IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21137.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Career Technical Education and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from California Community Colleges

Author

Listed:
  • Ann Huff Stevens
  • Michal Kurlaender
  • Michel Grosz

Abstract

Career technical education (CTE) programs at community colleges are increasingly seen as an attractive alternative to four-year colleges, yet little systematic evidence exists on the returns to specific certificates and degrees. We estimate returns to CTE programs using administrative data from the California Community College system linked to earnings records. We employ estimation approaches including individual fixed effects and individual-specific trends, and find average returns to CTE certificate and degrees that range from 14 to 45 percent. The largest returns are for programs in the healthcare sector; estimated returns in non-health related programs range from 15 to 23 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Ann Huff Stevens & Michal Kurlaender & Michel Grosz, 2015. "Career Technical Education and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from California Community Colleges," NBER Working Papers 21137, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21137
    Note: ED LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21137.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duane E. Leigh & Andrew M. Gill, 1997. "Labor Market Returns to Community Colleges: Evidence for Returning Adults," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(2), pages 334-353.
    2. Christopher Jepsen & Kenneth Troske & Paul Coomes, 2014. "The Labor-Market Returns to Community College Degrees, Diplomas, and Certificates," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 95-121.
    3. Julian R. Betts & Laurel L. McFarland, 1995. "Safe Port in a Storm: The Impact of Labor Market Conditions on Community College Enrollments," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(4), pages 741-765.
    4. Thomas J. Kane & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 1999. "The Community College: Educating Students at the Margin between College and Work," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 63-84, Winter.
    5. Kane, Thomas J & Rouse, Cecilia Elena, 1995. "Labor-Market Returns to Two- and Four-Year College," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 600-614, June.
    6. James J. Heckman & Jeffrey A. Smith, 1999. "The Pre-Program Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Implications for Simple Program Evaluation Strategies," NBER Working Papers 6983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Heckman, James J & Smith, Jeffrey A, 1999. "The Pre-programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(457), pages 313-348, July.
    8. LaLonde, Robert J, 1986. "Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs with Experimental Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 604-620, September.
    9. James E. Rosenbaum & Janet Rosenbaum, 2013. "Beyond BA Blinders: Lessons from Occupational Colleges and Certificate Programs for Nontraditional Students," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(2), pages 153-172, Spring.
    10. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097, Elsevier.
    11. Louis Jacobson & Robert J. Lalonde & Daniel Sullivan, 2005. "The Impact of Community College Retraining on Older Displaced Workers: Should We Teach Old Dogs New Tricks?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 58(3), pages 398-415, April.
    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. Celeste K. Carruthers & Thomas Sanford, 2015. "Way Station or Launching Pad? Unpacking the Returns to Postsecondary Adult Education," Working Papers 2015-02, University of Tennessee, Department of Economics.
    2. Stenberg, Anders & Westerlund, Olle, 2016. "Flexibility at a cost – Should governments stimulate tertiary education for adults?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 69-86.
    3. Stenberg, Anders, 2022. "Does formal education for adults yield long-term multiplier effects or human capital depreciation?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    4. Carruthers, Celeste K. & Sanford, Thomas, 2018. "Way station or launching pad? Unpacking the returns to adult technical education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 146-159.
    5. Stenberg, Anders, 2022. "A Note on Evaluating Formal Education for Adults," Working Paper Series 1/2022, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research, revised 14 Jun 2022.
    6. Regner, Hakan, 2002. "A nonexperimental evaluation of training programs for the unemployed in Sweden," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 187-206, April.
    7. Caliendo, Marco & Mahlstedt, Robert & Mitnik, Oscar A., 2017. "Unobservable, but unimportant? The relevance of usually unobserved variables for the evaluation of labor market policies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 14-25.
    8. Richard Blundell & Monica Costa Dias, 2009. "Alternative Approaches to Evaluation in Empirical Microeconomics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    9. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii & Miana Plesca, 2020. "Occupational mobility and the returns to training," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 174-211, February.
    10. Miguel Angel Malo & Fernando Muñoz-Bullón, 2006. "Employment promotion measures and the quality of the job match for persons with disabilities," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 179(4), pages 79-111, September.
    11. Fredrik Andersson & Harry J. Holzer & Julia I. Lane & David Rosenblum & Jeffrey Smith, 2024. "Does Federally Funded Job Training Work? Nonexperimental Estimates of WIA Training Impacts Using Longitudinal Data on Workers and Firms," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 59(4), pages 1244-1283.
    12. Lechner, Michael & Wunsch, Conny, 2013. "Sensitivity of matching-based program evaluations to the availability of control variables," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 111-121.
    13. Pauline Leung & Zhuan Pei,, 2020. "Further Education During Unemployment," Working Papers 642, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    14. Cellini, Stephanie Riegg & Chaudhary, Latika, 2014. "The labor market returns to a for-profit college education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 125-140.
    15. Jochen Kluve & Hartmut Lehmann & Christoph M. Schmidt, 2000. "Disentangling Treatment Effects of Polish Active Labour Market Policies: Evidence from Matched Samples," CERT Discussion Papers 0007, Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University.
    16. Chang Hyung Lee, 2020. "Minimum Wage Policy and Community College Enrollment Patterns," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 73(1), pages 178-210, January.
    17. Hagen, Tobias, 2016. "Econometric Evaluation of a Placement Coaching Program for Recipients of Disability Insurance Benefits in Switzerland," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145736, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Anders Stenberg & Olle Westerlund, 2015. "The long-term earnings consequences of general vs. specific training of the unemployed," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, December.
    19. Lockwood Reynolds, C., 2012. "Where to attend? Estimating the effects of beginning college at a two-year institution," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 345-362.
    20. Blanden, Jo & Buscha, Franz & Sturgis, Patrick & Urwin, Peter, 2012. "Measuring the earnings returns to lifelong learning in the UK," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 501-514.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:21137. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.