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A recently released paper found "only weakly positive and inconsistent gains" in the labor market for stackable credentials, which are defined as certificates and degrees that are awarded in a sequential order, as students progress in their careers.
The study by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College, which was released in November, includes several caveats, such as an acknowledgment that estimated earnings gains from stackable credentials may be imprecise. But, using federal data, the study found no clear labor-market benefits from any of the combination of stacked credentials.
"We conclude that the labor market evidence on stackable credentials is (at best) modestly positive: the earnings gains for degrees are robust and the gains for certificates, although not high, are generally positive," the paper said. "Yet, there is no clear evidence on the earnings gains explicitly from stacking these credentials. Moreover, we cannot identify which type of stack -- supplemental, progression or independent -- yields the highest earnings gains."
