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While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, the authors' difference-in-differences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

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Stackable credentials - sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path - have been suggested as a way to enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. Yet, thus far, little evidence has been provided on the economic value of these credentials. In this paper, the authors report a series of estimates on the association between stackable credentials and earnings. They use national, survey, and college-system-level datasets. A significant body of evidence indicates that the labor market returns to certificates - along with those to college degrees - are positive. But the authors' estimates of stackable credentials show only weakly positive and inconsistent gains from these award combinations. Generally, these estimates are indistinguishable from the returns to only one postsecondary credential. There is no clear evidence of how earnings vary across types of stack - progressive, supplemental, or independent - or student characteristics. However, estimated earnings gains from stackable credentials may be imprecise. Few college students stack awards, the motives for stacking are unknown, and notably, the number of stacked awards depends on whether general vocational awards are included. Future research should examine why students stack awards and how they can choose combinations of awards that maximize their earnings gains from stacking.

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More than one third of college-educated workers have a license that provides the right to practice a particular occupation. In contrast to certificates, these licenses, serving either as a productivity signal or acting as a restrictive practice, are associated with significantly higher earnings. Thus, it is possible that some part of the returns to college are in fact returns to licensing. In this paper, the authors identify the effects of licenses on a set of labor market outcomes for the college-educated workforce using newly available national Current Population Survey data merged with US Department of Labor. The results show significant discrepancies between individual self-reported licensing rates and state-mandated licensing requirements across occupations. Findings indicate significant advantages from licensing in terms of earnings and labor market participation (hours worked). Moreover, controlling for licensing does not significantly reduce the measured returns to college. Licenses convey economic benefits even in occupations where they are not required. In contrast to prior studies, the current study also finds that licenses reduce wage dispersion across the college-educated workforce.

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Does extra financial aid for the summer lead to gains in completion and earnings? Despite being the largest source of financial aid to low-income college students, the traditional Pell Grant has had one major limitation: If students enroll in two semesters full-time, they will not have any tuition support for the summer term of the same academic year. The year-round Pell (YRP) was implemented in the academic years 2009-10 and 2010-11 to provide a second Pell Grant to students who enrolled in more than 24 credits prior to the third semester and in at least six credits during the summer term.

This paper employs a difference-in-difference approach to examine the credit, credential completion, and labor market outcomes resulting from the YRP using a state administrative dataset from a community college system. The study finds that for each $1,000 of YRP grant funding per YRP-eligible student, the likelihood of summer enrollment among YRP-eligible students increases by 27 percentage points and the likelihood of associate degree completion increases by 2.2 percentage points, with these gains primarily benefitting adult students who enrolled at age 20 or above. Given that the federal government is currently reinstating the YRP, this research is timely in providing insight into the efficacy of the YRP.

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Understanding the role of subbaccalaureate programs in preparing students for the workforce has become increasingly important, particularly in quickly changing fields that require well-trained technical workers, such as information technology (IT). To better understand the role of community colleges in educating IT workers, we examined two key issues: (1) students' employment outcomes by the type of community college IT preparation they complete, and (2) the type of employers that tend to hire community college IT students. Specifically, we analyzed data on students who were enrolled in an IT program at any Washington State community and technical college during the 2000-01 academic year and who completed their program or left college by the spring of the 2004-05 academic year. We examined information on students' course-taking in college and their employment before, during, and after their college enrollment. Our investigation of employment outcomes by type of community college preparation suggests that employers prefer workers with higher-level credentials. Of the four groups we analyzed, students with both an associate degree and a certificate in IT had the strongest employment outcomes in terms of likelihood of employment, hours worked, and earnings. They were followed by students with an IT associate degree, and then by students with an IT certificate. Students who earned no credential but concentrated their study in IT by completing four or more courses had the weakest employment outcomes, underscoring the importance of completing full programs and earning a credential. Compared with workers overall, IT students were more likely to work for medium sized employers. They were also more likely to be employed in temporary services and educational services industries. Our findings highlight the importance of community college efforts to engage with the full range of local employers as well as the potential need for different engagement strategies, depending on the employer.

