Strategic Considerations for College Leaders Exploring Short-Term Credentials:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 253 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Jinann Bitar

Transcript: Podcast 253 with Jinann Bitar

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

David: Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Background

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guest today is Jinann Bitar of Education Trust, where Jinann oversees research and analysis, supports policy efforts through data modeling and collaborates with experts to develop innovative tools and resources. That’s a fancy way saying Jinann is a researcher and a data geek. Before joining the Education Trust, she worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center as well as the American Council on Education, where she equipped leaders with data-driven insights.

Her background also includes roles at public universities, such as the University of Montana, UC Davis, and UCLA. EdTrust has taken on a set of research projects that explore education pathways after high school, i.e. short-term credentials, and Jinann joins me today to talk about this project and how higher ed institutions can establish these types of programs. 

Jinann. Welcome to the program.

Jinann Bitar: Thanks for having me Drumm,

Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. You folks over at EdTrust are doing some amazing stuff with higher education. Before we jump into that, give our listeners a little bit of background on who you are. When we spoke the other day, I found it fascinating.

Jinann Bitar: Well, thanks, Drumm.

[00:01:41] Jinan’s Career Journey

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, well my name’s Jinann Bitar. I currently serve as the director of higher ed research and data analytics for the Education Trust National Office in Washington DC. But before I landed here, I’d love to tell you a little bit about my journey, my first 10 to 12 years in the career field I actually spent working and learning at state universities like University of Montana and UC Davis, at UCLA, and I always had different roles that involved persistence, retention, and completion initiatives, talking about affordability, working with the state legislature on tuition hikes. And in those times, I kept going back to the evidence and data and a lot of times it wasn’t there. And things we knew anecdotally that were hurting or helping students, we couldn’t find it in what people would call the evidence. And so that really led me to go back and get a research degree and learn more about how we could get that evidence and ensure that the policies that we’re enacting and the things we’re advocating for really based on data. And so, that led me to some places like the Higher Education Research Institute and working on projects with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. And then I landed a fellowship with the American Council on Education here in Washington DC, and for folks who know, that’s the umbrella membership work for all the higher education institutions.

So really talking to leaders, college, chancellors and presidents and administrators across the US, understand what’s best for higher ed. That sort of captured my heart and here I stayed. So I spent some time next at the Bipartisan Policy Center working on a comprehensive Higher Education Act reauthorization. For folks, here in the beltway, we know that sort of died down during covid years and now in the last two administrations we’re seeing a lot more one-off higher ed. But I had a great time learning and really finding out all the intricacies of the legislative process at the bipartisan policy center, until I moved into my role here at the Education Trust, where I run the research and data analytics for the higher ed team. And we’re really known for our work on affordability, access, and student success. So I’m so excited to talk more about where this journey has led me and the things that EdTrust is diving into now.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, EdTrust seems like a good landing place for you, especially with your love of data.

[00:04:18] Overview of Education Trust

Drumm McNaughton: You described yourself as a data geek before, and that’s true. Tell us a little bit about EdTrust or Education Trust, because many folks may not know is what you do and your role is really important.

Jinann Bitar: Thanks for pointing that out, Drumm. Well, EdTrust, we’re a national nonprofit and we advocate for educational equity, and we really focus on closing opportunity and achievement gaps for students of color and students from low income backgrounds. So we conduct research, policy analysis, do technical assistance with states, feds, and systems, and have advocacy to push for systematic changes in K 12 and higher ed systems.

So we work at a national level and we have regional offices like EdTrust West or EdTrust Midwest and South. And then we have state partners so they can address context specific challenges. On our national higher ed team, like I said, our work really includes advancing knowledge and policies that promote practices around college access, affordability, and success.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I can imagine that the next few years may be a little challenging with that specific role, but we all know it’s very important that this work continues. So you just finished first phase or first portion of some research. Tell us a little bit about this research and where it’s going to be going.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, so we’re really excited.

