When the number of credentials awarded by Utah’s technical colleges soared in recent years, the system appeared to be bucking a national trend that has college-completion activists worried.
The number of certificates issued by the eight-campus Utah College of Applied Technology jumped 43 percent from 2011 to 2014, to 34,600.
What makes the leap particularly impressive is that it occurred during a period for which both two- and four-year colleges are reporting another slip in graduation rates across all categories of students.
If the improvements among Utah’s technical colleges appeared too good to be true, a state legislative audit this month suggested that they probably were.
Many of the certificates showing up in the completion column were, in fact, retroactively counted for short-term job-training programs that can be finished in a few months or less, the audit report said. They were counted as completions even though no certificates were presented to the students and no record of them appeared on the students’ transcripts.
Most of the colleges’ certificates now take less than an academic quarter to complete, the audit said.
Effectively, the auditors suggested, the system had been artificially inflating its completion numbers since 2013. They said the colleges had done so to help meet a goal, set by the governor, that two-thirds of the state’s residents have a degree or certificate by 2020.
The system’s president, Robert O. Brems, denied that the colleges, known as UCAT, had inflated their completion numbers. He said they were simply trying to capture more students in their completion statistics.
But the flap illustrates how the intense pressure that lawmakers, foundations, and even President Obama are placing on colleges to improve their graduation rates is prompting some creative credential counting. It also raises questions about who gets to define what counts as a high-quality degree, and what that definition looks like.
New Types of Credentials
Short-term certificates, which are cheaper and faster to produce than are degrees, are booming in popularity.
From 2000 to 2014, the number of certificates awarded by community colleges ballooned by 150 percent, compared with a 59-percent jump in associate degrees and a 47-percent increase in bachelor’s degrees, according to the American Association of Community Colleges.
Some of the growth is due to the trend toward “stackable credentials,” in which students break their educations down into smaller pieces that allow them to move in and out of the work force without having to start over each time they return to college.
And there is little doubt that certificates in fields like welding or truck driving provide valuable skills to students with specific occupational goals at a fraction of the cost of a college degree.
But the value of a college’s certificates is cheapened, skeptics argue, when they’re handed out too liberally.
Most of the completions reported by the Utah College of Applied Technology are for students who passed a course, rather than finished a program and received a certificate, according to the audit report.
Job-training sequences, for instance, can usually be finished in 60 hours or less, while students spend more than 450 hours on most certificate programs.
“All of these additions to completion rates over the past four years have diluted UCAT’s traditional program certificate completions with a high volume of smaller student achievements,” the report notes.
‘These are real students with real goals who had achieved real competencies,’ says the Utah technical-college system’s president.
In an interview, the college’s president, Mr. Brems, insisted that nothing was being diluted. With the state’s unemployment rate hovering just under 4 percent, he said, there aren’t a lot of out-of-work people needing training. Many already have jobs, but just need to spend 10 or 20 hours brushing up on specific skills.
“Our customers are coming for shorter and shorter periods of time, and we’re adjusting to that,” Mr. Brems said.
At a time when the state is moving toward performance-based funding and the pressure is on to graduate more students, figuring out whom to add to the completion tallies was tricky, he said.
Initially, the system counted only people who were seeking certificates, but that accounted for only about half of its students. College officials got to thinking, “What about all of the students who are just needing occupational upgrades, or high-school students who are taking courses? There was no mechanism for reporting them toward the 2020 goal,” Mr. Brems said.
After meeting with legislators, system officials decided to issue a new category of credential for people who had achieved their stated objective, even if that was just a 20-hour program to brush up work skills. They called it an occupational-skills certificate.
No one was trying to pad the completion numbers, Mr. Brems said. “These are real students with real goals who had achieved real competencies.”
Focus on Completion Rates
Six years ago, six national associations representing two-year colleges pledged to increase the number of students with “credentials of value” by 50 percent by the year 2020.
The Lumina Foundation wants to see at least 60 percent of working-age Americans with “high-quality degrees and other credentials” by 2025.
Some 32 states have pledged to take specific steps to increase graduation rates, according to Lumina officials. More than 30 also base at least part of their higher-education budget allocations on performance metrics that include the number of degrees and certificates awarded.
In a series of papers, Lumina outlined the potential it sees for such performance incentives, when combined with more advising and other student-support services, to increase the number of credentials awarded — especially to low-income and minority students.
‘Constant vigilance’ will be needed to ensure that the credentials counted in performance metrics are quality ones, says a strategy officer with Lumina. ‘What we don’t want is a shell game.’
Skeptics say those funding formulas have little effect on completion rates and, in fact, encourage colleges to hand out more short-term credentials whose value is dubious.
A study released last year found that many certificates that take less than a year to complete do not help students earn more money or get jobs.
Sean Tierney, a strategy officer with Lumina, acknowledged in an interview that some credentials are worth more than others.
“Whenever a state looks to fund colleges based on certain metrics, we have to be sure there are no unintended consequences,” he said.
“Constant vigilance” will be needed to ensure that the credentials that are counted are those that lead to future education and employment, Mr. Tierney added. “What we don’t want is a shell game.”
Cliff Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, said that when international organizations judge completion rates, they count only basic degrees. While shorter-term credentials are recognized in the United States, badges and similar credentials shouldn’t be, he said in an email.
To do so, he wrote, would be “like saying people who pour cement for a building foundation have ‘completed,’ even though the building site is still just a hole in the ground with the beginnings of a foundation.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
