Job Corps is the nation's largest residential education and job training program for at-risk youth. The program provides training to approximately 60,000 participants each year. This report examines various methodologies for estimating the cost per enrollee and cost per graduate to help inform the Employment and Training Administration's (ETA) calculations for the Job Corps program Annual Report.

Under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), ETA is required to report performance measures for Job Corps as a whole and for individual centers, outreach and admissions providers, and career transition services providers. The two performance measures are: (1) the cost per enrollee, which is to be calculated as the ratio of the total budget to the number of enrollees; and (2) the cost per graduate, which is to be calculated as the ratio of the total budget to the number of graduates. Although the high-level descriptions of these measures are straightforward, calculating them is challenging. The data used to calculate the measures come from multiple sources that track costs and participants for reporting and accounting purposes that may not be tied to WIOA. As a result, any methodology to calculate the costs requires a set of explicit assumptions and justifications for those assumptions. ETA was interested in identifying methodologies that leveraged available data to calculate average costs that were transparent and accurate. ETA was ultimately interested in using the information so that it could improve its calculation of costs for the Job Corps program as part of the ETA PY2017 Annual Report. There was also interest in understanding how data collection could be improved to provide better estimates in the future.

The study found that:

After identifying six types of methodologies for calculating average costs per graduate, the report's proposed PY 2017 Methodology found that the average cost per enrollee was $34,301, and the average cost per graduate was $57,312. This methodology reflected four principles: (1) met legislative requirements; (2) resulted in accurate estimates; (3) provided transparency to Congress and the public; and (4) required low computational resources.

Alternative methodologies led to different cost estimates and had various advantages and disadvantages. Advantages included flexibility in start date and program length, while disadvantages included lack of transparency and accuracy.

Across the six different cost methodologies, the average cost per "graduate" differed slightly, ranging from $57,312 to $66,194. The average cost per "enrollee" differed more considerably, ranging from $20,584 to $60,036. One of the main reasons for the differences in enrollee costs was due to how "enrollees" was defined.

Opportunities to improve estimates in subsequent iterations of the annual report include additional research on: (1) data collection methods; and (2) the program's definition of "enrollees" and "graduates" in the program.