Students Are Asking: Will My Degree Pay Off? They Deserve Answers.
Americans are uncertain about the value of higher education, and recent polls and surveys on public confidence, trust, and perceived value reflect that uncertainty. The rising cost of attendance, increasing automation, and an ever-shifting labor market still leave many families wondering whether a degree will pay off.
Higher education remains one of the country’s most powerful engines for upward mobility, but in an era clouded by economic disruption and stubborn underemployment, that promise is harder to see. If institutions hope to regain public confidence, they must clearly demonstrate that higher education leads to meaningful careers for graduates — and drives economic growth for communities.
No entities are better positioned to help make that case than the organizations that accredit them. For generations, accreditors have served as stewards of academic quality, ensuring that institutions meet established standards.
Those reference points for educational quality still matter, but most of them were formulated at a time when a college degree almost guaranteed a stable career. Today’s economy is anything but stable. Shifting labor market demands and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence are reshaping job requirements more quickly than course catalogs can keep up. Students and their families are bluntly asking: How do I know this program will pay off?
Accreditors face an imperative to respond by prioritizing measures that matter the most to these families—those tied directly to students’ career trajectories and economic mobility. WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), where I serve as president and CEO, is responding by helping its member institutions improve retention and graduation rates by flagging where performance is slipping or stubbornly stagnant. Last month, we also became the first accreditor to incorporate the Price-to-Earnings Premium metric into its publicly-facing data tool.
Robust access to data allows colleges to track student success, institutional effectiveness, and long-term financial viability, all factors that directly affect student earnings and workforce capacity.
Publicly available metrics on completion rates, student debt, early-career earnings, and fiscal health can help institutions understand their performance over time. It can also provide campus leaders with a shared map of where they stand and where they can improve. When a key indicator starts to slide, corrective action can begin before students bear the cost.
Career-relevant, labor-aligned pathways, such as competency-based education, apprenticeship degrees, and streamlined credential models, can accelerate time to degree, reduce student debt, and help institutions respond to local and regional employment needs. The result is a culture of continuous improvement that reinforces not just educational quality, but economic mobility.
Institutions have a responsibility to use that data to steer resources to students at risk of dropping out. Perhaps just as important is that they rethink delivery and design—building programs that don’t just confer degrees, but connect directly to labor market demand and the needs of their student populations.
For instance, EDvance College offers a fully online bachelor’s degree for early childhood educators already in the workforce. Reach University, meanwhile, enables school staff to earn job-embedded teaching credentials without leaving their current roles or placing their careers on hold. OpenClassrooms, a pioneer in apprenticeship degree programs, pairs project-based learning with one-on-one mentorship and a strong emphasis on career outcomes, while Minerva University reimagines global education through immersive online classes and experiential learning in cities across the world. Each of these innovative models is accredited by WSCUC, underscoring the role of forward-looking accreditors in fostering programs that align with both educational quality and labor market needs.
Higher education—and the nation—stand at a crossroads. As states increasingly depend on postsecondary education to drive workforce and economic growth, the quality and effectiveness of colleges and universities have become matters of urgent public interest.
Economic growth and competitiveness hinge on higher education’s ability to deliver outcomes that translate into labor market outcomes—and how effective accreditors are in pushing institutions to improve.
Outcomes-focused accreditation is the straightest path to ensure students finish, graduate without crushing debt, and land good jobs — but only if the data are gathered and applied, consistent with each institution’s mission. With more accreditors adopting this ethos of transparency and outcomes, the promise of college can once again match the reality—and public confidence will have real reason to return.
