To help reduce college expenses, policymakers in two dozen states have authorized community colleges to provide some four-year degrees.  

But for many officials, it remained an open question whether employers would view four-year degrees from a community college the same way they view four-year degrees from a flagship university, such as the University of Oklahoma.

New research provides an answer: Employers generally view college degrees the same, regardless of what institutions issued them.

The recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, “The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education,” explored the issue by submitting fictitious resumes to real job vacancies in early childhood education (ECE) facilities.

The submitted resumes randomly varied each applicant’s educational credential, the institution that conferred it, and the applicant’s race and ethnicity.

Researchers found employers were as receptive to applicants with community college baccalaureate (CCB) degrees as they were to applicants with four-year degrees from major state universities.

“We find that employers view CCB degrees similarly to both traditional bachelor’s and associate degrees, with statistically indistinguishable interview-request rates across degree types,” the authors wrote.

The paper noted that community colleges serve about 8.6 million students per year, about 40 percent of all undergraduates in the United States. Many of those students are nontraditional (such as working adults, older students, and students with family responsibilities), low-income and/or minority.

However, among students who begin their higher-education journey at a community college, only about one-third transfer to a four-year institution and only half of those who transfer earn a bachelor’s degree within six years.

To augment the share of community college students who obtain a four-year degree, many states have authorized community college baccalaureate (CCB) degrees, which eliminate the need for students to transfer to another institution.

Between 2004 and 2022, the share of community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees increased from 2.1 percent to 16.5 percent. In Washington state and Florida, which have expanded CCB granting authority statewide, community colleges now award between 5 percent and 10 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, according to the NBER working paper.

The pilot study was conducted over 17 weeks in two major cities in Texas and Washington. The study authors submitted 4,698 resumes to 1,570 job vacancies and tracked employers’ responses.

“We find that applicants with CCB degrees perform similarly to applicants with traditional bachelor’s (BA) or associate (AA) degrees in the ECE labor market,” the study authors wrote. “Although callback rates were relatively high—more than 20 percent of applicants received an interview request, and more than 30 percent received either an interview request or a request for more information—we find no statistically or economically significant differences in interview requests or callback rates across the three credential types (AA, CCB, and traditional BA).”

In both states, the study authors found “little evidence that employers differ meaningfully in the overall tone, sentiment, warmth, or personalization of their responses to CCB applicants.”

“If anything, callback messages to CCB applicants were slightly longer and no more likely to be generic or template-based than those sent to traditional BA applicants,” the study authors stated. “Taken together, these findings suggest that employers generally view CCB applicants similarly to traditional BA applicants, although perceptions of and familiarity with CCB credentials may vary somewhat across labor market contexts and state policy environments.”

The study also found that “employer responses to CCB credentials in the ECE labor market are broadly similar across demographic groups, geographic regions, and job characteristics. Across race-ethnicity, location, hourly pay, and benefit offerings, we find little evidence of statistically or economically significant differences in callback rates between CCB holders and applicants with either associate or traditional bachelor’s degrees.”

Although CCB degrees were initially proposed as a cost-savings measure for students, the study authors found “a net-price simulation suggests that sticker-price comparisons substantially overstate the affordability advantage of CCB programs.”