Texas colleges pitch quick credentials as a first step toward higher wages. But students often fall off the path.

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On paper, Angela Ramirez is taking a path like the one that many Texas policymakers and community college leaders designed to help students like her.

With dreams of becoming a nurse, the high school graduate took an eight-week class to earn a nursing aide credential, which helped her land a job at a nursing home in New Braunfels. That job, she thought, would help her enter the health care field while she saved up to pay for her nursing degree.

Over the past decade, short-term certificates have become a popular way for students and workers to quickly learn skills that can lead to better wages. Schools have tried to design these programs as blocks that students can stack on top of one another: First, they get a certificate that only takes a few weeks or months to obtain; then, they use it to get an entry-level job. Those earnings help them shoulder the costs when they return to the classroom to earn their next credential, which in turn will help them get a better-paid job.

The reality, however, is often more complicated.

For Ramirez, being a nurse aide was too physically demanding, too mentally exhausting and didn’t leave any room for school. The low pay — $17.50 an hour — made it difficult to save money. After working at the nursing home for a year, she quit to focus on her studies.

This fall, the 22-year-old enrolled full-time at Austin Community College to pursue her nursing degree. Her journey will be longer than if she had just gone straight into nursing school because the classes she took for her nursing aide credential don’t count as credits toward the degree. Overall, it will be another four years of school before she can work as a registered nurse.

“I have friends around me who just graduated this year. It was as great as it was to go to their graduations. It also was a little painful to kind of see, that could have been me,” she said. “I feel like I'm behind. … I feel like a freshman again.”

Few students who earn certificates — especially certificates that do not yield any college credit — return to school full-time the way Ramirez did. Studies show students rarely move back and forth between the classroom and the workplace as policymakers had envisioned, especially non-traditional students who obtained one of these so-called stackable credentials as a way to gradually make more money. While it’s difficult to say exactly why, experts often point to financial pressures and other responsibilities. Students often can’t afford to go back to school and lose out on steady income.

Yet earning that next credential is crucial to their economic mobility. If students don’t pursue that next step in their education, they might get stuck in low-paying jobs or end up on a different career path.

“They're getting into those jobs that the programs prepare them for and say, ‘Well, gosh, this isn't what I expected. I need to make more money,’ and then they end up doing something completely different from what the program prepared them for,” said Michelle Van Noy, director of the Education and Employment Research Center at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. “Then you have to wonder … why have colleges been spending all this time creating these pathways if [they’re] not being used as intended.”

Not a straightforward road

The path Ramirez chose had its benefits.

Before she earned her nursing aide credential, Ramirez spent nearly three years attending multiple universities pursuing a different career. She ultimately decided to switch gears and go back to her childhood dream of being a nurse — but this time she needed to make sure this was what she truly wanted. The short-term credential, she reasoned, would let her test the waters before fully committing.

Her experience at the nursing home, while tiring, confirmed to her that she wanted to work in health care.

“I really enjoyed helping those people and just kind of like being involved in their lives and getting to know them,” she said.

Now that she’s back in the classroom, she’s also finding that work experience valuable as she learns new areas of medicine, including health disorders and diseases.

“I'm able to relate back to them or I already know about them because my residents that I used to have experienced those things,” Ramirez said.

Quick access to the workforce and real-world experience have often been part of the pitch for short-term credentials. Community colleges have long offered these programs to meet local workforce needs, connecting workers with jobs in high-demand fields.

Schools also recognized that a two or four-year degree might not be for everyone. Some people are pressed to enter the workforce right out of high school to start earning an income and support their families. Plus, college can be expensive and many students are hesitant to take out loans to cover the cost.

These programs come in various forms depending on the college, region and field of study. Students can earn a commercial driver’s license and become a truck driver in four weeks. They can study for five months to work as a medical assistant.

Historically, schools have operated short-term programs separately from those that lead toward a degree. Over the past decade, community colleges have started to connect these two sides so that more students can go from earning a short-term certificate to pursuing a more traditional two- or four-year degree.

“It’s blurring the lines a little bit between the two of those,” said Lindsay Daugherty, whose research with the RAND Corporation is at the forefront of the stackable credential movement.

Experts say schools and the state must help Texans take their education beyond the high school level. Federal data shows people with a two-year degree make 18% more than someone with just a high school diploma, and individuals with a four-year degree earned nearly 60% more than someone with a high school diploma. In the next 20 years, most jobs will require some kind of postsecondary credential, according to the policy group Texas 2036.

Texas ramped up its efforts to bolster short-term credential programs during the pandemic. The state funneled millions in federal COVID relief funds to community colleges to help them build out these programs so displaced workers could learn new skills and reenter the workforce during the economic crisis.

Federal data shows more young students have been pursuing certificate programs in recent years. Young people ages 18-22 earned more certificates in 2023 than in any other year in the last decade. State policymakers are also incentivizing shorter programs. Last legislative session, Texas lawmakers started to fund community colleges based in part on how many students earn short-term certificates.

Yet data on the effectiveness of these short-term programs is scarce. Many states, including Texas, haven’t required schools to track noncredit programs, leaving questions about exactly how much stacking credentials helps students advance in their studies and make more money.

What research does exist shows students often do not follow the path that schools envisioned. Few students ever transition from noncredit to for-credit programs. The chance students will stack certificates and degrees varies widely on which field of study they picked and whether the certificate program counts for college credit. Not all colleges offer credit for certificates, creating an uneven patchwork across schools and regions.

