A Workforce Tool Hiding in Plain Sight: The Community College Bachelor's Degree
New research shows the credential works for nurses but not for programmers. The pattern reveals which programs states should back—and how to make others succeed.
A nursing graduate from a community college earns the same as one from a traditional university. A computer science graduate from a community college earns $30,000 less.
Both hold bachelor’s degrees. Both attended the same type of institution. The labour market treats them very differently.
This is the finding of a new working paper (Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: How CCB Graduates’ Earnings Compare to AAs and BAs) by Riley Acton, Camila Morales, Kalena Cortes, Julia Turner, and Lois Miller. It is the first national study of community college baccalaureate (CCB) outcomes, covering 13 states and tracking graduates into the labor market. For governors and mayors investing in these programmes, the results suggest that field selection matters more than they may have assumed.
The (Policy) Context
At the time of the writing, Twenty-four US states now allow community colleges to grant bachelor’s degrees. The number awarded quadrupled between 2004 and 2022, from 3,300 to over 16,000. Illinois and Iowa are considering joining this year.
The attraction for state officials is straightforward. Texas will face a shortage of more than 57,000 full-time registered nurses by 2032, according to the Texas Hospital Association. Florida started the 2023 school year with roughly 8,000 teacher vacancies, according to the Florida Education Association. Traditional universities produce graduates, but capacity constraints bite: clinical placements are limited, faculty lines take years to fill, new construction requires legislative appropriations that may not arrive before the next election.
Community colleges offer an alternative. The average CCB costs $16,800 in tuition and fees; a bachelor’s from a traditional public university costs $31,000. The American Association of Community Colleges counts 1,167 public and independent community colleges across the country, rising to 1,600 when branch campuses are included. California alone operates 116 campuses. Many already run associate-degree programmes in nursing, education, and technical fields. Upgrading to bachelor’s programmes means extending existing capacity, not building from scratch.
This is the reuse opportunity. The infrastructure exists. Whether it can be repurposed effectively depends on which programmes states choose to expand.
What the Research Found
The researchers used Census Bureau employment records covering 96% of US jobs, tracking graduates one year after completion. They compared earnings within the same field, isolating institution type.
Nursing CCB graduates earn at parity with traditional university graduates. Criminal justice CCB graduates earn more than their four-year peers. Healthcare and business show no significant penalty.
Computer and information technology diverges sharply. The median CCB graduate earns $30,000 less than a peer from a four-year university. Engineering technology shows penalties of $5,000 to $10,000. Agriculture and liberal arts show smaller but persistent gaps.
The estimates control for graduation year and compare graduates in the same state and field. The pattern is consistent across the dataset.
The study captures only short-term earnings, one year post-graduation. Students choosing CCBs may differ from university students in ways the data cannot observe. The researchers are conducting a resume audit study that may sharpen the causal picture. But the consistency across fields and states is hard to explain away as selection alone.
Understanding How It Works
The paper attributes the divergence to industry alignment.
Nursing graduates follow a narrow path. They take the NCLEX, obtain a licence, and work in healthcare. Seventy-three percent of health professions CCB graduates end up in healthcare and social assistance. Employers know what the credential certifies. The institution that granted it is secondary to whether the graduate passed the boards.
Education follows a similar structure. Seventy-eight percent of education CCB graduates work in educational services. State certification defines the entry route.
Computer science lacks any equivalent pathway. Graduates disperse across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, defence, startups. Only 12% end up in professional and technical services, the category containing most technology firms. When employers cannot predict where graduates will land, they use proxies: university reputation, selectivity, the assumption that a four-year institution filtered for quality.
Tight alignment between field and industry correlates with small or no CCB penalties. Diffuse pathways correlate with large ones.
Community Colleges are Supply-Side Policy
This finding reframes what CCBs can do for states.
Most industrial policy focuses on demand: tax incentives to attract firms, infrastructure to support investment, regulatory changes to encourage hiring. These interventions assume workers with the requisite skills exist. Often they do not. A semiconductor fabrication plant means nothing without technicians. A hospital expansion fails if there are no nurses to staff it.
CCBs are a supply-side tool. They produce credentialed workers at lower cost than universities, distributed across regions that four-year institutions do not serve. Roughly 75% of CCB graduates work in the same state where they earned their credential. For fields where the credential performs at parity with a traditional degree, CCBs offer workforce capacity that scales without new campus construction.
The question is which fields qualify.
