California’s community-college system has unveiled an online salary-comparison tool that details how much money students earned before and after completing a certificate or an associate degree at a college in the 112-campus system.
The Web site, called Salary Surfer, shows median annual incomes two years before, two years after, and five years after students completed a program—a trove of data that could persuade more students to enroll, help them decide which programs to enter, and provide college leaders with ammunition to use in arguing against deeper state budget cuts. The system is the nation’s largest college system and has endured cuts of $1.5-billion in state support over the last five years.
Salary Surfer’s data show that, five years after finishing their programs, nearly 45 percent of students who completed an associate degree earned more than $54,000, the median income for a California resident with a bachelor’s degree.
“This is a factual base for the story we’ve been telling in higher education for a number of years,” Brice W. Harris, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, said in a conference call with reporters. “We think we can look policy makers in the eye and say that we’ve been telling you that return on investment is good, and here it is.”
The Web site shows salary information for students in 179 of the system’s degree and certificate programs that are most widely enrolled in, a range of fields as varied as applied photography and health-information coding. The data cover about half of the system’s graduates and do not include students who took jobs with the federal government, who are self-employed or working out of state, or who transferred to a four-year college.
Programs with the highest earnings potential include electrical systems and power transmission, physician assistant, and radiation-therapy technician. In each of them, graduates were earning more than $90,000 a year five years after completing their programs.
Californians who got credentials in some fields, however, still barely earned a living wage. Those who obtained associate degrees in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy were earning just over $25,000 five years after finishing their degrees.
The data also show a stark difference between vocational and nonvocational programs. Graduates with associate degrees in vocational fields earned a median of $61,600 five years after graduation, while for those in nonvocational programs, the median was $39,300.
The Web site does not show the differences in earning potential between programs at different colleges because sample sizes dwindle the farther you “drill down,” said Patrick Perry, the system’s vice chancellor for technology, research, and information systems.
Encouragement for Students
Helen Benjamin, chancellor of the Contra Costa Community College District, said the information should motivate low-income students to see the value of going back to college to earn an associate degree or certificate by giving them clear evidence of their salary potential.
“Our students need something like this, which is very tangible and will encourage them to complete their studies,” she said.
Mr. Harris, the system chancellor, stressed that community-college officials wanted current and prospective students to see the salary information as just one piece in determining which field to pursue.
The information could also affect colleges’ decisions about which programs they should offer, Mr. Harris said. “Over time this will influence curriculum development and offerings up and down the state,” he said. “It will take us some time to analyze that.”
He added that he hoped the Web site would be a basis for community-college officials to begin discussions with the University of California system and the California State University system to broaden the tool’s reach.
While most states have the capabilities to bring education and salary data together, only a few have done so. College Measures, a partnership of the American Institutes for Research and Matrix Knowledge, a consulting firm, has built similar tools for Arkansas, Colorado, Tennessee, and Texas.
In California, the college system and the state’s Employment Development Department worked in partnership to aggregate the data. The cost to the system was minimal, said Mr. Perry, the vice chancellor for technology, because the program was built in-house.