chapters, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Mark D'Amico
This chapter discusses an often neglected aspect of the community college mission: noncredit courses that address local service area needs.
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- Publication Year
- 2016
- Book/Chapters, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics
- Mark D'Amico
This chapter provides a discussion of the workforce development role of community colleges and the influence of the “success agenda.” Some of the primary themes from the extant literature that are discussed include: the traditional workforce development role of community colleges; aspects of the completion and/or success agenda relevant to workforce development; recent efforts to frame community college workforce development in the accountability movement (e.g., performance-based funding); implications relevant to the Workforce Investment Act; and, opportunities and constraints through for-credit career-preparation programs, noncredit education, and developments in transfer including articulation and the applied baccalaureate. The chapter also includes a discussion of how these related themes have been approached in the scholarly literature and directions for advancing inquiry.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Publications, Working Papers
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
- Di Xu, Kelli A. Bird, Michael Cooper, Benjamin L. Castleman
Many public workforce training programs lead to industry-recognized, third-party awarded credentials, but little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of these credentials in the labor market. This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market returns to industry-recognized credentials connected to community college workforce noncredit training programs. Based on novel data that includes approximately 24,000 working-age adults enrolled in noncredit workforce training programs at the Virginia Community College System, we employ a comparative individual-level fixed effects model to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes and earnings time-trends. Our results indicate that earning an industry-recognized credential, on average, increases quarterly earnings by approximately $1,000 and the probability of being employed by 2.4 percentage points, although there is substantial heterogeneity in economic return across different program fields. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the earnings gains associated with the industry credential obtained through the noncredit workforce training would exceed program costs in just over half a year on average.
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Publications, Working Papers
- Demographics
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Sabrina Solanki, Kelli Bird, Michael Cooper, and Benjamin Castleman
This report presents initial findings from a comprehensive study being undertaken to examine noncredit CTE programs offered within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). In 2016, the Virginia legislature, through HB66, passed legislation to expand participation in community college noncredit CTE programs. These programs are commonly known in Virginia as “FastForward” programs. A key component of this initiative is an innovative funding mechanism, the New Economy Workforce Credential Grant (WCG), which is a cost-sharing pay-for-performance model (described in more detail below). The programs covered under this initiative are those that lead to an industry-recognized credential in a high-demand field; our analyses focus on this subset of eligible “FastForward programs.”
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Finance, Policy, State Data Infrastructure
- Michelle Van Noy, Mark D’Amico, and Monica Kerrigan
States are beginning to implement the new Workforce Pell Grant program, but only a small number of short-term training programs have been approved so far as states and institutions work through new eligibility, approval, and data-reporting requirements. The authors emphasizes that it is too early to judge the program’s impact, with experts expecting adoption to increase gradually as implementation processes mature and more programs qualify.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes
Michelle Van Noy and Katherine Hughes state that with nearly two million nondegree credentials available, measuring quality requires a multidimensional framework that considers program design, demonstrated competencies, learner and employer outcomes, and the market systems that make credentials recognizable and valuable. They emphasize that quality information must be communicated clearly—through accessible, consumer-friendly metrics—to help learners, employers, and policymakers make informed decisions and strengthen accountability as Workforce Pell expands.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Dan Douglas, Justin Vinton, and Michelle Van Noy
Michelle Van Noy and her co-authors explain that defining completion and success in nondegree workforce programs is much more complicated than in traditional degree programs because program lengths, stackable credentials, and student goals vary widely. They believe states and institutions should develop more nuanced definitions of progress and completion—especially in light of Workforce Pell requirements—that recognize meaningful milestones while supporting accurate measurement of student outcomes and labor market success.
- Publication Year
- 2026
- Blog, Publications
- Enrollment, Finance, Policy
- Peter Bahr, Mark D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, and Di Xu
Workforce Pell expands federal aid eligibility to some short-term and noncredit programs, but only those that meet strict requirements related to program length, outcomes, and demonstrated value. These criteria create significant barriers, meaning many existing noncredit programs will not qualify without improved data systems and stronger alignment with workforce and credit pathways. As a result, the policy’s impact on access will depend on institutions’ ability to meet these accountability standards.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Colorado (CO), New Jersey (NJ)
- Tom Hilliard and Mark D’Amico
The authors state that Colorado and New Jersey are developing different approaches to evaluating the quality of nondegree credentials, reflecting each state’s policy priorities, workforce needs, and available data. They highlight how these early efforts can inform other states by demonstrating the importance of aligning quality measures with learner outcomes, employer demand, and strong data systems.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
- Tom Hilliard and Michelle Van Noy
the authors argue that states and colleges lack critical data on whether learners actually earn many nondegree certifications and licenses because credential attainment is often held by third-party issuers rather than education providers or state agencies. They describe the CredLens initiative as a national data trust designed to securely connect credential attainment, education, and employment data, enabling policymakers and institutions to better evaluate program quality, student outcomes, and the labor market value of nondegree credentials.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Tom Hilliard and Michelle Van Noy
How are accreditors are adapting to the growing role of nondegree credentials as federal policy changes, including Workforce Pell, increase demand for quality assurance beyond traditional degree programs? Authors Michelle Van Noy and Thomas Hilliard argue that accreditors will likely play a larger role in evaluating the quality and effectiveness of nondegree offerings while balancing innovation, accountability, and the diverse purposes these credentials serve.
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Noah Geisel, Scott Cheney, Michelle Van Noy, Hironao Okahana, and Melanie Gottlieb
The authors, including Michelle Van Noy, propose creating a standardized “nutrition label” for credentials that clearly communicates what learners gain from a credential—including skills, cost, duration, quality indicators, transferability, and employment outcomes—rather than focusing primarily on what the credential is called. It argues that greater transparency and consistent information would help learners, employers, and policymakers compare credentials, make informed decisions, and better understand their value in the labor marke
- Publication Year
- 2025
- Blog, Publications
- Outcomes, Policy, Program Quality
- Michelle Van Noy
Nondegree credentials serve many different purposes—from preparing learners for entry into an occupation to helping incumbent workers build targeted skills or meet continuing education requirements—so they should not be treated as a single category. According to author Michelle Van Noy, because programs are designed with different goals in mind, policymakers and educators should evaluate them using expectations and outcome measures that align with each credential’s intended purpose rather than applying one standard to all.
- Publication Year
- 2024
- Blog, Publications
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, Student Voices/Perspectives, State Data Infrastructure
- Virginia (VA)
- Di Xu, Benjamin Castleman, and Betsy Tessler
With rapid technological advances, the U.S. labor market exhibits a growing need for more frequent and ongoing skill development. Community college noncredit career and technical education (CTE) programs that allow students to complete workforce training and earn credentials play an essential role in providing workers with the skills they need to compete for jobs in high-demand fields. Yet, there is a dearth of research on these programs because noncredit students are typically not included in state and national postsecondary datasets. In this guest blog for CTE Month, researchers Di Xu, Benjamin Castleman, and Betsy Tessler discuss their IES-funded exploration study in which they build on a long-standing research partnership with the Virginia Community College System and leverage a variety of data sources to investigate the Commonwealth’s FastForward programs. These programs are noncredit CTE programs designed to lead to an industry-recognized credential in one of several high-demand fields identified by the Virginia Workforce Board.