U.S. postsecondary educational institutions conferred nearly 5.4 million officially recognized graduate and undergraduate credentials — degrees, certificates, etc. — during the 2022-23 academic year. However, the count of credentials does not represent the number of students who actually earned a credential, since students can receive more than one credential in a given academic year.
The U.S. Education Department collects information on certificate and degree completions in several ways through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The most commonly used data represents the number of credentials conferred by level of award and discipline at postsecondary institutions in a given academic year — completions.
However, unduplicated headcounts of the number of students (not credentials) at both an institutional level, as well as by level of award at the institution, are collected through IPEDS. This brief explores the most recently released data for the 2022-23 academic year.
In the 2022-23 academic year, there were over 580,000 more credentials conferred (5.40 million) by postsecondary educational institutions than there were students who earned them (4.82 million). On average, there were 1.12 credentials for each student who attained a credential — or about 121 extra credentials per 1,000 credential recipients.
Some of the multiple credential earners have double majors. For example, around 96,000 (4.6%) of the 2.08 million bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2022-23 were for a second major. In addition, some of the extra credentials are for individuals who earn multiple types of awards, such as a certificate and an associate degree, during the academic year.
For-profit colleges and non-degree-granting institutions have the fewest multiple credential earners, while public community colleges had the highest ratio of all higher education sectors at 1.32 credentials per student. In fact, public community colleges were the only sector with more than 100 extra credentials per 1,000, with roughly 315 extra awards for every 1,000 credentials completed. Many community colleges provide stackable credential programs, and this may reflect that.
The data show variation by the racial/ethnic background of public community college credential earners. Black students have the fewest credentials relative to the number of recipients (1.24), while Asian and Pacific Islander students (1.40) and Hispanic students (1.39) had the highest ratio of credentials per recipient.
The data show that the ratio of credentials per recipient is lower at each level of award than when looking at the overall unduplicated headcount of credential earners. While there were 154,584 more credentials among students when only looking within each award level as shown above, there were 343,638 more credentials overall than the total number of recipients overall in public community colleges. Therefore, a significant number of the multiple credentials earned by community college students are at different levels (e.g. a certificate and an associate degree).
For public community colleges, certificates of at least 12 weeks but less than 1 year had the most credentials awarded per recipient, with an additional 206 certificates per 1,000 recipients, while the baccalaureate degree had the fewest credentials awarded per recipient.
