Access to vocational education can boost income over the long term(voxeu.org)
voxeu.org
Access to vocational education can boost income over the long term
https://voxeu.org/article/access-vocational-education-can-boost-income-over-long-term
31 comments
It also increases societal well being. The more people are trained to keep things running, fixed, and improved upon, the better.
I suppose it might be relevant to cite this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280379
For engineers, I’d say building a system for serious life-long learning will boost income over the long term. Vocational education or not is not essential.
>building a system for serious life-long learning
May I ask, what your personal learning system looks like?
May I ask, what your personal learning system looks like?
Mine is really simple: 1. favor fundamentals over specific technologies; 2. Study model systems; 3. Make work fun by always diving deep and pushing further; 4. Study regularly
For instance, study relational algebra instead of Hibernate In Action; study Jim Gray instead of Mastering MongoDB, study probability and papers instead of Keras in 21 Days. You get the idea
For instance, study relational algebra instead of Hibernate In Action; study Jim Gray instead of Mastering MongoDB, study probability and papers instead of Keras in 21 Days. You get the idea
why not study both? or rather, encourage people to balance their diet according to their specific situation. learning two types of tools sharpens them both. in the case of design/implementation, it provides both short-term and long-term utility and enjoyment.
for some people, that means learning an actual database and building something rather than consuming more information. for other people, that means learning more computer science concepts and meta knowledge/skills.
cynically, i agree that fundamentals seem to be increasingly on shorter and shorter supply... but i suspect it's a wide world, and that what we're actually seeing is a WIIIIIIIDE spectrum of jobs (and interests!) all called "Software Engineer".
besides, people can think for themselves -- that's the point of learning fundamentals (meta-concepts and thinking skills).
the exact diet someone needs depends on where they are at currently, both technically and financially, and where they want to be.
PS - the main article is about apprenticeships, which serve a way more important function than learning: getting a foot into the job market. for many engineers without work experience, they're not even getting a chance to interview without first getting a network and proven track record.
for some people, that means learning an actual database and building something rather than consuming more information. for other people, that means learning more computer science concepts and meta knowledge/skills.
cynically, i agree that fundamentals seem to be increasingly on shorter and shorter supply... but i suspect it's a wide world, and that what we're actually seeing is a WIIIIIIIDE spectrum of jobs (and interests!) all called "Software Engineer".
besides, people can think for themselves -- that's the point of learning fundamentals (meta-concepts and thinking skills).
the exact diet someone needs depends on where they are at currently, both technically and financially, and where they want to be.
PS - the main article is about apprenticeships, which serve a way more important function than learning: getting a foot into the job market. for many engineers without work experience, they're not even getting a chance to interview without first getting a network and proven track record.
> why not study both
Because no need. Technologies come and go all the time. They can be learned on the job anyway. With the right mental models that we developed by studying fundamentals, we get to pick up specific technologies quickly too. Studying in our spare time is an investment, so we need to treat our time as the most precious resource.
Because no need. Technologies come and go all the time. They can be learned on the job anyway. With the right mental models that we developed by studying fundamentals, we get to pick up specific technologies quickly too. Studying in our spare time is an investment, so we need to treat our time as the most precious resource.
I'd say applying said fundamentals is absolutely essential to fully learning them for engineers, and that requires specific technologies, particularly if you're doing anything with hardware. Sooner or later you have to pick a micro-controller and read the data sheets, learn all the vendor tools that come with it, experiment with open source options, etc.
It also depends on your objectives. Are you studying for fun/general improvement or are you angling for a particular job/vocation? If the latter you better be using the tools the job is likely to require.
Not disagreeing that fundamentals are important, they're vital. But I wouldn't say there's "no need" to study specific technologies. You'll never be competitive if all you do is train fundamentals with no applications or objectives. And not all employers are willing to let a new hire "learn on the job". Also technologies do not "come and go all the time" outside of webDev. My knowledge of c++ and Java from 17 years ago serves me well to this day.
It also depends on your objectives. Are you studying for fun/general improvement or are you angling for a particular job/vocation? If the latter you better be using the tools the job is likely to require.
