A students were more likely to complete college credentials than non-PLA students—this was true for adultstudents of all races, ethnicities, and income levels. The 24,512 adult students who earned PLA credits had acredential completion rate of 49% over the seven-and-a-half-year observation period, compared to 27% among adultstudents with no PLA credits. Credential completion was even higher (73%) for adult students with PLA credit frommethods other than ACE credit recommendations for military

Consider another example—education. It is true that in most countries, asin the United States, a higher level of educational attainment is typically as-sociated with a lower risk of economic insecurity. But the penalties associatedwith low levels of educational attainment, and the rewards associated with highlevels of attainment, vary significantly by country. Full-time workers without ahigh school degree in Finland, for instance, report the same earnings as thosewith a high school degree. In the United States, however, these workers ex-perience a 24 percent earnings penalty for not completing high school.23 InNorway, a college degree yields only a 20 percent earnings increase over a highschool degree for full-time workers, versus a much higher 68 percent increase inthe United States.24 The percentage of those with a high school degree earningat or below the poverty threshold is more than 4 times higher in the UnitedStates than in Belgium.25