In 2023, the Biden administration enacted the new Gainful Employment Rule, which mandates greater transparency and accountability about the value of college credentials. Rather than focusing on credentials themselves, this brief from the Urban Institute looks at occupations and the typical level of education they require to examine the degree to which they pay earnings premiums for additional education.
The analysis shows that more than a third of jobs requiring a short-term nondegree credential and nearly half of those requiring a master’s degree do not pay earnings premiums. These jobs are heavily concentrated in health care, education, and social services where communities are already seeing acute labor shortages. In this light, even the very best educational institutions and programs will struggle to offer credentials that meet reasonable earnings standards in these fields—even if the credentials themselves are free. Thus, any meaningful approach to addressing labor shortages in health, education, and social services in local communities and ensuring returns on investment for students must be sector based and comprehensive. Communities should consider recalibrating licensing requirements, addressing degree inflation in hiring, reinventing the ways to train for these careers, targeting student debt relief, and using policy levers to improve wages and working conditions, states the report.