Washington Monthly - September/October 2023 - 39

We should expect students who earn certificates in,
say, cosmetology to earn relatively little-such is the market
for hairdressers and manicurists. But the HEA Group's
analysis also found worrisome variation in salary outcomes
even among students who earned certificates in nearly identical
subject matter. Recipients of certificates in " computer/
information technology administration and management "
from the for-profit Asher College in Sacramento earned a
median income of $49,525 four years later, the report found;
those who earned certificates in " computer and information
science " from the public South Texas College earned less than
half that-a median of $18,250.
Free market die-hards might argue that these disparities
will self-correct as students flock to programs with the best
reputations, leaving the poor performers to wither. But making
those comparisons is tricky. Is the 10-week, full-time data
analytics " boot camp " taught by Fullstack Academy through
Virginia Tech for $13,495 markedly better than the nine-week
online class on the same subject from Cornell University for
$3,750? Is the online certificate course sponsored by IBM better
than the one offered by Meta? It's impossible to decide
without knowing how graduates fare in the job market.
I ended up choosing Google's data analytics course in
part because it was the most popular certificate program in
2022, according to Coursera. As of late July, more than 1.7 million
students had enrolled. According to Bronagh Friel, the
head of Grow with Google, 75 percent of the company's certificate
graduates " report a positive career impact, such as a new
job, higher pay or a promotion, within six months of completion. "
Those are great results, but they're self-reported, and
there's no way to verify them.
P
ublic and private colleges and universities that confer
four-year degrees in a variety of fields are not, of course,
uniform in quality either. Graduates with diplomas in
business management tend, on average, to have substantially
higher salaries than graduates in fine arts. Graduates of Harvard
make more money, on average, than graduates of the forprofit
DeVry. But if the goal is to provide students with an educational
path to a reliable salary, a bachelor's degree-from
anywhere, in any subject matter-remains the better bet. The
HEA study found that 80 percent of bachelor's graduates earn
at least $40,000 per year four years after graduation (in contrast
to the relatively poor performance of certificate holders
noted above). In some STEM fields, like computer science,
bachelor's degree graduates earn a median of $104,799.
Part of the reason might be the substantive advantages
conferred by a four-year educational experience, says Sean
Gallagher, the founder and executive director of Northeastern
University's Center for the Future of Higher Education and
Talent Strategy. An employer hiring a college graduate with
a degree in computer science is relatively confident that the
candidate can perform basic data analytics tasks. But what a
company really values, Gallagher says, is that the candidate,
by making it to graduation, is likely to have " the soft skills, the
experiences, the perseverance, and the ability to attain a goal. "
An asynchronous online course, or even a " very deep, welldesigned,
very expensive, few months' training experience, "
Gallagher adds, is far less likely to convey those types of skills.
This preference for college degrees extends to the tech
world, too, despite Silicon Valley's love affair with college
dropouts like Apple's Steve Jobs and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg,
and commitments from companies like IBM to dramatically
reduce the job postings that require a four-year degree. A 2022
report from the labor market research firm Lightcast found
that tech companies still disproportionately require college
degrees. At Oracle, more than 90 percent of job postings required
a four-year degree or above, according to Lightcast. At
Apple, it was 72 percent. At Google, 77 percent.
This trend certainly held true in my admittedly superficial
job hunt this summer. Armed with my new Google professional
certificate, I surveyed Indeed.com for entry-level
data analyst jobs in both D.C. and Silicon Valley, and found
that almost every job required either a four-year degree, significant
prior experience, or a nuanced set of skills that would
be impossible to obtain through short-term certification programs.
A June posting for " Big Data Software Engineer " at
IBM, for example, did not require a college degree, but it did
ask that applicants have Top Secret security clearance; could
demonstrate " hands-on experience configuring and operating
container-based systems such as Kubernetes, Docker and/
or OpenShift " ; and be able to program in Python and Java.
When I asked Victoria Suarez, the manager of talent strategy
and operations at Alpha Omega Integration, an IT firm based
in Vienna, Virginia, if she thought my Google certificate could
get me in the door, she hesitated. " Oftentimes, you can just sit
there, push play on the video, and get a certificate, " she said.
" We all kind of know that too. "
At best, my certificate was a signal to potential employers
of my interest in the field. " It could demonstrate to an employer
that, hey, this person would be worth training because
they're already investing in themselves to take the certificate
and to acquaint themselves with the field, " says Matt Deneroff,
the D.C. branch director for the global professional placement
firm Robert Half.
My job search at Google was perhaps the most deflating.
Despite Google's promise to treat its own career certificates as
" equivalent of a four-year degree, " Google's hiring platform,
which allows applicants to sort job openings by the degree required,
does not list " certificate " among the filter options. In
a forthcoming book, the author and higher education expert
Ben Wildavsky quotes a Google executive admitting that the
company-sponsored certificates " aren't intended to prepare
people to work at Google itself. " Google employees, the executive
explained, " need deeper learning abilities than shortterm
programs typically provide. "
T
he idea, trumpeted by Google and echoed by overwrought
pundits, that professional certificates ought to
replace traditional degrees is maddening to many chamWashington
Monthly 39
http://www.Indeed.com
Washington Monthly - September/October 2023

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