Everyone has a different experience with post-secondary education. One element of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey on Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) reviews higher education and its impacts on household income and spending decisions.
The survey asks participants who have already earned a post-secondary degree and who are not currently enrolled in school to consider in hindsight what educational decisions they may have made differently. Notably, 61% of people who earned less than a bachelor’s degree – in other words, an associate degree or certificate – said in hindsight they would have completed more education.
Nearly two-thirds of those who earn an associate degree or non-degree certificate recognize the insufficiency of their higher education as being a persistent problem in their lives. I wasn’t surprised when I read this, but I firmly believe that it doesn’t have to be this way for most community college graduates.
Associate degrees don’t turn out to be very valuable to employers right now. Some don’t recognize them as college degrees. Certificates are even worse; employers don’t really know how to assess their value. That impacts the worker’s income.
An associate degree isn’t a bachelor’s degree, so should the employer pay a worker with an associate degree the same as a person with a better higher education pedigree if they’re performing substantially the same work? Is a bachelor’s degree worth more? Does degree type make a statement about the employee? Is a worker with a bachelor’s degree more knowledgeable, more reliable, more accountable than a worker with an associate degree?
And how persistent are community college credentials? Are they still valuable after five years? Ten years? Do they have an expiration date? And if so, is the worker’s skill set obsolete when that expiration date comes calling?
Higher education opens the door to higher earnings
From the employee’s perspective, the decision to go low on higher education means accepting lower starting salaries, lower raises, and lower lifetime earnings. When expressed in these terms, it is not hard to figure out why fewer people are enrolling in community colleges at all.
This sentiment isn’t new or revelatory. I’ve said for years that the stand-alone income potential of a community college credential is too low to allow graduates to earn living wages and to enter the middle class. Regardless of the statistical correctness of their hindsight sentiments, few community college graduates make it through a four-year program if or when they transfer. Realistically, community college graduates have only the slimmest opportunity to improve their future earnings by getting more education.
If nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents who earned only an associate degree or less regret their higher education decisions, are they really saying that they regret their decision to go to a community college? Do they believe they’d have been better off attending a university in the first place?
That is the perception that community colleges need to overcome. It is precisely why community colleges need to focus on drastically improving the income potential of their academic programs.
Photo Credit: Flazingo Photos, via Flickr
