The Dispatch

Whether you earn a family-sustaining wage after completing a certificate program can depend less on what you study than where you study it.

That’s one takeaway from a virtual conversation we hosted earlier this week with Michael Itzkowitz, founder and president of The HEA Group, and Carrie Warick-Smith, vice president of public policy at the Association of Community College Trustees. They joined Open Campus co-founder and Editor in Chief Sara Hebel to talk about the future of certificate programs in the age of Workforce Pell.

The conversation also highlighted findings from a new tool we built with The HEA Group to show which of these programs pay off.

You can catch the full conversation here (passcode: certificates#2026).

A new era of accountability

We’re now under an “accountability umbrella,” where for the first time Congress has enacted regulations to oversee higher-ed outcomes, Warick-Smith said.

Panelists pointed to federal Pell Grants that are now available for short-term workforce programs — and the strict requirements that mean, so far, few programs actually qualify.

📚 Read more: North Carolina community colleges find few workforce courses qualify for new federal financial aid (via our partner NC Local)

There’s also the proposed “Do No Harm” rule that’s going through the rulemaking process: Undergraduate programs would have to demonstrate that a majority of their graduates out-earn a typical high school graduate, or risk losing eligibility for federal student aid. Taken together, those two efforts mean there’s a lot of talk right now about what routes best set students up for good-paying jobs, and where colleges are falling short.

Itzkowitz also pointed out that “Do No Harm” is actually a pretty low bar: Graduates of a program need to earn more than their state’s average high school graduate. He cited Florida as an example. There, students need to make more than $32,000 a year to clear that threshold — that amounts to $16 an hour, just above what minimum wage will be there this fall.

“If folks aren’t able to keep their lights on and they’re working two or three jobs after they get a credential it’s going to be very unlikely they’re able to attend a civic meeting or engage in many of these other benefits we associate with higher education,” he said.

For practical intelligence on Workforce Pell, delivered weekly to your inbox, sign up for our six-part Workforce Pell Briefing.

Location matters

Our explorer shows the average earnings premium for undergraduate certificate holders compared to typical high school graduates. States with higher earnings premiums appear more orange, while lower premiums appear more blue.

The Certificate Earnings Explorer tool, which we built in partnership with The HEA Group, allows users to explore and compare the economic outcomes of thousands of undergraduate certificate programs.

Warick-Smith and Itzkowitz both pointed to the variation in earnings by program and by region as one of the most surprising takeaways from the tool.

📚 Read more: Data center boom strains Texas homebuilders’ need for electricians (via our partner The Texas Tribune)

The highest-earning programs around the country train linemen. But how much you earn doing that dangerous job can vary by where you live. Graduates who train to be electrical and power transmission installers in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County can earn nearly $175,000 a year. But the same program two states over in Indiana turns out graduates earning about $92,000. Those are still “really healthy, family-sustaining wages, but that’s a tremendous difference,” Warick-Smith said.

📚 Read more: Lakeshore College summer camp introduces children and teens to hands-on, in-demand jobs (via our partner Wisconsin Watch)

📚 Read more: 10 years and 16,800 students short: What went wrong with Colorado’s youth apprenticeship program? (via our partner Chalkbeat Colorado)

There can also be significant variation across institutions, even within the same state, Itzkowitz found in a recent analysis of Colorado offerings: Graduates with a certificate in Vehicle Maintenance from Trinidad State College earn about $32,000 four years after graduation, less than a high school graduate earns. Graduates with the exact same credential from Northeastern Junior College in Sterling earn nearly $67,000, more than double.

College leaders should use this information to dig deeper into any programs whose graduates aren’t ending up in good-paying jobs, Itzkowitz said. They should assess whether instructors are equipping students with the right skills and whether their career services centers are providing enough support. But most often, they’ll need to answer a tougher question: Are there enough local jobs to support the credential they’re offering?

Equity concerns

Panelists also pointed to equity issues visible in the certificate data. Women and students of color are already being steered toward workforce programs, Itzkowitz said. If those programs leave them earning less than a typical high school graduate, they’re perpetuating inequality rather than delivering economic mobility.

Warick-Smith also noted that programs in the care economy may fail earnings requirements — not because the programs are poor in quality or unimportant, but because childcare workers and home health aides are paid poorly.

📚 Read more: Despite losing federal grants, Alamo Colleges works to expand support for parenting students (via our partner The San Antonio Report)

Her “glass-half-full interpretation” is that the accountability measures will force policymakers to look at the care economy and what could be considered a broken marketplace.

“The pessimistic view is that we end up having programs that have lower participation and outputs because of these new requirements and then we have worker shortages,” she said. In that instance, she said, it’s not really about the program quality, but about the wages that society assigns to those jobs.

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