Not disagreeing that fundamentals are important, they're vital. But I wouldn't say there's "no need" to study specific technologies. You'll never be competitive if all you do is train fundamentals with no applications or objectives. And not all employers are willing to let a new hire "learn on the job". Also technologies do not "come and go all the time" outside of webDev. My knowledge of c++ and Java from 17 years ago serves me well to this day.
Sure thing. That's why I didn't say studying only fundamentals but "favor fundamentals" and "dive deep in work" and "study model systems". Fundamentals and specific technologies should balance out. I just favor fundamentals in my spare time as they pay more dividend. It may not work for other people, and I don't even know if it works best for myself. It makes me happy, though, which is enough reason to keep me going.
[deleted]
> why not study both
Because time and energy are finite.
Because time and energy are finite.
I would say that's for everybody. The cycle time of modern technological epochs is, in many cases, much shorter than the vocational lifespan of an individual, and the gap appears to be widening.
[deleted]
A nice fuzzy RD design! The interpretation of their results, though, is difficult because the counterfactual is not very clear to me.
They are using admission score cutoffs to oversubscribed vocational schools. The intuition here is that people who score right below and right above the admission cutoff did so because of randomness, therefore their setup approximates a random assignment experiment at the cutoff.
For the results to be interpretable, we need to think through the counterfactual. That is, what happens to the students who score below the cutoff and that are not admitted to those over-subscribed vocational schools? Do they complete a general education degree at another school? Do they attend another non-over-subscribed vocational school? Do they drop out of school altogether?
I am curios about reduced form estimates of the gap (i.e., without the 2-stage estimates). I wonder how much of the $2000 could be explained by more experience on the job for people who complete a vocational track rather than a general education track+university. In that, I wonder how much of a delay entry to the job market could explain the returns of vocational education.
Another thing that I am wondering about is how elastic to education/credentials is the Finnish labor market. That is, how responsive are wages to credentials/higher education degrees. I hope that the actual articles/publication includes a description of this because it will be important for external validity of these results beyond that specific national market. For example, in the United States, there is a big wage gap between professional degrees (e.g., medical doctor, ~$120.000 year) and vocational degrees (e.g., welder, ~$40.000 year). I wonder if the same large gap in wages is present in the Finland. If that is not the case, I wonder how much these results would apply to other non-Finnish job markets.
I'm also not sure if I buy the authors' claim that "The regression discontinuity design estimates come from the middle of the distribution of academic ability. However, the benefits may be even larger for people with low compulsory-school GPAs who only apply to the vocational track, while vocational education may be detrimental for people with high GPAs who apply only to the general track." This feels like a misrepresentation of the RD estimate. They only estimate the effect for people who score right around the cutoff. They cannot really extrapolate the effects beyond a small bandwidth around that cutoff. They are really overselling their results when they discuss people away from their cutoff and just guessing what would happen to people at other parts of the distribution.
They are using admission score cutoffs to oversubscribed vocational schools. The intuition here is that people who score right below and right above the admission cutoff did so because of randomness, therefore their setup approximates a random assignment experiment at the cutoff.
For the results to be interpretable, we need to think through the counterfactual. That is, what happens to the students who score below the cutoff and that are not admitted to those over-subscribed vocational schools? Do they complete a general education degree at another school? Do they attend another non-over-subscribed vocational school? Do they drop out of school altogether?
I am curios about reduced form estimates of the gap (i.e., without the 2-stage estimates). I wonder how much of the $2000 could be explained by more experience on the job for people who complete a vocational track rather than a general education track+university. In that, I wonder how much of a delay entry to the job market could explain the returns of vocational education.
Another thing that I am wondering about is how elastic to education/credentials is the Finnish labor market. That is, how responsive are wages to credentials/higher education degrees. I hope that the actual articles/publication includes a description of this because it will be important for external validity of these results beyond that specific national market. For example, in the United States, there is a big wage gap between professional degrees (e.g., medical doctor, ~$120.000 year) and vocational degrees (e.g., welder, ~$40.000 year). I wonder if the same large gap in wages is present in the Finland. If that is not the case, I wonder how much these results would apply to other non-Finnish job markets.
