Noncredit training at community colleges linked to earnings gains

Returns vary by field, duration, training type, and gender

American Educational Research Association

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Washington, November 18, 2025—Students who enroll in short-term, job-focused training through community college noncredit programs experience modest but meaningful earnings gains and a greater likelihood of being employed after training, according to a new study published today in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

The study, conducted by Peter Riley Bahr of the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Rooney Columbus of E&E Analytics, finds that workers earn about $2,000 more per year, on average, within two years of completing training—an increase of more than 4 percent after adjusting for inflation. By that point, individuals who completed training are also nearly 4 percentage points more likely to be employed than their peers without training. When the analysis also accounts for people who were unemployed before training but found jobs afterward, the average earnings increase rises to almost $4,000 per year, reflecting the combined effects of training on both wages and the likelihood of being employed.

Video: Co-author Peter Riley Bahr discusses the findings and implications of the study

Each year, millions of community college students enroll in noncredit workforce training programs. The number of these programs may grow substantially in the next few years following the expansion of Pell Grant eligibility this past July to include short-term training.

Bahr and Columbus offer the first comprehensive, statewide estimates of earnings gains from noncredit occupational training. They analyzed administrative data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Workforce Commission, including more than 128,000 students—mostly adult learners—who enrolled in noncredit occupational courses at public two-year colleges in Texas between fall 2011 and fall 2014. Bahr and Columbus followed the employment and earnings of these students for five years before and after training to understand how the training altered their labor market trajectories.

“Whether noncredit occupation training pays off for students has been an open question for some time,” said Bahr, who is vice president of employer alignment at Strada Education Foundation and managing research director of the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. “We find that earnings gains are quite robust in some fields.”

Gains differ significantly based both on characteristics of the training and on the gender of the students. Students who enroll in longer programs, specifically those exceeding 150 hours, tend to experience the highest earnings gains.

Students in transportation-focused programs, such as those in commercial driving, see above-average earnings gains. Students in engineering technology programs, such as occupational safety and health or petroleum technology, also experience strong returns, as do students in construction training, like power transmission installation or plumbing technology. Longer training programs of 300 hours or more in nursing and protective services are similarly associated with above-average earnings gains.

In contrast, business and information sciences programs show little to no earnings gains, regardless of the length of training. However, the authors caution against interpreting this as evidence that such programs lack value in the labor market. Some noncredit training is designed to help individuals meet certification or licensing requirements to maintain current employment and, as a result, may not boost wages directly.

“We have to be careful about claims that noncredit occupational training in a given field does not pay off for students simply because the students see little or no wage gains after the training,” said Bahr. “Some noncredit programs help individuals complete ongoing training necessary to keep their jobs, and we generally would not expect to see earnings gains for those types of programs.”

The study also reveals important gender-based differences. Men experience similar earnings gains whether they enroll in training programs sponsored by an employer or open-enrollment programs that students pay for themselves. For women, however, employer-sponsored programs are associated with significantly higher average gains than open-enrollment options.

“Average gains for women are a fraction of the gains for men, and the gap doesn’t appear to be entirely a result of difference in the fields of study that men and women tend to choose,” Bahr said. “There seem to be distinct gender dynamics at play in noncredit training and related workforce opportunities, which need to be investigated more closely.” 

The authors also found that gains are more pronounced among students who changed jobs around the time of their training, suggesting that the timing and context of enrollment may influence outcomes.  

“More research is needed to understand what drives students to enroll in noncredit training, why they choose noncredit training over similar credit programs, the extent of alignment between training and employment opportunities across fields of study, and how these dynamics shape wage outcomes,” said Bahr.

While noncredit programs typically require only modest time investments, and many students remain employed while enrolled, the authors emphasize that prospective students should seek detailed information from colleges about both the costs of enrolling and the payoff that students can expect in terms of employment opportunities and wage growth. The costs of noncredit programs in tuition and fees can vary widely across institutions and fields of study.

The article, “Labor Market Returns to Community College Noncredit Occupational Education,” appears online in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

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About AERA
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on  Bluesky, LinkedIn,  Facebook, Instagram,  X,  and Threads.

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Journal

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

DOI

10.3102/01623737251360029 

Article Title

Labor Market Returns to Community College Noncredit Occupational Education

Article Publication Date

18-Nov-2025

 

Study reveals how quiet political connections help corporations win contracts

Strategic Management Society

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A study published in Strategic Management Journal sheds light on the subtle yet significant role that unelected officials play in helping corporations secure successful contract bids.

The research, led by Dr. Tony L. He of Rutgers Business School in Newark, N.J., analyzed a dataset of 14,849 public procurement contracts across 28 European countries between 2011 and 2017.

“My research shows that, contrary to what many might expect, in this particular context it’s not the flashy connections to powerful elected officials that help firms most,” Dr. He explained. “Instead, relationships with lower-profile, unelected officials often have a bigger impact on firms’ success in winning government contracts.”

When a corporation wants to leverage public pressure to achieve government policy changes, the endorsement of a high-profile political figure can lend legitimacy. But for some operations, it’s connections to agents moving in the shadows that exert the most influence on procurement outcomes.

