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This paper provides among the first rigorous estimates of the labor-market returns to community college certificates and diplomas, as well as estimating the returns to the more commonly-studied associate's degrees. Using administrative data from Kentucky, we estimate panel-data models that control for differences among students in pre-college earnings and educational aspirations. Associate's degrees and diplomas have quarterly earnings returns of nearly [USD] 2,400 for women and [USD] 1,500 for men, compared with much smaller returns for certificates. There is substantial heterogeneity in returns across fields of study. Degrees, diplomas, and - for women - certificates correspond with higher levels of employment.

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Much is known about private returns to education in the form of higher earnings. Less is known about social value, over and above the private, market value. Associations between education and socially-desirable outcomes are strong, but disentangling the effect of education from other causal factors is challenging. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the social value of one form of higher education. [The authors] elicit willingness to pay for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System directly through a stated-preferences survey and compare [the] estimate of total social value to [the] estimates of private value in the form of increased earnings. [The authors'] earnings estimates are based on two distinct data sets, one administrative and one from the US Census. The difference between the total social value and the increase in earnings is [the authors'] measure of the education externality. [The authors'] work differs from previous research by eliciting values directly in a way that yields a total value including any external benefits and by focusing on education at the community college level. [The authors'] preferred estimate indicates the social value of expanding the system substantially exceeds private value by approximately 50 per cent.

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