TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Acton, Riley
AU  - Morales, Camila
AU  - Turner, Julia
AU  - Miller, Lois
AU  - Cortes, Kalena E.
        TI  - The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education
        PY  - 2026/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18786
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18786
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - community college baccalaureate
KW  - college accessibility
KW  - college choices
KW  - college attainment
KW  - associate degree
KW  - bachelor’s degree
KW  - community colleges
KW  - two-year colleges
KW  - four-year colleges
KW  - public postsecondary institutions
        ER  -