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Stackable credentials - sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path - can enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. In light of recent labor market changes, these credentials may represent an important buffer against job displacement. However, very little evidence exists as to what constitutes a stackable credential and how many persons have obtained them.

[The authors] distinguish three types of stacking - progression, supplemental, and independent. Using national, survey, and college-system-level datasets, [they] estimate that between three and five per cent of the college-educated population have stackable credentials. However, there are several substantial empirical challenges in identifying stackable credentials related to the ordering of awards and to the degree of skill complementarity across awards. Significantly, [the authors] find that general vocational awards - earned at any institution and typically not credit-bearing - are often conflated with stackable certificates. The incidence of these awards is far greater than of stackable credentials. A review of the evidence shows that certificates convey modestly positive gains in earnings, but there is no evidence that stacking yields earnings gains. Finally, despite frequent changes in skills needs across the economy, [the authors] identify barriers to the expansion of stackable credentials.

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High school graduates often delay college enrollment, but few studies have looked at the effects of this choice on their educational attainment and success in the labor market. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper compares the academic and labor market outcomes of high school graduates who delay college enrollment ('delayers') and those who enroll in college immediately ('on-time enrollees') up to 13 years after high school completion. The results show that delaying college enrollment decreases individuals' likelihood of enrolling in college and increases their tendency to enroll in two-year colleges if they do return to school. Delayers experience early earnings benefits, but these fade out after their mid-20s and turn to significant losses over time. Differences in student characteristics only explain one third of the pay gap between delayers and on-time enrollees; 60 per cent of the pay gap is explained by delayers' reduced likelihood of attending and obtaining a degree at a four-year college.

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Experiential learning is critical to a smooth transition from higher education to the workforce. Work-based college courses, such as internships and practicums, may be useful in facilitating this transition. This paper applies an innovative text mining technique to identify and analyze work-based courses from transcript data. The paper examines patterns and post-degree labor market outcomes of taking work-based courses at two-year and four-year colleges in a large public college system. Findings show that approximately 15 per cent of enrollees and 30 per cent of graduates took a work-based course in the six years after college entry. Students typically earned credits from work-based courses, and they typically took the courses in later years of their programs. Moreover, work-based coursetaking varied largely across fields of study as well as colleges. While there was no significant racial disparity, female students, students who were younger at enrollment, and U.S.-born students were more likely to take the courses than their counterparts. Results show a positive association between work-based coursetaking in college and the probability of being employed after degree completion among both two-year and four-year degree completers, a positive association with post-degree earnings among four-year completers, and a negative association with post-degree earnings among two-year completers.

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Based on fieldwork in two distinct labor markets, this paper compares how associate and bachelor's degrees are perceived by employers seeking to hire [information technology] IT technicians. The study finds that there are particular positive and negative qualities, such as hands-on skills and lack of academic initiative, that hiring managers expect to find almost exclusively among associate degree holders. The findings also suggest that perceptions of credentials vary by local labor market characteristics.

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This study provides one of the first estimates of the returns to different types of community college credentials - short-term certificates, long-term certificates, and associate degrees - across different fields of study. We exploit a rich dataset that includes matched, longitudinal college transcripts and Unemployment Insurance records for students who entered a Washington State community college in 2001-2002, and we use an individual fixed effects identification strategy to control for both observed and unobserved student characteristics that are time invariant. We find that earning an associate degree leads to positive increases in wages in almost every field (compared with earning some credits but not obtaining a credential), but that the magnitude of these effects varies greatly by field. For example, while earning an associate degree in the humanities and social sciences increases earnings by five per cent for women, earning an associate degree in nursing increases women's earnings by 37 per cent. Further, our analysis by field of study reveals that the returns to associate degrees are higher than the returns to long-term and short-term certificates within almost every field, but that a larger proportion of long-term certificates tend to be offered in high-return fields. Our findings also suggest that, unlike associate degrees and long-term certificates, short-term certificates have little or no effect on wages in most fields of study when compared with earning some credits and leaving college without a credential. Finally, the impact of credential receipt on the probability of employment and on hours worked per week is at least as significant in magnitude as the impact on wages. This suggests that part of the returns to earnings estimated in previous literature results from the greater employability of students who earn a credential rather than from increases in human capital as measured by wages.

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