Career Technical Education And Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From California Community Colleges Ann Huff Stevens, Michal Kurlaender, and Michel Grosz (Affiliates in Economics and Education)
Summary:
This paper estimates the earnings returns to vocational, or
career technical, education programs in the nation’s largest
community college system. While career technical education (CTE)
programs have often been mentioned as an attractive alternative
to four-year colleges for some students, very little systematic
evidence exists on the returns to specific vocational
certificates and degrees. Using administrative data covering the
entire California Community College system and linked
administrative earnings records, this study estimates returns to
CTE education. We use rich pre-enrollment earnings data and
estimation approaches including individual fixed effects and
individual trends, and find average returns to CTE certificate
and degrees that range from 12 to 23 percent. The largest returns
are for programs in the healthcare sector; among non-health
related CTE programs estimated returns range from five to ten
percent.
Michal Kurlaender’s work focuses on education policy and
evaluation, particularly practices that address existing
racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequality at various stages of
the educational attainment process.
Michel Grosz is a PhD student in the UC Davis Economics
department. His research focuses on higher education in
California and the impact of the recent recession. Before coming
to Davis he graduated from Pomona College and worked at the Urban
Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy
Center.
