By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Three minutes
It can be hard to keep up with all the latest reports in education related to college access and attainment. Acknowledging that, here are summaries of three recent interesting pieces of research. Are you a National College Attainment Network (NCAN) member who really likes data, evaluation, and research? Email me at debaunb@ncan.org to get involved in our data, evaluation, and research channel on the NCAN Online Practitioner Community!
Non-Degree Credentials Offer Mixed Returns: The American Enterprise Institute and the Burning Glass Institute analyzed a data set that connected the career histories of more than 65 million Americans with a data set of more than 23,000 nondegree credentials from more than 2,000 providers. These nondegree credentials include, for example, CTE programs and short-term
training programs.
Key findings include:
Just 12% of credentials provided earners with “significant wage gains.”
Credentials in the top decile (10%) “yield annual wage gains of nearly $5,000 and significantly increase career-switching success and advancement opportunities, while bottom-tier credentials provide few or no benefits.”
Credentials in the top quarter (25%) offered one-year increases of $3,000, and the median credential boosted earnings by $1,400.
Credential Engine identifies more than 1.1 million credentials nationwide. These results underscore the idea that not all credentials offer the same economic boost (let alone likelihood of completion).
Students need to make (and need to be able to make) informed choices about the return on their investment.
Surveys Offer Conflicting Vision of Postsecondary Preparation in High School: Students gave their schools a B- on teaching skills relevant to their future, helping to figure out future career plans, and preparing students for education after
high school, according to polling from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation in the 2025 Student Report Card. The grades are up from a C+ last year for “teaching skills”
and “future career plans.”
Additional surveying from Gallup, the Walton Family Foundation, and Jobs for the Future shows a
steep drop-off in both student and parent knowledge of options after high school beyond a paid job and pursuing a bachelor’s degree. These were the only two options that 50+% of parent respondents indicated knowing “a great deal” or “a lot” about,
and they were the only options about which more than 30% of student respondents said the same. Less than 20% of students reported significant familiarity with these pathways: associate’s degree, nondegree credentials, the military, starting a
business, and completing an apprenticeship or internship.
While about half of parents reported “frequently” having conversations about postsecondary pathways, that left 47% of parents having these conversations just occasionally or
even less frequently. The percentage of Gen Z parents reporting these conversations occurred frequently predictably increased as parental educational attainment increased. Timing matters too: just 43% of parents said they were frequently having
these conversations in 10th grade compared to 65% in 12th grade.
37.6 million is a big number, and it’s one that represents the “Some College, No Credential” (SCNC) population under age 65 in the United States was about 37.6 million, up 2.2% from the previous year, according to new research from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC). Most troubling is that although the number of SCNC students re-enrolling in postsecondary education increased for the second year in a row, the newly stopped out population between
January 2022 and July 2023 far outpaced re-enrollment and the number of individuals aging out of the working age SCNC population. States, communities, and institutions are going to have to get a lot better at re-enrolling the SCNC population
if adult enrollment is going to offset the upcoming decline in traditional-aged college enrollment.
That’s it for now – have research you’d like to elevate to the rest of the NCAN membership? Let me know at debaunb@ncan.org, and it’ might appear in a future rendition of this series.
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