This article is written by Boston Globe Higher Education Reporter Hilary Burns and features quotes from Lumina’s Strategy Director of Data and Measurement, Chris Mullin.
By Hilary Burns
Growing up in Manchester, N.H., Richard Senneville’s friends and family assumed that the curious, academically inclined teenager would head to college after high school. But the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on his family’s finances made Senneville, wary of the debt he would have to take on to pursue a bachelor’s degree, rethink his educational trajectory.
Senneville dropped out of high school after the small charter school he attended shut down in 2015. After a couple of years, he and several friends were ready for an adventure. They pulled together funds to buy an old sailboat in need of repairs.
“We were sort of boat homeless for awhile,” he said. “We were coastal cruisers.”
The purchase jump-started Senneville’s career on the water, teaching sailing and repairing and maintaining boats, including working on a Viking longship at one point. Now 26, Senneville, who passed the High School Equivalency Test in 2019, recently completed a 10-week marine technician certificate program through Bunker Hill Community College, his first foray into higher education. He’s optimistic the formal training will increase his earnings potential, and lead to higher-paying work on the water fixing engines and electrical systems.
“Not every path is directly to college,” Senneville said. “There’s this whole big world of boats out there, and as soon as you get your foot in the door, you realize that there [are] a lot of opportunities.”
As the number of people pursuing two-and-four-year degrees across the country falls due to high sticker prices and declining birth rates, a growing swell of students are turning to shorter-term certificate programs to gain workforce skills in less time, for less money. Some 670,665 people completed certificate programs in the academic year ending in 2023, a 4 percent increase from the year prior, according the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The share of people completing bachelor’s and associate’s degrees fell 3 percent and 7 percent, respectively, during that time.
Educational certificates, which have been around for decades, have become increasingly popular among students looking to gain skills to move up in their careers, or switch jobs, said Christopher Mullin, strategy director of data and measurement for Lumina Foundation in Indianapolis. Over 2,000 students a year participate in roughly 15 certificate programs at Bunker Hill, 40 percent more than five years ago, said Kristen McKenna, dean of workforce and economic development.
However, some higher education experts are skeptical that certificate programs are the best answer to the affordability problem in higher education. Many low-quality certificate programs do not leave students better off financially, said Shalin Jyotishi, founder and managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank.
“It is a bit of a land mine, the certificate landscape,” Jyotishi said. “It’s not always all it’s cracked up to be. And while students are less likely to accrue debt for a certificate program, they can still waste their time and money.”
He is wary of advocates and politicians pushing for the expansion of the federal Pell Grant program to apply to short-term workforce training programs. The incoming chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan, is among them.
“Short-term programs have such mixed records,” Jyotishi said. “A bachelor’s degree from an in-demand program of study at a reputable public institution, for all its shortcomings and challenges, is still the safest bet for a spot in the middle class.”
Still, many certificate programs that are created with input from employers can result in higher-paying positions, Jyotishi said. He pointed to a program that Mesa Community College in Arizona created with the Boeing Company to train electrical technicians as an example of a worthwhile investment.
Mullin said it’s important for students to consider the regional workforce needs before signing up for a certificate program to ensure they are learning skills that local companies are looking for.
“I do think that they’re going to continue to be a more integral part of post-secondary education moving forward,” Mullin said.
The marine technician program at Bunker Hill started in 2021 and has since served more than 60 students from “all walks of life” from Greater Boston, said Jacqueline Saba, maritime trades coordinator at the college. Most of the students work full time while they complete the training program, which is free for students; the program costs have been covered by grants, Saba said.
“The marine industry in Boston is right behind all of these brand new buildings, in the Seaport [and] right downtown,” Saba said. “A lot of people don’t think of it as a career, [but] Boston is one of the biggest ports on the East Coast. We have wind farms here now, wind testing centers, dozens of ferries, boat builders right in Boston, a huge fish pier. There’s just a lot going on in the marine world.”
Randall Lyons, executive director of the Massachusetts Marine Trades Association, said certificate programs like the one at Bunker Hill help train needed workers in an industry facing employee shortages. He hopes community colleges in Massachusetts offer two-year degree programs in the marine trades down the road.
“A lot of us are just getting older,” said Tom Cox, owner of Constitution Marina. “We’re aging out, and we need more [talent]. So this really opens up a lot of opportunities.”
Senneville is determined to continue building his career in the marine trades; he currently teaches sailing and works an array of one-off jobs maintaining and repairing boats. He said he would still like to pursue a degree in sociology or architecture when he feels more financially secure.
“I’ll always be learning,” Seneville said. “There’s just so much to learn about in the world.”
But he feels confident he will earn more working in the marine trades than he would pursuing a career in his academic interests, and he loves working on the water.
“I think ultimately I am still going to find myself coming back to boats and the ocean,” Senneville said. “There’s a lot of opportunities, there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of benefits.”
This article was originally published in Boston Globe.