The Overlooked Value of Certificates and Associate's Degrees: What Students Need to Know before They Go to College

Education beyond high school is now the preferred currency for workers seeking economic opportunity in the US labor market. Since the 1980s, the bachelor's degree has been the gold standard for stable employment and lifetime earnings and the most promising route to the middle class. The new rules of the college and career game confirm that education level matters, and that more education is generally better when it comes to earnings potential. What is less well known is that program of study and major matter even more to potential earnings than education level. As a result, less education can often be worth more. In fact, some certificate holders can earn more than those with an associate's or bachelor's degree, and some associate's degree holders can earn more than those with a bachelor's degree. In other words, certificates and associate's degrees--credentials on the middle-skills pathway--can be viable routes to economic opportunity. Workers who have taken this pathway to jobs are doing so with certificates, associate's degrees, noncredit education, certifications, licenses, and a host of emerging microcredentials such as badges or coding and technology boot camps. But, while pockets of opportunity exist, not enough is known about the risks and rewards of the particular education and training programs available. Today the combined number of certificates and associate's degrees awarded by colleges is roughly equivalent to the number of bachelor's degrees, around 2 million per year, with certificates and associate's degrees each accounting for about 1 million. The students earning the vast majority of these credentials attend public two-year colleges. While certifications, licenses, microcredentials, and noncredit education are also important options on the middle-skills pathway, much less is known about the workforce outcomes of these options because no data source consistently captures this information. Due to limitations in the data, this report focuses on certificates and associate's degrees.