I'm also not sure if I buy the authors' claim that "The regression discontinuity design estimates come from the middle of the distribution of academic ability. However, the benefits may be even larger for people with low compulsory-school GPAs who only apply to the vocational track, while vocational education may be detrimental for people with high GPAs who apply only to the general track." This feels like a misrepresentation of the RD estimate. They only estimate the effect for people who score right around the cutoff. They cannot really extrapolate the effects beyond a small bandwidth around that cutoff. They are really overselling their results when they discuss people away from their cutoff and just guessing what would happen to people at other parts of the distribution.
I like a data driven approach to education and view vocational education choices as an important part of the larger conversation for school choice and education reform that needs to happen in K-12 in the US. But I feel like this particular article/research may need to be performed in a more multivariate manner to be truly useful, although it does highlight the directions these explorations might take.
For example, consider this:
> Studies in the Netherlands and Sweden which look at vocational-education reforms that increased the general content in the vocational track find no benefits of additional general content on labour-market outcomes (Oosterbeek and Webbink 2007, Hall 2016).
OK, so if general content doesn’t add value to labour-market outcomes what can we say about the general content requirements that permeate about universities? They too are likely not useful.
But to discuss university education more precisely we would need to break it down from monolithic characterizations like “here are the university outcomes” to a per-degree basis. For example, is it that general education is valuable or simply that university degrees like computer science are valuable despite the deadweight of general education requirements?
Another point that needs dedicated exploration:
> In Norway, Bertrand et al. (2019) find that a similar reform also increased selection into the vocational track and thereby led to improved earnings for those induced into vocational education.
This makes sense - you try to make the vocational education more comprehensive or challenging, and you end up getting a more selective stream of students who would be more successful no matter how they were educated or certified. So isn’t that also true of universities? They’re simply the beneficiaries of a competitive system that gives them access to the highest performers, which then makes it look like a university education has value when it is really just the result of a selection advantage.
For example, consider this:
> Studies in the Netherlands and Sweden which look at vocational-education reforms that increased the general content in the vocational track find no benefits of additional general content on labour-market outcomes (Oosterbeek and Webbink 2007, Hall 2016).
OK, so if general content doesn’t add value to labour-market outcomes what can we say about the general content requirements that permeate about universities? They too are likely not useful.
But to discuss university education more precisely we would need to break it down from monolithic characterizations like “here are the university outcomes” to a per-degree basis. For example, is it that general education is valuable or simply that university degrees like computer science are valuable despite the deadweight of general education requirements?
Another point that needs dedicated exploration:
> In Norway, Bertrand et al. (2019) find that a similar reform also increased selection into the vocational track and thereby led to improved earnings for those induced into vocational education.
This makes sense - you try to make the vocational education more comprehensive or challenging, and you end up getting a more selective stream of students who would be more successful no matter how they were educated or certified. So isn’t that also true of universities? They’re simply the beneficiaries of a competitive system that gives them access to the highest performers, which then makes it look like a university education has value when it is really just the result of a selection advantage.
Haven't read the Netherlands/Sweden paper, but my first thought is that if their vocational education was already good and widely used, it could be the case that additional general content wasn't helpful, but that might be very different in a different country. In the U.S. I get the impression we have let our secondary vocational education programs kind of die on the vine, although community colleges have stepped into the gap in some cases. So I think we were starting from a poorer position than most of Europe, in regards vocational education.
Matches my experiences in terms of teaching college undergrads: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boos..., many of whom don't want to be in school and aren't interested in abstract symbol manipulation.
hintymad(2)
not a directly related question but still i think relevant because education.
how is the current system of higher education "justified" for the "masses" of students and not the cream toppers. i am specfically talking about india because that is what i can talk about. if your country is similar/dissimilar that would be great to know.
in india, its generally accepted that all students study till higher seconday, ie age of 18. there are enough schools and higher secondary schools/colleges to reach there. just so you know, age 16 is "matriculation", then 11th and 12th as "higher secondary". then comes colleges and stuff.
what i am interested in is the "competitive exams" that happen right after this 12th, if you want to be a doctor, you have to qualify an exam, "NEET" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eligibility_cum_Entra...
in 2020, 1,597,435 students registered for an exam, all india for a grand total of 66000 seats in all indian medical colleges. Now, many students do go to foreign universities for studies but thats irrelevant.
