Getting the Most Out of Short-Term Career and Technical Education (CTE) Credentials

CTE programs aim to develop skills that align with employer needs and lead directly to employment. Such programs are most prevalent in six fields of study: health sciences, business and marketing, computer and information sciences, repair services, protective services, and personal and culinary services. This report assesses evidence regarding the returns to short-term CTE programs as well as the factors that help explain improved outcomes for students. The researchers accomplish this analysis by drawing from several sources, including the College Scorecard (i.e., a program-level dataset pertaining to associate degrees and certificates, general field of study, specific field of study, and median debt among graduates), the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Completion Survey of 2021 (i.e., data regarding race, ethnicity, and gender of people completing specific programs), and Occupational Employment Statistics (i.e., a tool used to extract overall median annual income and calculate the median for occupations mapping to each field of study in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas that offer CTE programs).
The analysis considers descriptive statistics and institutional characteristics as well as dependent variables such as debt, earnings, and debt burdens. Due to skew in these dependent variables, the researchers log transform them before running multilevel regression models and pool and cluster all short-term CTE programs within institutions. The researchers are also careful to state the report’s limitations before providing an overview of short-term CTE programs, an explanation of debt-burden drivers, and an analysis of programs within general fields of study. The report concludes with implications for programs and policy and possible directions for future research.

The major findings of this report include:

1. Median debt is roughly $16,000, but ranges from $3,700 to $45,000 across all short-term CTE credentials
2. Median earnings two years after graduation are about $32,000—twice the median debt—and range from $8,200 to $116,000
3. Short-term CTE programs are fairly evenly split between undergraduate certificates and associate degrees
4. Women are the majority in most CTE programs, but very gendered trends exist when we look more closely at specific fields of study
5. People of color comprise more than one third of learners and represent a similar share in most fields, except computer and information sciences, where they are a smaller share
6. Most programs are located at 2-year public colleges
7. About two-thirds of personal and culinary services programs are based out of less-than-2-year institutions, and 79 percent of these programs are at private, for-profit institutions
8. Field of study and the credential level of CTE programs add the most to our understanding of outcomes across all CTE programs, particularly for earnings 2 years post-graduation
9. Institutional characteristics play a larger role in explaining student debt than they do in explaining earnings
10. Program, institutional, and labor market characteristics explain a significant share of the differences we see in outcomes for graduates across CTE programs
11. Associate degree programs overall have 6 percent higher debt burden compared with certificate programs because their added cost outpaces increased earnings
12. Across all CTE programs, those located in institutions with large shares of adult learners tend to have relatively high debt burden because students tend to take out more in loans and their earnings don’t sufficiently compensate
13. Graduates of programs located in higher-wage labor markets enjoy significantly higher earnings at the 2-year mark

This report’s recommendations include:

1. Provide strong career guidance before learners enroll and change the narrative about high-value CTE careers
2. Be deliberate about equality
3. Expand the number of seats in high-value programs and remove barriers to accessing them
4. Assist adult learners and women by limiting debt accrual and provide debt relief
5. Implement strategies for accelerated learning to reduce debt

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2023
• Author(s): Scott, M.; Sick,N.; and Wilson, J.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Justin Venneri
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies