Survey of College Policies in Developing Certificate Programs

This study looks closely at how colleges are devising certificate programs to supplement or broaden their traditional course offerings and meet the demand for flexible and lifelong education increasingly demanded by the American public. The report presents data from 35 colleges and two trade associations and helps its readers to answer questions such as: how much are colleges spending on developing and marketing new certificate programs? Who develops the programs? To what extent do they rely on existing coursework? To what degree do they use online learning? What are their enrollment prospects compared to traditional degree programs? In which subject areas have they been most fruitful? How do colleges come up with ideas for certificate programs? How much market research do they do and how confident are they in the data backing up their program development decisions? How much do they spend on traditional marketing venues such as radio and print ads and how much on Facebook, Google and other pay per click ads? How involved are alumni in developing new certificate programs? What role does local industry play? Just a few of the 115-page reports many findings are that: • When asked how good the market will be for certificate programs over the next two years, most respondents felt that the market will be “good” (54.29%) or “great” (11.43%). • More than one-third of the respondents either “often” or “very much so” made use of the IPEDS from the National Center for Education Statistics when developing new programs. More than 17% do not use it at all. • Community colleges were more apt than other types of colleges to find current faculty or staff to be “useful” or “a great source” of ideas for new certificate programs. • Only 4.63% of certificate courses or programs are completely competency exam based and do not involve human instruction. • Nearly 65% of credits earned in certificate programs could later be applied to degree programs.