Students who enroll in short-term, job-focused training through community college noncredit programs experience modest but meaningful earnings gains and a greater likelihood of being employed after training, according to a new study published today in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.
The study, conducted by Peter Riley Bahr of the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Rooney Columbus of E&E Analytics, finds that workers earn about $2,000 more per year, on average, within two years of completing training—an increase of more than 4 percent after adjusting for inflation.
By that point, individuals who completed training are also nearly 4 percentage points more likely to be employed than their peers without training. When the analysis also accounts for people who were unemployed before training but found jobs afterward, the average earnings increase rises to almost $4,000 per year, reflecting the combined effects of training on both wages and the likelihood of being employed.
Read more at AERA.
