A high school diploma still marks a critical education milestone in people’s lives. However, in today’s economy, it has lost its edge in providing individual workplace advantage and economic self-sufficiency.

Over the next 10 years, half of all new jobs in Washington state will require at least one year of college. In turn, a year of college education is the new minimum for success in almost any job. The two-year degree has become the standard for a well-paying job and a key stepping stone to a four-year university.

State demographics show we will not have enough educated people to fill tomorrow’s jobs if we rely solely on traditional-age students. While there are not enough prospective traditional students to fill the jobs requiring college-level work, there are 1.4 million adults in our state with a high school diploma or less.

This increase in educational requirements for good jobs, paired with changing demographics, obliged us, as a two-year college system, to attempt to engage with and increase educational attainment in broad segments of the population directly.

In 2005, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges conducted comprehensive research of the working age, low-skill, adult student population. The study, “Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students: Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice from a Statewide Longitudinal Tracking Study,” examined college-level attainment and post-college earnings.

We found those individuals who completed at least one year of college-credit courses and earned a certificate had a significant average annual earnings advantage:

 • $7,000 for students who began in English as a Second Language (ESL)

• $8,500 for those who began in adult Basic Education (ABE) or GED

• $2,700 and $1,700 for those entering with a GED or high school diploma, respectively We coined this milestone — one-year of college-level courses and a certificate — the “tipping point,” both because of the earnings advantage and the groundwork laid for going even further in postsecondary attainment.