Education is a critical pathway to economic independence and opportunity for Tennesseans. Our state and its residents invest time, energy, and money into education with the hope that it will lead to strong workforce outcomes, such as a well-trained workforce that brings high-quality employment opportunities to the state. When we better understand the workforce outcomes that our students experience, we can better support them as they pursue educational opportunities.
Enter the summer 2025 revisions to Tennessee’s Education-to-Employment Dashboard, a tool initially launched by the state’s Office of Evidence and Impact (OEI) in 2024. Designed to provide insight into the workforce outcomes of our state’s education system, OEI’s recent updates to the dashboard have elevated the quality of data and insights it offers. Within the revised dashboard, we found exciting insights related to education-workforce alignment, which were made possible by dashboard updates.
Insight #1: After five years, the earnings premium of graduates with postsecondary credentials is persistent and clear for certificate/diploma and degree programs.
- In Tennessee, fewer than 1-in-4 employees with just a high school diploma earn enough to achieve economic independence ($43,196 in annual earnings) five years after graduating from high school.
- Over half of postsecondary credential holders working in Tennessee reach economic independence within five years of graduating with a certificate/diploma, associate degree, or bachelor’s degree.
- However, not all students who earn a postsecondary credential meet this income threshold. This reflects the reality that not all credentials connect students with workforce opportunities and economic independence.
Insight #2: We know which academic programs, at specific credential levels, connect students with economic opportunity.
This updated dashboard aggregates learner-level data by credential type and broad program of study. It then combines the learner data with corresponding employment records, enabling us to look at the earnings by program of study across credential levels. Seeing an opportunity to apply the earnings threshold for our impact credential framework, SCORE asked which combinations of academic programs and credential types met the median earnings threshold that enables economic independence.
We found that 47 program categories were linked to earnings of at least $43,196 five years after graduation. This represents approximately 70% of the program categories listed on the dashboard. However, we also know that within each of these broad program categories, the earnings of specific programs vary. For a more specific understanding of this, OEI has included more detailed cuts of academic programs within this dashboard.
Insight #3: In Tennessee, 76% of programs of study offer earnings that do not connect students with economic opportunity (earnings of at least $43,196) within the first year of employment.
The limited number of programs that meet this earnings threshold within a year of graduation signals a need to better align our educational and workforce systems. While we work to better connect these systems, academic/career advising represents a key opportunity to help students pursue the postsecondary opportunities that best enable economic independence. By equipping advisors with workforce outcomes data, we can correctly advise students to pursue the best career options that are available to them. Connecting students with these opportunities transforms the lives of students, families, and Tennessee communities through upward economic mobility.
Tennessee must stay committed to data system and reporting enhancements to ensure strong alignment between its education system and workforce needs.
OEI pulls together powerful but historically siloed data systems in the state through the TN DATA system (formerly referred to as the P20 or P20 Connect data system). This highly technical and complex data work is important because the state is now able to examine the alignment of our educational systems to workforce systems more closely than ever before. With this knowledge, we are better able to equip students for lives of opportunity and economic independence.
However, there is much more work to be done in this arena. Over the past year, SCORE has outlined key data improvements the state should consider, such as enhanced tracking for both nondegree and stackable credentials. Looking to the future, the state has the opportunity for additional data reforms to continue enhancing the utility of the TN DATA system. In June, as part of a broader modernization project to the unemployment tax system, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development announced updates to its data collection that include the ability to collect employee occupations. This will allow Tennessee to more closely examine the economic opportunities of credentials and their aligned occupations.
We are excited to see OEI continue to utilize our state’s longitudinal data system and look forward to leveraging these and other new data in future dashboard iterations. This data work is not only important but necessary to enable Tennessee to make the best choices in ensuring economic opportunities for our residents.
The data used to drive the insights discussed here are publicly available. We encourage you to visit OEI’s updated dashboard and ask how you can also leverage this resource to better connect Tennessee’s students with economic opportunity.