Donors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into education and workforce training programs. Some of that money has funded credentials that helped workers move to better jobs and higher wages. Some has funded credentials that look good on paper but deliver little in the labor market.
There’s often no straightforward, reliable way to tell the difference between useful and useless credentials. But that’s changing. Two new tools can help donors tell the difference and decide what to support.
The Credential Value Index, from the Burning Glass Institute, gives funders first-time access to independent, outcome-based data on more than 23,000 non-degree credentials like certifications, licenses, and apprenticeships. The index is built from a database of more than 65 million career histories and tracks what actually happened to workers’ wages and career trajectories after they earned a given credential, rather than relying on what institutions report about themselves. It reports outcomes side by side on topics such as wage gains, new jobs, career advancement, and skill growth, so funders can see what kind of value a credential delivers.
Alongside it, the HEA Group and Open Campus have developed the Certificate Earnings Explorer, covering undergraduate, credit-bearing certificate programs at colleges short of a full degree. It uses federal financial-aid records matched to Internal Revenue Service earnings data, providing program-level earnings data on more than 5,500 such programs across all fifty states.
