The webinar, "Show Me the Money: In a Crowded Market, How are Colleges Communicating the Value of Non-Degree Credentials," brought together Stacy Caldwell, CEO of CredLens; Maria Toyoda, president and CEO of the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC); and Binh Thuy Do, vice president of research and development at Calbright College. The session was moderated by Seth Harris, a distinguished professor at Northeastern University and former senior official at the U.S. Department of Labor.
The conversation comes as enrollment data signals a striking shift in American higher education. According to figures released last week by the National Student Clearinghouse, certificate program enrollment at community colleges grew more than 12 percent year over year, a pace far outstripping enrollment growth in associate degree programs.
But popularity, panelists cautioned, does not equal efficacy.
"We do not have systematic, reliable, and readily available information about whether and which credentials actually lead to increased productivity for employers and wage gains, better job opportunities, and greater economic security for workers," Harris said in his opening remarks.
Caldwell, whose organization CredLens works directly with community colleges and training providers to link credential data to real labor market outcomes, said the sector's central failure is not a lack of good instincts. Instead, she added, it’s a lack of verified information.
"Leaders know their programs and they know their populations," Caldwell said. "But they may not have enough rich, verified data to feel confident going public with what they know."
CredLens addresses that gap by matching lists of program completers against a range of employment and earnings data sources — both commercial and administrative — to build longitudinal portraits of what students actually achieved. The platform tracks employment rates, wage levels before and after completion, job alignment, and educational progression at six-month, 12-month, and 18-month intervals.
Caldwell shared two concrete findings from partner institutions: a community college in northwestern Ohio that discovered, through CredLens data, that a significant share of its graduates were crossing the state line to work for two Michigan employers the college hadn't known about — and promptly called to build those relationships — and a two-year institution in Boston that used outcomes data to consolidate programs after discovering stark disparities in results for graduates pursuing similar jobs.
Do echoed the data challenge from a provider's perspective. Calbright College, a fully online California community college focused on workforce credentials and upward economic mobility, launched a pilot partnership with CredLens in December 2025 after years of relying on self-reported student surveys with low response rates and questionable verifiability.
"We might have good snapshots at any one given moment," Do said. "But the comprehensive nature of the data was not available to us." Through the CredLens platform, Calbright can now confirm that 80 percent of its completers are employed one year after graduation across all programs.
Toyoda, whose organization accredits entire institutions rather than individual programs, said accreditors face a structural tension in the non-degree credential space. With more than one million non-degree programs now in existence, she said, it is simply not feasible to evaluate each one.
"If an accreditor is sitting there saying we need to review every single program you are creating, that's untenable," Toyoda said. Instead, WSCUC reviews the overall institutional ecosystem and the capacity of an institution to deliver on its mission, relying on evidentiary data, including the kind CredLens produces, to determine whether institutions are succeeding.
Toyoda also cautioned against treating accreditation as a substitute for other quality signals, noting that labor markets are inherently local and that the most valuable data comes from understanding specific community and employer needs, not high-level aggregates.
One of the sharpest exchanges of the session came when Harris raised the issue of selection bias in outcome data — the risk that programs appear to produce strong results not because of program quality, but because of who enrolls.
Caldwell, drawing on her background in educational measurement, argued the solution lies in matching the right metric to the right goal.
"If you have a program where you know five courses in, somebody's out on the oil fields in the Permian Basin, tell that story," she said. Programs serving the hardest-to-reach populations — those lifting participants out of poverty or into their first job with health coverage — require a different frame than programs serving workers with existing labor market attachment.
"A program that moves somebody out of poverty or moves them into a job where they have healthcare coverage for the first time — that is a huge impact," Caldwell said. "We need to make the space for those metrics."
The panel closed with a pointed question about Workforce Pell — the long-advocated federal financial aid expansion to short-term credential programs — and whether its recent passage signals a turning point.
The consensus was cautious optimism, with a pointed caveat from Toyoda.
"It's a federal program that leans heavily on nonexistent state infrastructure," she said. "Until the states start to build the infrastructure to deal with the rules, the regulations, and the data requirements, I don't think anything's going to happen."
Caldwell called Workforce Pell "a push in the right direction" while acknowledging it would not resolve the local labor market data problems the sector still faces. Do said it validates the short-term credential model, but added that implementation and accountability would determine its overall impact.
