Research Reports
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- Publication Year
- 2026
- Michelle Van Noy and Mark D’Amico
- Policy, State Data Infrastructure
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
- Mark D'Amico and Michelle Van Noy
- Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Program Quality, State Data Infrastructure
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.
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- Publication Year
- 2025
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D’Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, Jackson Yan
- Outcomes, Program Quality
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
- 2024
- Michelle Van Noy, Sam Scovill and Nicole Sandelier Boyd
- Outcomes
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
- Michelle Van Noy, Mark D’Amico, Eliza K. Peterson, Justin Vinton, Tom Hilliard, Anjali Srivastava, Di Xu, Pete Riley Bahr
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, State Data Infrastructure
- Maryland (MD), New Jersey (NJ), Oregon (OR), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN)
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
- Peter Bahr, Cody Christensen, Rooney Columbus, Mark D'Amico, Jennifer May-Trifiletti, and Jackson Yan
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Demographics
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
- 2023
- Mark D’Amico, Michelle Van Noy, Anjali Srivastava, Peter Bahr, and Di Xu
- State Data Infrastructure
- Iowa (IA), Louisiana (LA), Virginia (VA)
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.
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- Publication Year
- 2023
- Peter Bahr, Amy Cable, Mark D'Amico, and Michelle Van Noy
- Enrollment, Outcomes, Finance, Policy, Demographics, State Data Infrastructure
- Louisiana (LA)
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Bahr, P. R., Columbus, R., and May-Trifiletti, J
- Enrollment, Outcomes
- Iowa (IA)
- Publication Year
- 2023
- Michelle Van Noy, Katherine Hughes, and Genevive Bjorn
- Policy, Program Quality
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.