He found that corporate political connections operating outside the spotlight—such as unelected advisors, aides, and administrative staff—might be more effective drivers of corporate influence in certain public allocation processes, because they play a crucial role in shaping government decisions but are subject to less scrutiny.

Drawing on a combination of case studies, empirical data and theoretical models, Dr. He explored how corporations approach visibility with their political engagement. He used a sample of 14,849 public procurement contracts across 28 European countries from 2011 to 2017, examining the association of contract bid success with the involvement of corporate political connections.

The analysis breaks down differences in the influence of elected politicians versus unelected political agents.

“I also find that visibility matters on two levels, not just who’s involved and but also how transparent the process is,” Dr. He said. “Elected politicians don’t seem to influence contracts decided through open, competitive bidding, where everything is quite public and visible. But they can shape the rules that determine who’s even allowed to bid in the first place, which happens behind the scenes. Unelected officials, by contrast, appear to exert influence across all types of contracts, using their lower visibility to stay involved in different kinds of processes.”

His findings illuminate potential issues in the realm of corporate transparency. Dr. He suggests that understanding how influence operates beneath the surface can help governments strengthen measures to uphold accountability standards and help ensure fairness in contract allocations.

 

“It’s easy to assume that influence only comes from the high-profile politicians we see on TV,” said Dr. He. “But my research shows that unelected officials and behind-the-scenes processes can shape outcomes just as much as visible politicians. Strengthening accountability for those less-visible roles can reduce corruption risks, and we need to recognize that influence often works in subtle ways, like shaping which firms gets to compete in the first place. Effective transparency and fairness measures require understanding the many points in political processes where decisions can be influenced.”

To read the full context of the study and its methods, access the full paper available in the Strategic Management Journal.

About the Strategic Management Society

The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is the leading global member organization fostering and supporting rigorous and practice-engaged strategic management research. SMS enjoys the support of 3,000 members, representing more than 1,100 institutions and companies in more than 70 countries. SMS publishes three leading academic journals in partnership with Wiley: Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Global Strategy Journal. These journals publish top-quality work applicable to researchers and practitioners with complementary access for all SMS Members. The SMS Explorer offers the latest insights and takeaways from the SMS Journals for business practitioners, consultants, and academics.

Click here to subscribe to the monthly SMS Explorer newsletter.

Click here to learn more about the programs and opportunities SMS has to offer.

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Journal

Strategic Management Journal

DOI

10.1002/smj.3736 

Article Title

Low profile, high impact: How the visibility of political agents shapes corporate political influence

 

$3.7 million in NIH funding for research into sand flies, vectors of parasitic disease leishmaniasis, goes to UNC Greensboro

Researchers will determine how to attract and kill egg-bearing P. papatasi sand flies

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

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image: 

Sand flies reared in the Wasserberg lab

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Credit: Sean Norona, UNCG University Communications

Professor Gideon Wasserberg at UNC Greensboro has been awarded a prestigious $3.7 million National Institutes of Health R01 grant to advance his research on controlling sand flies, the vectors of the parasitic disease leishmaniasis.

Leishmaniasis affects more than 1 million people each year and is found in approximately 90 countries in tropical and arid regions of the world, putting approximately 1 billion people at risk. The most common form, cutaneous leishmaniasis, typically causes skin ulcers, which can last months or even years and leave significant scars. The more serious visceral form of the disease, which attacks internal organs, often affects children and is usually fatal if left untreated, says Wasserberg.

“Leishmaniasis is considered a neglected zoonotic disease because cases are distributed in poorer regions of the world,” he says. “Cases are under-reported, research is underfunded, and health care is inadequate, so the numbers reported are probably lower than the reality.”

Wasserberg and his collaborators are studying the behavioral and chemical cues that entice egg-bearing—or gravid—P. papatasi sand flies to lay their eggs. P. papatasi is the most common vector of leishmaniasis in the Middle East, North Africa, and central Asia, he says.

The ultimate goal of the research is to develop attract-and-kill traps for egg-bearing sand flies.

Drs. Loganathan Ponnusamy and Coby Schal at North Carolina State University are co-investigators on the project.

The Ecology of Rodents and Sand flies

“Understanding rodent and sand fly ecology is the key to controlling the sand fly population and reducing human cases of leishmaniasis,” says Wasserberg.

The microscopic parasite that causes leishmaniasis lives harmlessly in rodents and transfers to sand flies that feed on their blood. Infected sand flies then transfer it via bite to other wild rodents, wild canids, and humans.

Sand fly females must feed on blood to produce eggs, so egg-bearing sand flies are most likely to carry the parasite. “By attracting gravid females to a lethal trap, we can best impact the sand fly population and leishmaniasis parasite transmission,” Wasserberg explains.

“In this ecological system, wild rodent burrows provide a shelter and breeding site for sand flies. We hypothesized that a trap that mimics the shape and odors of a burrow would attract egg-bearing females.”

