Do UX Certifications Pay Off?

What is the value of UX certification?

How do you learn the methods UX professionals use? A few university programs offer courses in UX or related fields.

Certainly, nothing beats hands-on experience conducting your own usability test on a prototype, running a survey, and interviewing stakeholders.

But how do you demonstrate to others (employers in particular) that you have the knowledge and experience? And how do you do that when you have little related professional experience?

Certifications offer the promise of a credential that could help you get a foot in the door and lead to higher pay. But is there any evidence they do either?

The last time we explored this question was with data from the 2016 UXPA salary survey. Our key conclusions were:

• Overall, certification did not appear to generate higher pay. In fact, the median pay for those with certification was nominally (but not significantly) lower than respondents without certification.
• Certification programs likely enrich practitioners’ knowledge, skills, and job credibility.
• Certification may be helpful when breaking into the UX field, either as a first job or a career change.

In this article, we analyze data from the 2024 UXPA salary survey to see what, if anything, has changed in the value of UX certification.

Summary and Discussion

Our exploration of the value of UX certification in 2024 while looking back to 2017 has found some consistencies in key findings and some discrepancies.

The overall effect of certification on salary remained nonsignificant. In 2017, the salaries of those without certification were slightly higher than those with certification, but the difference was not statistically significant. In the 2024 UXPA survey, that pattern was nominally reversed (respondents with certificates reported higher pay) but was still not statistically significant.

Salaries were lowest for the university academic certifications. Consistent with the 2017 findings, salaries were lower for respondents with university academic certifications than those with Nielsen Norman Group or CUA/CXA certifications.

There appears to be a disconnect between salaries for the certification groups and their average years of UX experience in 2024, which was not apparent in 2017. In 2017, salaries were about $13,000 higher for CUA/CXA than Nielsen Norman Group. This seemed reasonable given how much more recently the Nielsen Norman Group had started its certification program and how the mean years of UX experience were higher for the CUA/CXA group of certificants. In 2024, the years of experience for CUA/CXA certificants was about six years more than Nielsen Norman Group certificants (from two years in 2017), but the salaries for Nielsen Norman Group certificants were nominally higher than for CUA/CXA. This suggests that differences in years of experience do not fully explain differences in salaries for different types of certifications.

Increased education increases salary regardless of certification. In regression analyses conducted in 2024 and on previous UXPA surveys, level of education has always been a key driver of salary. Comparisons of salaries for Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate holders showed nominal differences in salary, sometimes higher and sometimes lower for certified respondents, but never statistically significant.

The apparent effects of certification tenure on salary appear to be completely explained by corresponding years of UX experience. As the number of years since respondents’ most recent certification increases, so does the salary. However, a follow-up key driver (regression) analysis found that when certification tenure and years of UX experience were the sole predictors of salary, the years of UX experience accounted for sixteen times more of the variation in salary than certification tenure (which is not a significant predictor).

Most respondents did not think certification helped to increase their pay. About a quarter of respondents didn’t know whether certification had helped their pay. Only 16% thought certification had helped to increase their pay.

About half of respondents felt that certification improved their skills in their current job. About a quarter of respondents said certification had no impact on their career, but others felt it helped them break into the field (23%), helped them get a new job (18%), or helped them secure a promotion (9%).

Bottom line: Despite a few inconsistencies, the major conclusions from our analyses in 2017 are the same in 2024—UX certification does not guarantee higher pay but can likely help new practitioners break into the field (a little) and help more seasoned practitioners improve their UX skills for applications in their current jobs.

Read the full article on MeasuringU's Blog

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