IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/corirl/98-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trends in the Payoff to Academic and Occupation-Specific Skills: The Short and Midium Run Returns to Academic and Vocational High School Courses for Non-College Bound Students

Author

Listed:
  • Mane, F.

Abstract

Using data from three longitudinal surveys of American high school students, I show that vocational courses helped non-college-bound-students to start their work life more successfully, in terms of steadier employment, higher wages and higher earnings. A comparison of the returns to academic and vocational course work for non-college bound students who graduated in 1972, 1980 and 1992 finds that the short and medium term payoffs to vocational courses rose substantially between 1972 and 1980 and remained high in 1992. Holding past and present school attendance and a host of other variables constant, academic course work in high school had much smaller labor market payoffs than vocational course work. These findings contradict the oft repeated claim that employers now seek workers with a good general education and are happy to teach the occupation specific skills necessary to do the job. Instead, they imply that the payoff to the occupation specific skills developed in schools has risen along with the payoff to generic academic skills.

Suggested Citation

  • Mane, F., 1998. "Trends in the Payoff to Academic and Occupation-Specific Skills: The Short and Midium Run Returns to Academic and Vocational High School Courses for Non-College Bound Students," Papers 98-07, Cornell - Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.
  • Handle: RePEc:fth:corirl:98-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kang, Suk & Bishop, John, 1989. "Vocational and academic education in high school: Complements or substitutes?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 133-148, April.
    2. John H. Bishop, 1996. "Is the market for college graduates headed for a bust? Demand and supply responses to rising college wage premiums," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 115-138.
    3. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas L. Steinmeier, 1982. "The Relation between Vocational Training in High School and Economic Outcomes," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 36(1), pages 73-87, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meer, Jonathan, 2007. "Evidence on the returns to secondary vocational education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 559-573, October.
    2. Daniel Kreisman & Kevin Stange, 2020. "Vocational and Career Tech Education in American High Schools: The Value of Depth Over Breadth," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(1), pages 11-44, Winter.
    3. Groot, Wim, 1995. "Type specific returns to enterprise-related training," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 323-333, December.
    4. Mona Said & Fatma El-Hamidi, 2008. "Taking Technical Education Seriously in MENA: Determinants, Labor Market Implications and Policy Lessons," Working Papers 450, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2008.
    5. Hall, Caroline, 2013. "Does more general education reduce the risk of future unemployment? Evidence from labor market experiences during the Great Recession," Working Paper Series 2013:17, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    6. Polidano, Cain & Tabasso, Domenico, 2014. "Making it real: The benefits of workplace learning in upper-secondary vocational education and training courses," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 130-146.
    7. Hall, Caroline, 2016. "Does more general education reduce the risk of future unemployment? Evidence from an expansion of vocational upper secondary education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 251-271.
    8. Heijke, Hans & Meng, Christoph & Ris, Catherine, 2003. "Fitting to the job: the role of generic and vocational competencies in adjustment and performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 215-229, April.
    9. Hans Heijke & Christoph Meng & Ger Ramaekers, 2003. "An investigation into the role of human capital competences and their pay‐off," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 24(7), pages 750-773, November.
    10. Light, Audrey, 1999. "High school employment, high school curriculum, and post-school wages," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 291-309, June.
    11. Heijke,Hans & Meng,Christoph & Ramaekers,Ger, 2003. "An investigation into the role of human capital competences and their pay-off," ROA Research Memorandum 001, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    12. Yolanda Kodrzycki, 1997. "Training programs for displaced workers: what do they accomplish?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 39-57.
    13. Miller, Luke C. & Mittleman, Joel, 2012. "High Schools That Work and college preparedness: Measuring the model's impact on mathematics and science pipeline progression," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1116-1135.
    14. Polidano, Cain & Tabasso, Domenico, 2013. "Making It Real: The Benefits of Workplace Learning in Upper-Secondary VET Courses," IZA Discussion Papers 7633, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Biesma, R.G. & Pavlova, M. & van Merode, G.G. & Groot, W., 2007. "Using conjoint analysis to estimate employers preferences for key competencies of master level Dutch graduates entering the public health field," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 375-386, June.
    16. Iñaki Iriondo & Teodosio Pérez-Amaral, 2013. "The Effect of Educational Mismatch on Wages Using European Panel Data," Working Papers 700, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    17. John Bishop, 1998. "Occupation-Specific Versus General Education and Training," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 559(1), pages 24-38, September.
    18. Polidano, Cain & Tabasso, Domenico, 2016. "Fully integrating upper-secondary vocational and academic courses: A flexible new way?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 117-131.
    19. Verhaest, Dieter & Omey, Eddy, 2009. "The relation between formal education and skill acquisition in young workers first job," Working Papers 2009/07, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    20. Martin HUMBURG & Andries de GRIP & Rolf van der VELDEN, 2017. "Which skills protect graduates against a slack labour market?," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 156(1), pages 25-43, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    EDUCATION;

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fth:corirl:98-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.