By Derek Goodman
Before you invest tens of thousands of dollars and two to four years of your life in a college credential, you need to know what the data actually says about whether that investment pays off, and for whom.
If you’re a small business owner thinking about going back to school, or weighing whether to fund a degree for a key employee, you’re already asking the right question: is this worth it? Not in the abstract, feel-good sense, but financially. Will this credential produce a measurable return, or is it an expensive signal that doesn’t change the underlying math?
The honest answer is that it depends, and the variable it depends on most isn’t the school’s reputation or even the field of study. It’s whether the credential you’re earning actually has demonstrable economic value in the labor market you’re entering. And according to the most comprehensive research available on this question, more than half of the credentials currently held by working adults in the U.S. don’t meet that bar.
That’s not a pessimistic take. It’s a data point that, once you understand it, actually makes the decision clearer. Here’s what the research shows, how to apply it to your own situation, and what a newer model of credential design means for the ROI calculation going forward.
The Number You Need to Know
The Lumina Foundation, which tracks postsecondary education outcomes across the United States, has found that only 43.6 percent of U.S. credentials have demonstrable economic value. Read that again: fewer than half of the degrees and certificates that Americans earn and pay for translate into meaningful wage gains or measurable career advancement.
The Lumina Foundation frames this as the credential value gap, the distance between what a credential costs in time and money and what it actually delivers in economic terms. Their Stronger Nation research series, which tracks credential attainment and outcomes at the state level, provides the most granular public data available on this question.
For a small business owner, this number reframes the entire conversation. When you’re thinking about going back to school, you’re not just asking whether a degree is generally valuable. You’re asking whether the specific credential, from the specific type of program, in the specific field you’re targeting, is in that 43.6 percent or the other 56 percent.
That’s a much more tractable question, and it’s one you can actually research before you commit.
How to Think About Education ROI the Way You’d Think About Any Business Investment
Small business owners are already good at one thing that most people going back to school aren’t: thinking in terms of return on investment. You wouldn’t add a piece of equipment, hire a contractor, or launch a new service line without at least a rough model of what it would cost, what it would produce, and when you’d break even. Education deserves the same framework.
The cost side is usually the part people focus on: tuition, fees, lost income during enrollment, and the opportunity cost of time spent studying rather than working. For a working adult at a mid-career stage, those numbers can be substantial.
The return side is where most people’s analysis gets fuzzy. The standard claim, that a college degree adds about a million dollars in lifetime earnings compared to a high school diploma, is a population-level average that tells you almost nothing about your specific situation. It blends together high-return credentials in high-demand fields with low-return credentials in saturated markets. It doesn’t account for the fact that you’re already several years into a career and may be comparing a degree to continued advancement in your current field rather than to a baseline of no credential at all.
A more useful framework asks three questions:
What’s the earnings premium for this specific credential in this specific field? The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook breaks down median wages, job growth projections, and typical education requirements at the occupation level. This is public data that you can access for free, and it’s far more useful than general statistics about the value of a degree.
What’s the typical time to employment in a role where this credential matters? For a small business owner, the relevant question often isn’t whether the credential adds value over a forty-year career; it’s whether it adds enough value in the next three to five years to justify the investment now. A credential that takes two years to earn and another year to convert into a better role has a different ROI profile than one that opens doors immediately.
How does this credential signal value to employers or clients in your market? For small business owners, credentials sometimes matter less for getting hired and more for credibility with clients, contract eligibility, or the ability to enter regulated markets. That’s a different ROI calculation than a traditional employee’s career ladder.
Why the Type of Credential Matters as Much as Having One
Even within the same field, not all credentials are created equal. The emerging research on credential value has identified a meaningful distinction between programs that simply award a degree upon completion and programs that explicitly document and verify the specific skills a student developed along the way.
This distinction matters for a practical reason: employers can’t use a degree to determine what you actually know how to do. A business administration degree could represent deep expertise in financial modeling, or it could represent two years of general coursework with no particular skill concentration. From the outside, both look the same on a resume.
Skills-mapped credential programs address this directly. Rather than treating the degree as the primary output, these programs align every course to specific, employer-validated competencies and issue verifiable digital credentials at the course level. A student doesn’t just graduate with a degree; they graduate with a documented, verifiable portfolio of specific skills that an employer can evaluate independently of the degree itself.
What Employers Are Actually Using to Make Hiring Decisions in 2026
If you’re going back to school with the goal of making yourself more competitive in the labor market, either as an employee or as someone bidding on contracts or professional engagements, you need to understand how hiring and evaluation decisions are actually being made right now.
The shift toward skills-based hiring has been building for several years and has meaningfully accelerated. Major employers including IBM, Google, Apple, and a large and growing number of mid-market companies have publicly moved to hiring frameworks that evaluate candidates on demonstrated competency rather than credential completion. Job posting data from Lightcast, which tracks tens of millions of postings, shows a steady decline in explicit four-year degree requirements and a corresponding increase in skill-specific language.
For small business owners, this has two implications. First, if you’re going back to school to make yourself more marketable, the credentials that will actually move the needle are the ones that produce verifiable, documented skills rather than a degree that sits as a line on your resume. Second, if you’re evaluating credentials for employees or contract hires, you have more flexibility than you might think to look at skills documentation rather than defaulting to degree requirements. For working adults evaluating specific schools, this kind of primary data is more useful than rankings or marketing materials.
Fields Where the ROI Case Is Strongest
Not all fields are equal when it comes to credential ROI, and if you’re going to make this investment, it’s worth targeting fields where the data supports it.
Healthcare administration is one of the strongest cases. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects substantial job growth in this field through the early 2030s, median wages are well above the national average, and the credential-to-role pipeline is well-established. For small business owners with a background in operations or management, a healthcare administration credential can open doors to a field with strong demand and clear skill requirements.
Cybersecurity is another field with a compelling ROI profile. The skills gap in cybersecurity is well-documented and persistent, employer demand is high, and the field has developed a relatively robust infrastructure of verifiable credentials, from CompTIA certifications to degree programs with specific skills outcomes, that allow candidates to signal capability in ways that translate directly to hiring decisions.
Business management and related fields offer more variable outcomes, but programs that specialize in areas with strong employer demand, such as supply chain management, data analytics, or project management, tend to produce better ROI than general management degrees. The key again is specificity: a credential that documents specific, in-demand skills in a growing area of business practice is worth more than a credential that signals general business knowledge.
The Question of Timing: When Going Back to School Makes Financial Sense
For small business owners specifically, timing matters in ways that don’t apply to traditional employees. A few situations where the ROI case is particularly strong:
When you’re targeting a licensed or regulated market. If the credential you’re pursuing is a requirement to operate in a specific market, pursue specific contracts, or provide certain services, the ROI calculation is more straightforward. The credential is the price of admission, and the question is just whether that market is worth entering.
When you’re planning a deliberate career transition. If you’re planning to shift from running your own business to a corporate role, or from one industry to another, a credential can serve as a credibility bridge that shortens the time to employability in the new field. The ROI is highest when the transition is planned and the credential is targeted specifically at the destination role.
When the program issues credentials you can use before you graduate. Programs that issue course-level digital badges or micro-credentials allow you to start signaling new skills to your market while you’re still enrolled. For a small business owner, this means you can potentially start winning new clients or positioning yourself differently in your market before the degree is complete. That changes the cash flow profile of the investment significantly.
When you can attend without stepping away from your business. Online programs designed for working adults, with asynchronous coursework and flexible scheduling, have a meaningfully different ROI profile than programs that require you to reduce business operations to attend. The cost of foregone business income is a real input to the ROI calculation, and programs that minimize it have a structural advantage.
The Bottom Line for Small Business Owners
Going back to school can absolutely be worth it. But “worth it” is a financial question, and it deserves a financial answer.
The credential value gap research tells us that more than half of credentials don’t produce demonstrable economic value. That’s not a reason to skip education; it’s a reason to be selective. The credentials that do produce value tend to share common characteristics: they’re in fields with documented employer demand, they document specific skills rather than just course completion, and they’re designed with working adults in mind.
Before committing to any program, it’s worth doing the same due diligence you’d apply to any significant business investment. Look at the BLS data for your target field. Ask programs specifically how they document the skills students develop. Check independent outcome data for the institutions you’re considering. And pay attention to whether the credential structure gives you something to show before graduation, not just after.
The degree still matters. But in 2026, the credential that documents what you know how to do, in verifiable, specific terms, is increasingly the one that moves the needle.
Resources for Further Reading
Credential value and education ROI:
Lumina Foundation, Stronger Nation Report (https://www.luminafoundation.org/stronger-nation/) – Annual data on credential attainment and economic value across U.S. states
Skills-Mapped Degrees: Understanding Credential Value (https://skillsmappeddegrees.com/skills-mapped-value.html) – Overview of the credential value gap, Lumina data, and how skills-mapped programs address it
U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/) – Institutional outcome data including earnings, completion, and debt
BLS career outlook and field-specific ROI:
Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/) – Median wages, job growth projections, and education requirements by occupation
Skills by Career (https://skillsmappeddegrees.com/skills-by-career.html) – BLS-sourced skills data across 15 career pathways including healthcare administration, cybersecurity, and business management
Employer hiring trends and skills-based evaluation:
Lightcast Labor Market Analytics (https://lightcast.io/) – Job posting data and skills demand trends across industries and regions
Tear the Paper Ceiling (https://www.tearthepaperceiling.org/) – Employer coalition committed to skills-based hiring and removing unnecessary degree requirements
Digital credentials and skills documentation:
Digital Badges in Degree Programs, skillsmappeddegrees.com (https://skillsmappeddegrees.com/digital-badges.html) – How verifiable digital badges work, how they’re issued, and employer recognition data
Credential Engine (https://credentialengine.org/) – National registry and transparency framework for credentials across sectors
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Derek Goodman is a regular guest contributor at One Click Advisor. He is an experienced entrepreneur and educator or entrepreneurs. For more of Derek’s work, please visit Inbizability.