Professional Certificates: The ‘Cash Cow’ of U.S. Universities? - Jon Marcus, Time

“It’s a good side-business for four-year colleges and graduate schools,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. At a time when higher-education budgets are being further and further stretched, universities want a piece of what the Georgetown center estimates is $140 billion a year spent on formal career training nationwide, about 40% of which is siphoned into educational institutions. “They’re playing precisely that game,” said Robert Ehlers Jr., director of the Center for Security Studies at Angelo State University in Texas, which has added professional certificate programs in criminal justice, border security, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. Ehlers Jr. said he’s heard officials at other universities refer to professional certificates “as both cash cows and as a means of attracting students who might not otherwise come to that school to sample the kinds of education it might have to offer.”