The shifting labor market has fueled a huge spike in undergraduate certificate programs, which are vastly outpacing the growth in undergraduate enrollment in general.
From 2019 to last fall, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found a 28.5 percent increase in enrollment in the programs, which are seen both as a way to move into the workforce quicker without a college degree and as a resume-booster for those still working on their bachelor’s.
Schools have responded to the needs of communities, creating programs such as certificates for teachers and nurses to help address long-standing shortages or ones in emergency management amid the rise in natural disasters.
“Our population has changed and is changing so dramatically, it’s put an incredible pressure on businesses because they can’t find the skilled workers that they need to build the jobs of today and, very importantly, the jobs of tomorrow,” said Edson Barton, CEO and co-founder of YouScience, a college and career readiness platform.
“Employers are sitting there saying, ‘Hey, we’re not getting what we need,’ and so, they are putting tremendous pressure on the post-secondary institutions […] to build more programs,” Barton added.
Undergraduate certificate programs are courses that focus on teaching a particular skill, most often technical ones, that encompass a wide variety of fields from health care to cybersecurity.
Offered by many accredited colleges and universities, they are typically flexible programs that take a year or less to complete. The courses themselves also sometimes get accreditation through relevant agencies to ensure their quality.
Undergraduate enrollment more broadly has risen since the devastation of the pandemic, but far more slowly: Last fall was the first time total college enrollment outpaced 2019, and only by 0.4 percent.
But dual enrollment, where high school students enroll in college or other post-secondary pathways while still earning their diploma, has had a major increase since the pandemic, growing 7 percent from 2023 to 2024 alone.
Catherine Imperatore, research and content director of the Association for Career and Technical Education, said her group has seen many dual-enrolled students entering career and technical education (CTE) programs, especially if they are looking for a credential by the time they finish high school.
Data show industries including construction and health care are among the biggest areas of growth for undergraduate certificate programs, which are benefiting significantly from federal investments in infrastructure passed under the Biden administration.
“We’ve also seen a growing interest in the apprenticeship model,” Imperatore said, which emphasizes on-the-job experience, though students “may also be getting some training that could be offered through something like a community college certificate program.”
The acceptance and acceleration of undergraduate certificate programs has been a team effort between schools and the workforce.
Christine Harper, acting associate provost for academic operations at the University of Kentucky, told The Hill her school has seen a 132 percent increase from fall 2019 to fall 2024 in its undergraduate certificate program enrollment, going from 544 students to 1,261.
“I can tell you that what we’re really focusing on is how to align the workforce needs” with those programs, Harper said.
Certificate and accelerated education programs have been a lifeline for careers that have seen shortages over the past few years, particularly nurses and teachers.
A bipartisan bill was introduced in the House last year with the goal to create grant programs that would help schools develop accelerated nursing degree programs to combat the shortage.
The American Council on Education in 2023 had credited a decline in teacher certification programs as one of the causes of teacher shortages.
“Providing real-world teaching experiences through creative certification programs can attract more education students,” the organization wrote.
The push for these programs has also come from the community. Harper said her school added an emergency management certificate in response to natural disasters seen in Kentucky and across the country and the lack of personnel trained to handle them.
The acceptance of these programs has changed the game not only for employers, but for students as well.
While typically certificate programs were thought for students who were not on a traditional college track, the focus on specific skills in the workforce has caused four-year degree seekers to add these certificates as opposed to other options, such as a minor.
“The vast majority of our undergraduate certificates are a second degree for our students,” Harper said, adding that 94 percent of those going for the certificates at Kentucky are also enrolled in a four-year program.
“The ones that we see students taking the most would be the business certificate or the sales certificate,” she added.
Experts say the popularity of undergraduate certificates is unlikely to slow down for the foreseeable future as both the workforce and colleges appear to be in expansion mode on the programs.
“I think there’s more of the general acceptance of the labor market to accept these programs. It used to be that you had to really only have a degree, but industries are really focused more on, not so much your general knowledge, but what are the specific skills that you have that we can put to work right away,” said Cindy Gallatin, associate vice president of digital strategy at the University of New Haven.