Current Findings, Next Steps

Wasserberg’s prior research has netted over $2 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

As part of that work, his team found egg-bearing females were attracted to sites containing previously laid eggs and larvae. The researchers identified several bacteria and fungi in sand fly larvae nests that produce chemical attractants. “The odors they produce likely indicate larval nutrition, so they predict a suitable egg-laying site,” says Wasserberg.

“From there, we identified several chemicals produced by those microbes that caused an electrophysiological response in sand fly antennae. Now we’re testing different combinations of these chemicals to see which of them the sand flies prefer.”

Given that blood-feeding and mating also occur in the burrow, the researchers are testing whether the same attractants that draw gravid sand flies might also draw males seeking female sand flies and female sand flies seeking blood.

In the United States, most people who develop leishmaniasis contracted the infection while out of the country. However, there have been some cases of locally contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Currently, there is no vaccine, and infection prevention focuses on avoiding sandfly bites.

“This work will not eradicate leishmaniasis in the world, but it could be helpful in reducing human exposure in affected areas,” Wasserberg says.

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About UNC Greensboro

UNC Greensboro is a learner-centered public research university with almost 19,000 students in eight colleges and schools pursuing more than 150 areas of undergraduate and 200 areas of graduate study. Recognized nationally for helping first-generation and lower-income students find paths to prosperity, UNCG is ranked No. 1 most affordable institution in North Carolina for net cost by the N.Y. Times and No. 1 in North Carolina for social mobility by The Wall Street Journal. Designated an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, UNCG is a community-engaged research institution with a portfolio of more than $67M in research and creative activity. The University creates an annual economic impact for the Piedmont Triad region in excess of $1B. Please visit uncg.edu and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, Bluesky and LinkedIn. 

 

Study of higher education during COVID-19 shutdowns shows certain subjects can be better taught online

University of Notre Dame

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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, schools around the globe had to switch from regular, in-person classes to online learning overnight. This introduced numerous operational challenges, particularly in equipping students with quantitative skills essential for the labor market.

New research from the University of Notre Dame looks at how the abrupt move from classroom teaching to online learning during the lockdown affected college students’ performance in China.

Surprisingly, the undergraduates performed better in math after switching to online classes — improving their scores by about eight to 11 points on a 100-point scale, according to Shijie Lu, the Howard J. and Geraldine F. Korth Associate Professor of Marketing at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Lu’s research, “Effectiveness of Online Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Chinese Universities,” is forthcoming in Production and Operations Management.

Along with Xintong Han from Laval University in Quebec City, Shane Wang from Virginia Tech and Nan Cui at Wuhan University in China, Lu analyzed more than 15,000 course records from nearly 8,000 students across nine universities. They compared students’ grades from before the pandemic, when they learned in person, to those during the lockdown when all classes moved online.

Results varied depending on the subject and the lockdown environment. Online learning worked especially well for reasoning-based subjects such as mathematics, where students could pause lectures, rewatch examples and practice problems at their own pace. In contrast, courses such as English that rely on discussion and interpretation, and are challenging to replicate effectively in virtual environments, benefited much less from the online format.

“Contrary to the widespread belief that online education is less effective than face-to-face instruction, our findings show that students actually performed better online, at least in quantitative subjects during the pandemic,” said Lu, who specializes in business analytics and digital marketing. “This challenges the traditional view that in-person learning is always superior and suggests that, under certain conditions, well-structured online environments can enhance learning outcomes.”

Results were linked to the strictness of stay-at-home orders or transportation bans to see how different types of governmental lockdown policies shaped learning outcomes. Using rigorous econometric methods, the researchers made sure that the improvements they observed were due to the switch to online learning and not other unrelated factors.

They found that stricter stay-at-home orders issued by the government raised psychological stress and reduced the effectiveness of online learning. However, these negative effects were partially offset when workplace closures and public transportation suspensions helped some people maintain focus and discipline.

One possible explanation is that as parents were more frequently home due to employment interruptions, they were better positioned to ensure their children attended virtual classes, remained focused on tasks and followed a structured schedule. Meanwhile, suspension of public transportation reduced opportunities for social outings and non-academic distractions, effectively creating a quieter, more focused study environment at home.

“Our results show that online education when done thoughtfully can be more than just a backup plan during emergencies,” Lu said. “It can be an effective tool for learning, especially in analytical subjects.”

For educators, this means designing online courses that take advantage of digital tools — such as interactive exercises or on-demand videos — rather than simply moving lectures onto Zoom. For policymakers, it highlights that not all lockdown policies have the same effect on educational outcomes. Strict stay-at-home orders hurt learning, but moderate workplace closures that allow parents to supervise their children help to improve outcomes.

“These insights can help schools and governments better prepare for future disruptions — whether from pandemics, natural disasters or other emergencies — by understanding how to balance safety and learning effectiveness,” Lu said.

The study shows that online learning programs need to be flexible and designed with the specific course material and students’ physical location in mind.

Contact: Shijie Lu, 574-631-5883, slyu@nd.edu

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Journal

Production and Operations Management

Article Title

Effectiveness of Online Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Chinese Universities

Article Publication Date

13-Nov-2025