Raising academic standards and vocational concentrators: Are they better off or worse off?

Bishop, John H.; Mane, Ferran

doi:10.1080/09645290500031199

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Overall, the evidence described below indicates that youth completing school-based VET do as well (and sometimes better) than if they had instead remained in purely academic studies (Tansel 1994, 1999; Mane 1999; Tunali 2002; Bishop and Mane 2004, 2005; Meer 2007). Some evidence found that school-based VET is most efficient when the area of vocational training is matched with the occupation of employment, whereas no significant differences arise for unmatched groups (Neuman and Ziderman 1991, 1999).…”

Section: Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 94%

A Road Map to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries

Eichhörst¹,

Rodríguez‐Planas²,

Schmidl³

et al. 2015

ILR Review

208

176

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Young people have been among those most affected by the recent financial crisis. Vocational education and training (VET) is often viewed as the silver bullet for the youth joblessness problem. In this article, the authors provide a better understanding of VET in industrialized countries, proposing a typology with three types of vocational systems: 1) vocational and technical schools, 2) formal apprenticeships, and 3) dual apprenticeship systems that combine school training with a firm-based approach. They first describe the strengths and challenges of each system. They subsequently review the evidence of the effectiveness of VET versus general education and the relative effectiveness of the different VET systems. Results indicate that VET is a valued alternative beyond the core of general education and that the use of apprenticeships combined with institutional learning tends to be more effective than school-based VET.

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Section: Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 94%

A Road Map to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries

Eichhörst¹,

Rodríguez‐Planas²,

Schmidl³

et al. 2015

ILR Review

208

176

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The findings of this literature are overall quite mixed. Some papers (Mane, 1999;Bishop & Mane, 2005;Meer, 2007) have reported on a positive relationship between vocational secondary education and earnings. Citylevel, state-level, and national-level quasi-experimental studies commissioned by the US Department of Education as part of a national assessment of vocational education found more mixed evidence on the impact of vocational education on educational and labor market outcomes (US DOE, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Educational Pathways to Social Mobility: Evidence from Norway’s “Reform 94”

Bertrand¹,

Mogstad²,

Mountjoy³

2019

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High school vocational education has a controversial history in the United States, largely due to a perceived tradeoff between teaching readily deployable occupational skills versus shunting mostly disadvantaged students away from the educational and career flexibility afforded by general academic courses. We study the effects of a nationwide high school reform in Norway that aimed to move beyond this tradeoff. Reform 94, implemented in one step in the fall of 1994, integrated more general education into the vocational track, offered vocational students a pathway to college through a supplementary semester of academic courses, and sought to improve the quality of the vocational track through greater access to apprenticeships. We identify the impacts of the reform through a difference-indiscontinuity research design, comparing students born just before and after the reform's birthdate eligibility cutoff to students born around the same cutoff in placebo years. Linking multiple administrative registries covering the entire Norwegian population, we find that the reform substantially increased initial enrollment in the vocational track, but with different subsequent outcomes for different groups. More men complete the vocational track at the expense of academic diplomas, but this has no detectable impact on college-going and leads to reduced criminal activity and higher earnings in adulthood, especially among disadvantaged men. For disadvantaged women, the initial surge in vocational enrollment leads to fewer high school dropouts and more vocational degrees with the college-prep supplement, and hence an increase in the share of college-eligible women; however, this translates into only small and insignificant increases in college completion and adult earnings. We show that men overwhelmingly pursue vocational education in higher-paying skilled trade fields, while women almost exclusively pursue vocational education in lower-paying service-based fields, which helps in interpreting some of these results. Overall, the reform succeeded at improving social mobility, particularly among men, but it somewhat exacerbated the gender gap in adult earnings.

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“…In newer research, Dougherty (forthcoming) finds large high school graduation effects from students who are just accepted into career academies in Massachusetts compared with those who just miss the cutoff. Analyses using older cohorts have generally supported the same conclusions (Gustman & Steinmeier, 1982;Kang & Bishop, 1989;Bishop & Mane, 2005). Yet, selection is an issue in evaluating vocational programs and none of these studies use exogenous variation.…”

Section: Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 55%

Vocational and Career Tech Education in American High Schools: The Value of Depth Over Breadth

Kreisman

Stange

2020

Education Finance and Policy

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Vocational education is a large part of the high school curriculum, yet we have little understanding of what drives vocational enrollment or whether these courses help or harm early careers. To address this deficiency, we develop a framework for curriculum choice, taking into account ability and preferences for academic and vocational work. We test model predictions using detailed transcript and earnings information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997). Our results are twofold. First, students positively sort into vocational courses, suggesting that the belief that low-ability students are funneled into vocational coursework is unlikely true. Second, we find higher earnings among students taking more upper-level vocational courses—a nearly 2 percent wage premium for each additional year, yet we find no gain from introductory vocational courses. These results suggest: (1) policies limiting students' ability to take vocational courses may not be welfare-enhancing, and (2) the benefits of vocational coursework accrue to those who focus on depth over breadth.

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Raising academic standards and vocational concentrators: Are they better off or worse off?

Cited by 16 publications

References 10 publications

A Road Map to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries

A Road Map to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries

Improving Educational Pathways to Social Mobility: Evidence from Norway’s “Reform 94”

Vocational and Career Tech Education in American High Schools: The Value of Depth Over Breadth

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