[00:05:50] Research on Short-Term Credentials

Jinann Bitar: We have a recent paper out on the cost of short-term credentials, and that was really born out of a new pathway’s agenda at EdTrust, where we’re really trying to understand education and career trajectories from a diverse set of pathways. We may have more historically been known to do a lot of affordability work on the traditional four-year bachelor’s degrees or four year higher education institutions. And we know that there are actually a really large number, percentage, proportion of students, particularly students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, that are actually in short term credentials or other degree programs, workforce programs, than just the BA. And so we wanted to know, “well, are those cost efficient for other folks?”

And I’ll be honest, Drumm, I got into this with a little skepticism. We hear a lot around this conversation of “what is the value of higher ed? Are students getting a good ROI? ” And then we’re also seeing a lot of increased interest and stated enrollment and short-term credential programs. But I was like, are they actually cheaper or are they just shorter? So we really wanted to dive into that, particularly knowing that to understand value, our first step is going to be understand cost.

Drumm McNaughton: So with that, this is really the first portion of a longer research project, outside funding, on ” what is the value? Are they cost effective of credential certificate workforce programs?” Do I have that right?

Jinann Bitar: Yep, you do, Drumm!

Drumm McNaughton: Okay, so. To contextualize this, you’ve got to be able to compare apples to apples.

So please tell us about that, because if you’re looking at short term certificates or regular certificates comparing ’em to bachelor’s degrees, I would assume that one of the key things that you want to find out is, “are they cost effective”?

Jinann Bitar: Absolutely, Drumm. And you hit the nail on the head. We were trying to think of a way that we could compare apples to apples. Things like short term program costs, workforce programs, academic programs. And so EdTrust calculated what we call the total cost of attendance for students enrolled in credential programs lasting one year or less.

And there’s a total cost of attendance often listed at the traditional community college or four-year schools, we wanted to create something similar. We wanted to be able to look, take a look at that data by state and by credential type.

So we went ahead and found some partners. We used Credential Engine data, which is the largest national registry on credentials, and then some publicly available education, higher education data from IPEDs to extract information about program cost, location, and indirect costs.

Drumm McNaughton: So, just to make sure that I understand it, you’re really looking at credential certificates, workforce programs that are under a year long. And they could be administered through a community college, they could be administered through college or university, but it’s just specifically those things. Correct?

Jinann Bitar: Yep. Yep. It’s one year or less. And like you said, it could have been a multitude of people offering the program, a workforce provider, a community college, even a small business could have submitted something to the registry.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay, thanks. I just wanted to make sure that I understood what you’re doing.  

Jinann Bitar: Drumm, no problem there, and like I said, we use this data information to create a cost per duration, cost per month or cost per hour. And you could look at it either on an academic or calendar year, as some schools are running 12 months, some schools are running nine months.

So what does that mean? It means we can now compare the direct and indirect total costs of short-term credentials, apples to apples, to things like a bachelor’s degree at a four year university. And we can answer the question, are they cost efficient?

Drumm McNaughton: And that would be similar to a cost per credit hour, I would assume.

Jinann Bitar: Yes, and I will say very openly, like it is not calculated in any sort of way that the credit hour is calculated. But it certainly could be seen as an alternative to credit hour that would expand more program types than the credit hour currently does.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. That makes sense at least to my muddled mind.

[00:10:34] Short-Term Credentials Cost Efficiency and Affordability

Drumm McNaughton: So what did you guys find out?

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, well Drumm, I won’t say to my surprise, but I was a little surprised. So the first takeaway is these short-term credentials are pretty cost efficient, if you do say so myself, looking at the data. And in many cases, the short term credentials in the workforce programs actually demonstrate lower tuition, actually 2:1 lower tuition than some of the academic programs.

What I will say is they vary widely across states and between career types or industry types, like let’s say the difference between Allied Health or truck driving or tech. And so, they’re cost efficient, but they’re highly varied. And what we know is we are going to need more data to really understand that next component around value.

Drumm McNaughton: And we’ll get there in just a few minutes. But I did want to know, when you talk about affordability, you talk about comparing it to the minimum wage and et cetera. So let’s go into that just a little bit, the affordability as well as the cost effectiveness.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, so one way we were trying to understand and contextualize, they look cost efficient against other programs, but if let’s say I am someone from a low-income community, I’m looking to upskill and get a better job. How accessible are these going to be based on price? And so by looking at that cost per hour, we compare all these programs to the minimum wage in their states.

And the hourly program cost for short-term credentials often exceeds the minimum wage in most states. And I know I’m used to this offhand in my lifetime, quite a few, is if I’m going to have to buy something and I’m working on an hourly wage, I’m asking myself, well, how many hours do I have to work to afford said thing?

And some of these, when you broke them down, would take a lot of time and energy to save, to afford, for example, anywhere from 240 hours for a workforce training program in Washington, to upwards of 2,800 hours for an academic training program in New Hampshire. Right? So that’d be a pretty steep cost to bear to get access to those programs. And so what that meant to us at EdTrust is that workers and learners are likely going to need financial assistance to access and complete short term credentials. Now, we’re not making a statement about who should be funding that or if that should be done, but we’re just saying if folks are hoping that there’s broad access to these short-term credentials, it’s likely financial aid is going to be necessary.

Drumm McNaughton: And say that it’s probably more than necessary, it’s absolutely critical, if in fact governments, if folks feel any kind of obligation to help folks from a lower SES, socioeconomic society background, if they have any obligation or feel any need to do this, you just can’t say, we’ll, go out and get a certificate or whatever. You’re need to be able to help them do that.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, exactly. And we’ve seen, there is this interest, right? Folks are talking about extending the Pell Grant to short-term programs. And we’re also seeing a really big uptick in state financial aid available for non-degree credentials. So we know folks are talking about it and we just want to make sure we have the data and evidence to support those policy changes.

Drumm McNaughton: And so with that. Politicians are touting workforce education. It’s like this is the latest and greatest thing.

[00:14:27] Workforce Education and Enrollment Trends

Drumm McNaughton: Colleges, there was a study that just came out of Holt Business school, is 94% of graduates don’t feel ready for their job, and employers are saying the same thing. Does the narrative of workforce education match the hype?

Jinann Bitar: I would like to say that the narrative that people are wanting a faster, more efficient, and effective way to upskill and get into a job with family sustaining wages, that’s not hype. The demand, for what people want is there. Now, whether that is actually changing behavior, I would say we’ve yet to see it in the tea leaves or drawn in the sand.

And so one thing my team also undertook, over the last year, was an inquiry into the most recent five years of national student clearing house data on enrollment. And we broke it down by state and degree level. So we took a look, there’s bachelor’s, there’s associates, and then we looked programs below the associates level, which would include most of these short-term credentials. And what we found was interesting. There was not a very large move, percentagewise, increase, in these short-term credentials.

And there’s a couple reasons this might be. Right? One was that there just might not be a great representation of these short-term credentials in the National Student Clearinghouse data. That’s absolutely possible, and I know for a fact my colleagues over at NCS and at Strata and Cred Lens and a bunch of other folks are actually working diligently to solve this issue and get more information about short-term credentials into the clearinghouse, into the credential engine registry and in state longitudinal data systems.

But that being said, we did not see giant moves either way. In fact, there was no national trend. If there was movement, it was in a handful of states one way or the other. Meaning some states had a drop in these, some states we saw an uptick. That meant the national average was essentially null.

What I can say is that in states we saw a considerable uptick, we haven’t investigated all of them, and it wasn’t a deep investigation yet, but in a handful of them, they did have intentional policies to move students into short-term credentials or have added financial aid for NDC. For example, Indiana, we saw a good bump in this enrollment, we know that they have been working on state policy to boost these types of programs. But that being said, we didn’t see a drop particularly for black and Latino students, specifically at four-year public universities. So a lot of students are still choosing to enroll in bachelor’s degree programs at public universities in their states.

Unfortunately, we did see a pretty significant drop in the associate’s degree level. So I think the question is less, perhaps, from the data we are currently have, is less, are people enrolling in short-term credentials instead of a bachelor’s degree, and maybe perhaps are they doing short-term credentials instead of an associates?

Drumm McNaughton: MmHmm

Jinann Bitar: So that leaves us with some questions, Drumm.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh a absolutely, and the big question in my mind is value over a lifetime versus a college degree.

Jinann Bitar: And that’s exactly where my concern lies, ’cause we have pretty robust data and research that demonstrates a strong economic return at the bachelor’s degree level. Now, that doesn’t mean for everyone and in every scenario, but on average you are going to see about a million dollars more in your lifetime than someone who completed a high school diploma. And we just don’t have that sort of long-term data on these short-term credentials. So let’s say we hear good news, and folks like me and others finish some of our value inquiries and we find out short-term credentials can put you into a great living wage. The question is, do they also continue to give you the same income accrual over your lifetime that a bachelor’s degree currently provides?

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s a longitudinal study. Which, wait 5, 10, 15 years to see how that comes out. But in the meantime, you’re going to be looking, at Trust, you’re going to be looking at this type of thing. Getting more robust data to see, does it look like. You always hear that if you really want to make a lot of money, go into plumbing.

Jinann Bitar: Very consistent. Yeah. Everyone needs a plumber and it’s a skilled job that takes training, it takes continuing education. Yeah. I say this myself, Drumm, as someone who I had gone through a lot of traditional four year institutions. I also have my brother who has two different technical or vocational certificates and I won’t share too much, but I’ll say is he is certainly going to be paying off his student debt faster than I am.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, of course, but the college degree, which is always one of the big concerns, costs a lot more, which is why this value question of college is actually coming up. I think your second phase for this, looking at value versus return on investment is going to be very important.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, we’re really excited.

[00:19:59] Advice for College Presidents

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, so with that, for college presidents who are considering, and this is a little bit different from the three takeaways that we’ll wrap up with, but for college presidents who are considering changing around their curriculum, or adding new curriculum for workforce development, what are some of the things they need to be thinking about?

Jinann Bitar: I don’t think it’ll be any surprise that I say my number one is that, policy changes or interventions should really be data driven. Higher ed leaders, particularly folks like university presidents, boards, regents, really should investigate partners they may have that can help contextualize data and evidence. They don’t have to do it all on their own they can find folks to help. And the need to be figuring out what are the most important data and metrics for their state, for their systems, for their institutions. You can always find friends like us at EdTrust that are going to help you with frameworks and best practices, and maybe some examples. But you’re really going to need to trust your gut on what’s best for, let’s say your school system.

Drumm McNaughton: And for your school system, but also too, what are the industries around your institution? How do you attract those students? I just had a conversation with a gentleman who works in marketing and branding for college higher ed institutions, and the biggest problem I problem, the biggest challenge that folks have when they roll out a new program is they really haven’t done good research to find out what the market demand is.

So that would be my first thing, is go back, be a data geek, figure out what your local area, the industry needs are. Does that make sense?

Jinann Bitar: And you hit like the next thing I would say right on the head, which is, make sure that you’re collaborating with other public agencies, TA support, your local Chamber of Commerce, your Bureau of Labor statistics, maybe you have a state department on economics or something.

They may have a handle on some data that includes things that are like labor market demands in your state or up and coming areas where they’re going to need more workers. And so using your own available data to make decisions is great. It’s even better, if you can work in collaboration with other state agencies to understand how you can get programs to match where workers need to be and then everyone’s happy, right? Because we’re keeping folks in the state, we’re not getting a brain drain once folks finish programs in our state.

Drumm McNaughton: What else do college presidents need to think about if they’re going to be starting up more workforce development programs.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. Some of the same things stay true, right? So some of the best practices around how we get students to, through, and succeed are going to remain the same, whether it’s a four year degree, or it’s a short-term credential program. And that means that they have adequate access to financial assistance, that they have access to wraparound and holistic supports, and that they have some flexibility in how they’re designing their degree program. So it’s really meeting students where they are in 2025.

So if a university is trying to, let’s say, add a short-term credential program, they might want to think about breaking the mold instead of trying to create what would be a mini four year degree, like actually really take it from the experts in the field. Talk to folks who have already designed curriculum. Talk to folks who are already running programs with proven outcomes on earnings for their students. So, like you said, it really goes back to doing your own homework about what’s going to be the best fit.

Drumm McNaughton: And there’s no reason why you can’t design these to be stackable certificates. What would lead to an AA degree or a BA, BS degree?

Jinann Bitar: That is critical and one partner we work with that I know off the top of my head that does a great job at this is the College of Healthcare Professions in Texas, CHCP. So they have tons of very short and accessible credentials that can be stacked into associates up to bachelor’s degree and the prior credit counts throughout all of those programs. So it really encourages continued learning and upskilling.

Drumm McNaughton: And there are a number of places out there. I’m thinking about HLC as an accreditor. They’ve got a new initiative being run by Melanie Booth, who formerly of WASC and NC-SARA, who’s looking at quality credentials and how do you measure quality, et cetera. I know there are other accreditors doing the same thing.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah. Yeah. And so quality is a really big part of the value question. Right? And we know that folks like the National Skills Coalition, and like you mentioned, some other boots on the ground are really working to put information out about what a quality framework looks like for short term credentials. And what I can tell you is it includes a lot of the things that we were just discussing. But a big one, as you mentioned, is that I think state folks and system folks can really listen for, is this how do you make things stackable? How do you give credit for prior learning? Those are really big components to getting a lot more adult workers and learners to and through programs.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s the key is to be able to build enrollment, having advisory boards who can help you structure the curriculum. And one other point comes to mind is especially with stackable credentials, like what we’re talking about, most folks do workforce development programs through their experiential Ed or another division, and that may be where you want to house it, but don’t limit people from taking courses out of the gen ed program or other areas as well. Allow them to build their degree. Obviously it’s got to be accreditable, et cetera. But build that degree that’s really going to help them and potentially steer them into getting their bachelor’s degree.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, no, and I think there are some really good examples where you can maximize your capacity and resources to serve multiple populations. Let’s say you have a main campus and then you have a continuing education campus. And I saw this at University of Montana, and I’m sure this was more of a fiscal perspective, but it’s actually smart strategically is essentially having one class with one instructor, but you have two different course numberings based on whether you’re an enrolled degree credit programs person at the main campus, or you’re enrolled in the continuing education non-degree program. So they’re actually together, they’re in the classrooms, they’re doing the same thing, but we’re just making sure that syllabus hits the requirements for those two different kinds of programs.

And so that gives people access, like you said, to general education classes and then it gives main campus students access to maybe some more technical or hands-on courses that they were looking to get before they go out into the workforce.

Drumm McNaughton: So, so very important, and I remember back more years than I want to think about, as a faculty member, teaching master’s level courses with three different, same class, three different course numbers because of three different programs. One was a master’s in organization development, another was a master’s in leadership, the other was a Master’s in Healthcare administration. Same course, three different course things. There’s no reason that you can’t do the same thing with continuing education.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, it’s very common to do it across academic programs. Sure, it might be just a little more administrative burden, or a red tape, but like I said, examples where they’re doing it across schools, even school types, and that seems like a win.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s so critical. The last piece before we get to our typical takeaways is the short-term Pell, the short term grants. Many states are moving to those. But from a national level, we haven’t seen that yet. How would you recommend, because you’ve done work with congressional delegations, et cetera, how would you recommend presidents, boards, educational lobbyist, talk to their congressman, their senator, about getting these kind of programs put into place?

Jinann Bitar: Yeah, I think there are a couple things. There’s always quite a few moving parts when we’re talking about federal legislation, but there. Is, really. Just a couple. There is a, there is pretty significant bipartisan support behind components of legislation that would essentially open Pell Grant access to programs up to eight weeks. That would be new. Right? Right now it has a much higher credit hour threshold. Here’s the, I’m gonna give you the bad news, the good news, Drumm.

Here’s the bad news. Bad news is that the limited evidence we currently have on the effectiveness of, or like outcomes value, ROI, on short-term credentials is not looking good. We have like one Department of Education experimental sites research inquiry. They spent a long time keeping the data hidden from us ’cause it didn’t look good. And, and then a couple other small-scale research, inquiries that also don’t have great results.

I would say there’s a couple things going on there. One, we don’t have great data on short term credentials. And so one of the biggest calls we made in our paper was let’s get better data. If you are running credentials, send them to the registry. Make sure you’re working with Cred Lens. And then we also have asked state partners who may have internal data that they don’t make publicly available around things like completion or earnings to give us a call. We would love to work with a handful of state data partners to get a more robust set of data and evidence about the value of these short-term credentials out, published into the field.

And then I think where the opportunity lies though is that. And like these are my own opinions and they do not represent that of my organization. It’s to say that I know that some of these programs work for people and for me personally, whether it’s like a workforce program or a four-year degree or a community college, if it has good outcomes for students, we should lift that up and support it. And if it has bad outcomes for students, there should be accountability around it.

And so the introduction of short term PELL actually gives us an opportunity to build a framework around value that everyone can agree on. Meaning like if any type of program aren’t meeting certain quality or value metrics, then we’re going to probably restrict their access to federal dollars. And I think that’s a good notion across the board. We wanna make sure there’s value for students in every sector across programs. And so, like I said, we don’t have a lot of great data and evidence that short term credentials give students a great ROI, I say we need to do more data and research to make sure that’s an accurate summation of what’s available.

And then I also think, again, it’s an opportunity to create a value or accountability system where we can all agree, you should make more money after you finish X, Y, or Z degree than a high school diploma or we might not give state federal access to those dollars. Of course, that’s something people throw around as a benchmark in general, but I think we have to have some more collective conversations around what that means, and again, this is our opportunity. And I think a lot of folks are afraid maybe that there aren’t a lot of opportunities in the education or higher education space under this administration. And I would challenge them to think about the places where we all do agree on things. And I think a lot of folks across the country. Particularly state policy makers, local politicians, state legislatures, state university systems, they wanna see their residents go to, through, and get a job, stay in their communities, make money for their state’s, GDP. They know that’s how this works. So I just say we all have an opportunity to continue asking questions around value and those of us who can, should be trying to find more research and data so that those policy decisions can be data driven.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.

[00:33:10] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: Well, Jinann, this has been very interesting. This is very different than the typical podcasts that we do. We got into some real detailed information and I wanna thank you for bringing your expertise, your knowledge, and that of Education Trust to the program. I thank you. That was, it’s been wonderful.

Jinann Bitar: Thank you so much for having me Drumm, and I always appreciate when someone’s willing to listen to a wonky appeal. And I hope folks found some value of their own in the inside baseball. So thank you so much us here.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. As we always do, three takeaways for university presidents and boards about if you’re thinking about starting up this type of workforce development program.

Jinann Bitar: Yeah. So three takeaways. Use the data to make your decisions. Phone a friend, call your friends, get collaborators, co-conspirators and other agencies and interested partners together. And third, meet students where they are in 2025. So find out about your students and their communities. And I think if you do those three things, you can put together a good program.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. What’s next for you? What’s next for Ed Trust?

Jinann Bitar: Next for EdTrust, we are gonna do just that is take a deeper dive into some earnings outcomes and answer the question preliminary. How valuable are these short term credentials?

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Well, Jinann, thank you so much for being on the program. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to hearing more about phase two with this research.

Jinann Bitar: Thanks, Drumm.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Jinann Bitar of Education Trust. Jinann, thank you for sharing these insights with us, I look forward to having you on a program a future time when we talk about phase two and phase three of your research.

Folks, thanks again for listening. Look forward to seeing you next time.