Why Nursing Works
Nursing CCBs did not succeed by accident. The field accumulated decades of institutional scaffolding before community colleges began offering bachelor’s degrees.
Licensure boards set standards. The NCLEX examination provides a national competency benchmark. Clinical placements during the degree programme create direct hiring pipelines. Hospitals have employed associate-degree nurses for decades and supported their completion of bachelor’s degrees while working. Community college nursing credentials are familiar to employers, not suspect.
Most community colleges already have nursing programmes. They have simulation labs and clinical partnerships with regional hospitals. Faculty have worked the floors. Extending to a bachelor’s programme adds upper-division coursework and expands clinical placements. It does not require building from nothing.
Education has parallel structures: state certification examinations, defined career ladders, employers accustomed to associate-degree holders. Criminal justice and allied health fields share similar characteristics.
Computer science has no licensure board, no national examination, no clinical equivalent. Employers hiring software engineers cannot rely on a credential to signal competence. They rely on institution name instead.
Nursing Is A Template
The nursing model is not a ceiling on what CCBs can accomplish. It is a template.
States wanting to expand CCBs into fields that currently underperform would need to build equivalent infrastructure. Consider cybersecurity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 33% growth in information security analyst positions from 2023 to 2033. A generic computer science CCB will likely replicate the $30,000 penalty: graduates competing against four-year peers for diffuse roles, employers defaulting to institutional signals.
A (theoretical) cybersecurity program designed like nursing might perform differently. That would mean identifying employers with defined hiring needs before launching the programme: regional banks, hospital systems, state agencies, defence contractors. It would mean establishing internship pipelines and hiring commitments. Industry-recognised certifications would need to be layered onto the degree (CompTIA Security+, CISSP, or state-specific credentials). The programme would target specific roles rather than a generic field.
Community colleges adapt quickly when industry demand is clear. The paper notes cannabis science programmes appearing within months of state legalisation. CCBs extend this responsiveness to bachelor’s-level credentials. Whether states will invest in building pathways for higher-stakes fields, rather than simply authorising programmes, is a different question.
The Local Angle
For mayors, CCBs address a problem universities cannot solve: talent retention.
A city of 80,000 without a four-year campus exports its young people. They leave for college and settle where they graduate. The community college has always been there, but until recently could not offer a bachelor’s degree.
The 75% in-state employment rate for CCB graduates likely understates local retention for programmes with strong employer ties. A nursing CCB feeds graduates to the regional hospital. An education CCB feeds them to local school districts. Young people who might otherwise have left can build careers without relocating.
Mayors considering CCB expansion should ask whether local employers will commit to hiring graduates. A nursing programme makes sense if the hospital will participate. A cybersecurity programme makes sense if regional employers have those positions and will help design the pipeline. Absent employer commitment, a programme is a gamble on credentials the local labour market may not value.
State Capacity (As Always) is the Binding Constraint
Authorising CCBs is easy. Building the ecosystems that make them work is harder.
Again, Nursing CCBs succeed because the scaffolding was constructed over decades by licensure boards, professional associations, and healthcare employers. States expanding nursing programmes are leveraging infrastructure they did not have to build.
Expanding into new fields requires states to do the construction themselves: convene employers, negotiate hiring commitments, establish certification standards, design curricula around specific roles. This is workforce development as infrastructure project, not as programme authorisation.
States that treat CCB authorisation as sufficient will see graduates in new fields facing the penalties the current data reveal. States that pair authorisation with deliberate ecosystem construction may achieve different outcomes (not just for students). The mechanism the paper identifies points toward what would need to happen.
Wrapping up
For fields where credentialing infrastructure exists, CCB expansion carries modest risk. Nursing, education, criminal justice, and allied health programmes can be upgraded using existing foundations. Employers know what to expect.
For fields lacking such infrastructure, authorisation alone will not suffice. States would need employer commitments, industry certifications, and defined hiring pipelines before launching programmes. Reluctance from employers to commit signals something about likely outcomes.
Community colleges have the physical capacity. Classrooms, faculty, students: all present. The constraint is not infrastructure but institutional scaffolding, the apparatus that makes a credential legible to employers. Where that scaffolding exists, CCBs work. Where it does not, states face a choice: build it, or accept that the programmes will underperform.
Workforce shortages are a policy problem. CCBs are one tool for addressing them. The research clarifies which applications of the tool are likely to succeed and what would need to change for others to follow.