High School Vocational Education and the Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: Tracking Through the Life Course of Education

Abstract

Objective
In previous decades, Career and Technical Education (CTE) was meant to prepare students to enter the workforce immediately following high school. Today, students are encouraged to continue their education and pursue a college degree. What is the role of CTE in the new college-for-all era? Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we analyze which students, if any, benefit from taking CTE courses in high school.

Theoretical Framework
In the 1990s, college-for-all became American educational policy, and the Perkins Act mandated that CTE (then vocational education) increase its academic goals. Bishop & Mane (2004) and Kemple (2008) found a positive impact on earnings for students in career-related tracks, and that career courses reduced dropout rates of high-risk students—especially males. However, increased emphasis on college-for-all has created uncertainty about CTE’s purpose. Meanwhile, occupational associate degrees and certificates have new found value, but how they interact with CTE is unclear. This paper examines whether CTE is related to earnings outcomes for young adults with varying educational credentials, including sub-BAs and students with some college but no degree, categories neglected by prior research.

Methods
Using ELS:2002, we analyze two earnings outcomes for two levels of CTE course-taking. We examine “concentrators”—students who take three or more CTE courses in one occupational track—and “dabblers”—students who take three or more CTE courses in varying occupational tracks (Aliaga et al. 2012), contrasted with students who take only one CTE course (as most students (95%) do).
Following convention, we analyze the natural log of earnings rather than raw earnings in OLS linear regressions. We also use logistic regressions to examine above-median earners. Both regressions examine how CTE is related to earnings, after controls (see Table). Following Kemple’s (2008) findings, we separate male and female students.

Results
Like Kemple (2008), we find significant results for males, but not females (not shown). Because there are many reasons this could be, we will analyze female students in a future paper. In the total sample, compared with students who take only one CTE course, dabblers and concentrators are significantly more likely to have higher earnings and to have above-median earnings.
For students with only high school diplomas, dabblers (but not concentrators) had higher earnings and both were more likely to have above-median earnings.
For those with some college (“college dropouts”), we find that concentrators have higher earnings (p<0.05) and above-median earnings (p<0.1, not quite significant).
For sub-BA degrees, both dabblers (p<0.05) and concentrators (p<0.1) are more likely to have above-median earnings, but natural log of earnings is not significant.

Significance
We find that high school graduates (and perhaps sub-BA graduates and students who drop out of college) are more likely to get above-median earnings if they are CTE concentrators. Because some findings are not quite significant, we urge caution, and we plan further analyses. However, even eight years after high school, CTE can serve as a back-up option, and may provide earnings benefits for high school and sub-BA graduates.

Authors

• Alexis Gable, Northwestern University

• Lynn Meissner, Northwestern University

• Caitlin Ahearn, Northwestern University

• James E. Rosenbaum, Northwestern University