Many U.S. Adults Hold Educational Credentials That Are Valuable Alternatives to Degrees
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released Measuring Alternative Educational Credentials: 2012, which reports that, as of fall 2012, more than 50 million U.S. adults (about 25 percent of the adult population) had received a professional certification, license, or educational certificate that was not a degree awarded by a college or university. Of the awardees, some 34 million had a professional certification or license, 7 million had an educational certificate, and 12 million had received both a professional certification or license and an educational certificate.
These alternative credentials covered a wide variety of content areas, including business, cosmetology, culinary arts, education, finance, management, and nursing. According to this first Census Bureau report ever about alternative educational credentials, they generally led to higher median monthly earnings for people with less than a bachelor’s degree, ranging from $4,167 for those with only a professional certification or license to $3,433 for those with only an educational certificate, and $3,920 for someone with both types of credentials. People without an alternative credential earned only $3,110, by comparison. There was little difference reported for people who had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, whether they added an alternative certificate or not.
The bureau also reported that professional certifications and licenses were more common at the level of an associate degree or higher, and especially so for people with master's and professional degrees.
The study found 11.2 million adults who had at most a high school diploma and also held a professional certification or license. If such an alternative credential were the hallmark of a revised measure of educational levels, almost 5 percent of the adult population would move into a higher (i.e., more than high school) education category.
The study also determined that almost three-quarters of recent or current jobs required professional certifications and licenses. Further, some 30 percent of adults who worked during the previous four months held an alternative credential, compared to 16 percent of unemployed adults and 13 percent of adults not in the labor force.
The data included in the report were collected between September and December 2012 using the Survey of Income and Program Participation.
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