Other studies show modest gains in employment and salaries when students earn certificates and degrees, particularly in health care fields. Community colleges often emphasize the benefits of earning health care-related certificates that can build toward a degree, partly because of the large demand for nurses and other health care workers, including certified nursing aides, medical assistants and phlebotomists, who draw blood.

But while these health care certificates can lead to jobs working alongside nurses or doctors, experts say that does not mean they will help students enter those professions.

“There are no classes, really, from those [certified nursing assistant] or phlebotomy programs that transfer into a [registered nurse] program,” Daugherty said. “We just need to be transparent with the individuals who are going in: If you're entering a CNA program, you're entering a medical assistant route. This is the end of it.”

Data shows few students who complete a certified nursing assistant program use it as a stepping stone to pursue a degree. A 2016 study of health training pathways at California’s community colleges found that just 20% of certified nurse aides went on to get a higher-level credential. Only 10% became registered nurses within six years.

“People are trying to give people different pathways, but in doing so, they're oversimplifying the benefit of some of these credentials,” said Iris Palmer, director for community colleges with the Education Policy program at New America.

Stopping midway up the credential ladder can make a big difference in how much a person earns in the long run. In Texas, most certified nursing assistants earn $17 an hour or about $35,370 annually. Registered nurses, who have much more training and provide care directly, earn closer to $43 an hour, or $90,000 a year, according to federal data.

When Ramirez earned her certified nursing aide certificate, she understood that it would not count toward any future degree. But it helped with her goal of getting a job as soon as possible. It also let her get a taste of the health care industry before deciding whether she wanted to stay in the field.

By enrolling at ACC to pursue her nursing degree, Ramirez is already bucking the trend. She said not all of her colleagues at the nursing home have been able to do the same.

“There were CNAs who were overworked and tired,” she said.“I feel like [they] were just trying to meet the demands of the job and trying to support their family and [they] really hoped that they would be able to someday go back to school.”

Living up to the promise

Laura Marmolejo saw firsthand how rare it was for her students pursuing advanced manufacturing certificates at ACC to come back and earn a degree in the field. Either students enroll to quickly earn a certificate to get a job on the floor of a manufacturing company, or they go straight for an associate degree to become a technician, someone who makes sure industrial machines run properly.

But Marmolejo, dean of the advanced manufacturing department at ACC, realized that the curriculum for both the certificate and degree programs often overlapped. A few years ago, she reorganized the program so students who earned the short-term credential would also earn some college credits that could be applied toward a two-year degree. Now, manufacturing students at ACC can earn up to 18 college credits before they ever enroll to pursue the associate's degree.

By infusing college credits into the certificate program, ACC hopes to increase the chances that students will come back to pursue a higher degree, Marmolejo said.

“It allows more people access to education,” she said. “For a long time, students [getting a certificate would] think of it as, ‘I just need a class to get a job.’ They don't see themselves as students.”

Van Noy, who researches credentials at Rutgers University, said connecting noncredit and for-credit programs in this way is an “ideal” goal for schools designing pathways for students to follow.

Marmolejo also changed the course schedule so students could better fit classes around their work schedules if they decide to pursue a degree.

Since they’ve combined the programs, Marmolejo said at least 50 students who enrolled for a certificate went on to earn an associate’s degree. Before, only a handful of students would make the jump, she said.

“Students are starting to realize that this is not just a one-and-done class, but they step towards further career opportunities,” she said.

Arden Kling is one of those students. The 22-year-old stopped attending community college in California after one semester and moved to Taylor, about 40 miles northeast of Austin.

When Samsung built a new semiconductor facility in her town, Kling decided to take a technical drafting class to learn how to draw or design products. She loved the course and decided to pursue a certificate.

“I didn't think I was smart enough to go to college,” she said. “So once I got through that certificate, I was like, ‘Well, wait a minute. I've been doing this. I can keep doing this!’”

Van Noy said she often hears students say they chose a noncredit program because they had a prior negative experience with education and didn’t want to immediately commit to a for-credit program.

“It's a little testing the waters career-wise, but it's also a little bit of testing the waters educationally,” she said.

Kling has two more semesters left before she earns a two-year associate’s degree. While her immediate goal is to work at Samsung, now she also dreams of eventually earning her bachelor's degree.

“A lot of manufacturing is just trying things and trying things until you do find the thing that works,” she said. “And when you find that thing that works, it feels so good.”

Ramirez also feels she tried many things before she found the right path.

As she works toward her nursing degree at ACC, Ramirez sometimes thinks about the winding path she’s taken to get here and worries about the long road still ahead. She found a less demanding job as a nurse aide to cover the bills, but working while attending school means it’ll take longer to earn her degree.

But she reminds herself that she doesn’t think she’d be happy if she hadn’t switched paths. And her journey has not been without lessons.

“I really have learned how to be a college student and how to really feel about being successful in your classes and applying yourself,” she said.

Ramirez said she can see a future in which she goes to earn a bachelor’s and even a master’s degree. But for now, she’s focused on finishing this next step.

“I'm just really looking forward to the next four years,” she said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

This story was produced as part of the Higher Education Media Fellowship at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The fellowship supports new reporting into issues related to postsecondary career and technical education.

Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.