Discussions of workforce development emphasize stackable training, and assume linear advancement and alignment, through college and career paths. Stackable credentials have become a best practice for community colleges across the United States as they struggle to advance the college completion agenda and ensure that students graduate with the…

New America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. Because community college students tend to be underserved by our current higher education structure, much of our research and subsequent policy analysis and recommendations…

We address the emphasis of the California Community College system upon credentials in their effort to document student outcomes. Statewide curricular awards (associate degrees and certificates) were collected over a four-year period. Data were organized descriptively and analyzed in order to identify long term trends. These curricular trends are…