Postcollege Workforce Outcomes Measures: Issues Facing Policymakers, Analysts, and Researchers

“The impact of college on workforce outcomes has become a central issue in the ongoing debate about the role of post-secondary education in the American economy and society. Community colleges are at the center of this debate. Questions that drive the policy conversation include these three:

1. What is a post-secondary program’s employment rate?

2. How much are completers earning?

3. At what level—student, program, or college—should earnings or other data for college completers be made available?” (p. 3). (Abstractor: Author)

• "The diverse paths a college student may take after graduation—including further postsecondary education, employment, participation in humanitarian efforts, enlistment in military or clandestine services, incarceration, or death—do not allow for the calculation of a precise “employment/placement rate.” As such, it may be most accurate and honest to generate an employment match rate along with earnings data. Also, note that the inverse of the employment rate does not denote failure.
• Earnings data can be problematic for a number of reasons. One way to accommodate this is to include the median in addition to a range of values.
• For practical, legal, and other reasons, an individual student is not a viable option for reporting purposes in this area. Aggregate college and university earnings value is also not generally viable because most institutions offer a wide range of programs in which earnings can vary substantially, depending on major and award level (e.g., certificate, bachelor’s degree, advanced degree). Given this, data for completers should be made available at the 2-digit Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) level, as defined by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) of the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)” (p.3). (Abstractor: Author).

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2013
• Author(s): Mullin, Christopher M.
• Organizational Author(s): American Association of Community Colleges
• Funding Source: Self-funded
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies