Group of students and faculty walk together across a modern college hallways lined with windows.

Public confidence in higher education has declined in recent years, as more Americans question whether a college degree is worth the cost. Rising tuition, persistent economic inequality, and evolving labor market demands have intensified these concerns. Simultaneously, students increasingly cite career advancement as their primary motivation for pursuing a degree, pressuring colleges to demonstrate clear economic returns. 

In response, several states now tie public funding for higher education to performance metrics that reward institutions for producing “credentials of value”—typically defined by wage or employment outcomes. Yet, higher education also delivers vital non-economic benefits, strengthening democracy, fostering informed citizenship, and enhancing the civic fabric of society.

At Ithaka S+R, our Postsecondary Value & Public Trust program addresses these challenges by advancing the economic, social, and civic value of postsecondary education. Our sophisticated data analysis, rigorous research and evaluation, and technical consulting drives the policies and insights that improve affordability, strengthen workforce alignment, maximize economic and civic value, and rebuild public trust. 

Improving affordability

Improving affordability is not just allocating more financial aid or lowering tuition. It requires innovation at the institution, system, and state levels to create and support new pathways to a degree that help students reach the finish line more efficiently. Our work assesses the effectiveness of these innovations in order to help states and systems make wise postsecondary investments aligned with their attainment and workforce goals.

  • The Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees. This two-year research grant will culminate in public reports and a customizable economic impact tool to help states, institutions, and students understand the costs and returns of community college bachelor’s degree expansion and make more informed policy and investment decisions.
  • Holistic Credit Mobility. College is more affordable when students are able to count the credits they’ve earned—through dual enrollment while in high school, standardized exams, work experience, military experience, and attendance at multiple colleges—towards a degree. Ithaka S+R and Complete College America are collaborating to surface new insights and concrete steps to advance policies, technology, and practices that promote a student-centered, holistic approach to credit mobility.

Strengthening workforce alignment and outcomes

States are investing in higher education to strengthen their workforces and expand economic mobility. But too often, they lack the data needed to ensure those investments are paying off. While states may understand their labor market needs and track the credentials they produce, they often cannot clearly see which programs lead to good jobs, which credentials support long-term economic security, or how outcomes differ across institutions, regions, and student populations.

Our work connects these dots. We take a comprehensive view—examining how states’ investments in financial aid and credentials of value align with workforce needs; whether students have access to career-aligned learning before they graduate; how graduates’ earnings vary across programs and over time; and whether higher education is meeting labor market demand.

  • Students’ Experiences with Career-Aligned Learning. Across multiple state systems and institutional partners, we are studying how microcredentials and embedded work-based learning experiences can strengthen career pathways and expand economic opportunity. Across two projects, one in partnership with NASH and the other with the University of Texas System, we are examining how industry-recognized microcredentials are implemented at scale, why students pursue them, the barriers they encounter, and how graduates’ perceive their labor market value. Through our collaboration with the Consortium for Independent Colleges, we are also exploring how employer-driven, course-based work experiences—particularly virtual models—can broaden access to career-aligned learning and improve post-graduation outcomes, especially for students from underserved backgrounds.
  • Targeting State Investments to Meet Labor Market Demand. We developed a novel dataset and tool that classifies and analyzes state investments that are directed toward industry- or occupation-aligned credentials, using it to examine how states are currently investing in targeted financial aid and supporting institutions, how well those investments align with high-opportunity occupations, and what tradeoffs and opportunities emerge.
  • Understanding Graduates’ Earnings Across Programs and Time. We collaborated with the Postsecondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) Coalition to build a national research agenda to explore critical questions about the value of credentials, graduate mobility across states, and how higher education aligns with labor market needs to inform better policy and institutional decisions. In doing so, we prepared a set of three reports using South Carolina’s PSEO data to demonstrate opportunities to strengthen workforce alignment, improve graduates’ economic security, and reduce out-of-state migration.

Maximizing the economic and civic value of postsecondary education

How we define and measure value in higher education shapes policy decisions, institutional priorities, and students’ opportunities and outcomes. States and institutions increasingly rely on economic indicators—such as employment and earnings—to guide investment, and these measures matter. But when value is reduced to short-term earnings alone, it can steer students toward programs optimized for immediate job placement while sidelining pathways that support sustained wage growth, long-term mobility, and career adaptability. 

Our work advances a more comprehensive approach. We analyze individual economic outcomes over time to identify which programs drive lasting economic security and translate those findings to the institutional and state levels to assess their broader impact on public investment and state economies. At the same time, we recognize that higher education’s value extends beyond the labor market, and we support efforts to define, measure, and strengthen its social and civic contributions.