A report released yesterday by the National Student Clearinghouse shows that the number of post-secondary students who leave school without earning a credential is growing. According to the report, the population of “some college, no credential” (SCNC) students increased by 3.6% in the 2021-22 academic year. That’s the largest one-year increase on record. This is important to Washtenaw County residents, in part, because WCC generates an incredibly high number of “some college, no credential” students. WCC issues more non-degree certificates than any other community college in the State of Michigan. (By a lot.) In fact, because WCC issues so many non-degree certificates, the US Department of Education now considers WCC a “certificate school.”
Unfortunately, because these certificates are not degrees, the statisticians classify those who earn them as part of the growing population of SCNC. That’s exactly what states – including the State of Michigan – don’t want.
Currently, Michigan has about 1.2 million people with SCNC status. This strategy gets even worse for WCC. According to the national data, only 4 out of 10 students who leave an institution without having earned a degree return to the institution they initially enrolled in. In other words, 6 out of 10 students who do go back to school enroll somewhere else. That’s a lot of students to lose.
Instead of encouraging students to complete a degree program while they’re enrolled at WCC, these students are cut loose with a certificate. Most never return to complete a degree, even though returning to the school they started at would offer the shortest path to a college degree.
Certificates don’t offer protection against income loss
Completion of a degree is really important. While most people argue that completing a degree shows an employer that an applicant can set goals, complete a multi-year plan, make the investment to see a project through from start to finish, etc., that’s not the real value in completing a degree. People who earn degrees earn more money and can better manage job losses, involuntary furloughs, unpaid leaves and other periods of non-employment. Having the degree matters.
It’s fair to point out that some observers lump associate degree earners in with the SCNC crowd. Their particular bias states that degrees begin at the bachelor’s degree and move upward. Nonetheless, it serves absolutely no one when the community college cranks out non-degree certificates at two-to-three times the rate of associate degrees, especially when the state has prioritized a plan to increase the number of adults over the age of 25 who have earned 60 college credits.
What will it take to refocus WCC’s strategy on increasing the number of degree-completers in Washtenaw County?
Photo Credit: Nick Bastian , via Flickr
