The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education

Riley Acton, Camila Morales (), Julia Turner (), Lois Miller and Kalena Cortes ()
Additional contact information
Camila Morales: University of Texas at Dallas
Julia Turner: Northwestern University
Kalena Cortes: Texas A&M University

No 18786, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few successfully transfer and complete one. Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) programs offer an alternative by allowing community colleges to confer bachelor’s degrees directly, yet little is known about how employers value these credentials. We address this question with the first resume audit study of CCB degrees, submitting fictitious applications to real job vacancies while experimentally varying applicants’ credentials, institutions, and demographics. This pilot focuses on the early childhood education (ECE) labor market, a growing CCB field marked by labor shortages and rising educational requirements. We find that employers view CCB degrees similarly to traditional bachelor’s and associate degrees, with statistically indistinguishable interview-request rates. Callback text shows little evidence of differential employer responses, while a net-price simulation suggests sticker-price comparisons overstate CCB affordability. These findings provide new evidence on the labor market value and affordability of CCB degrees and inform an ongoing audit study across additional fields.

Keywords: community college baccalaureate; college accessibility; college choices; college attainment; associate degree; bachelor’s degree; community colleges; two-year colleges; four-year colleges; public postsecondary institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18786.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18786

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().