my question is, if 1.5 Million "medical" students are studying for 66000 seats only, what about 1.4 million students? they wont be getting their place so they need to look elsewhere.
same for engineering and other courses.
yes many join regular colleges for degree courses, 3 year or 5 year or likes or many go into higher education like PHD and stuff but the core problem is every year millions are being taught medicine which is supposed to primary education for their lifelong professional career but many will simply not be able to achieve that.
what about these students?
edit: right after you pass your "matriculation" you are supposed to decide your subjects, "medical", "non medical", "commerce" and "arts"
medical is medicine. non medical is engineering commerce is just that, arts is humanities.
how is the current system of higher education "justified" for the "masses" of students and not the cream toppers. i am specfically talking about india because that is what i can talk about. if your country is similar/dissimilar that would be great to know.
in india, its generally accepted that all students study till higher seconday, ie age of 18. there are enough schools and higher secondary schools/colleges to reach there. just so you know, age 16 is "matriculation", then 11th and 12th as "higher secondary". then comes colleges and stuff.
what i am interested in is the "competitive exams" that happen right after this 12th, if you want to be a doctor, you have to qualify an exam, "NEET" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eligibility_cum_Entra...
in 2020, 1,597,435 students registered for an exam, all india for a grand total of 66000 seats in all indian medical colleges. Now, many students do go to foreign universities for studies but thats irrelevant.
my question is, if 1.5 Million "medical" students are studying for 66000 seats only, what about 1.4 million students? they wont be getting their place so they need to look elsewhere.
same for engineering and other courses.
yes many join regular colleges for degree courses, 3 year or 5 year or likes or many go into higher education like PHD and stuff but the core problem is every year millions are being taught medicine which is supposed to primary education for their lifelong professional career but many will simply not be able to achieve that.
what about these students?
edit: right after you pass your "matriculation" you are supposed to decide your subjects, "medical", "non medical", "commerce" and "arts"
medical is medicine. non medical is engineering commerce is just that, arts is humanities.
The background is that US secondary education is lousy. THere's some background in this essay from a Russian mathematician teaching at a regional institution in Texas: http://michel.delord.free.fr/toom_w.pdf
Students aren't going up to college to become physicians, they are there to learn basic literacy skills to become employable. The failure rate for nursing school aspirants in introductory chemistry at my institution in Alabama is 70 %. It is that bad.
Students aren't going up to college to become physicians, they are there to learn basic literacy skills to become employable. The failure rate for nursing school aspirants in introductory chemistry at my institution in Alabama is 70 %. It is that bad.
https://i.redd.it/djb581wsmle61.jpg
this was shared on india subreddit yesterday. i failed to mention this in the above post, right after you pass your "matriculation" you are supposed to decide your subjects, "medical", "non medical", "commerce" and "arts"
medical is medicine. non medical is engineering commerce is just that, arts is humanities.
just 4 groups of subjects and a students is expected to study just that "section" but a couple of years later finds out he/she was unable to get a "seat" so "college" it is. there graduating from there, just pillar to post for job or if their parents have cash, they are sent for further studies in foreign countries.
>they are there to learn basic literacy skills to become employable.
i employ commerce graduates in my office. the level of grasp they have on the subjects they are supposed to have studied in 3 years of their course is not enough to get them an intern level job. either the colleges are doing a crap job of teaching them or there is something wrong with what is being taught
this was shared on india subreddit yesterday. i failed to mention this in the above post, right after you pass your "matriculation" you are supposed to decide your subjects, "medical", "non medical", "commerce" and "arts"
medical is medicine. non medical is engineering commerce is just that, arts is humanities.
just 4 groups of subjects and a students is expected to study just that "section" but a couple of years later finds out he/she was unable to get a "seat" so "college" it is. there graduating from there, just pillar to post for job or if their parents have cash, they are sent for further studies in foreign countries.
>they are there to learn basic literacy skills to become employable.
i employ commerce graduates in my office. the level of grasp they have on the subjects they are supposed to have studied in 3 years of their course is not enough to get them an intern level job. either the colleges are doing a crap job of teaching them or there is something wrong with what is being taught
> how is the current system of higher education "justified" for the "masses" of students and not the cream toppers.
It’s a massive wasteful signaling arms race that all would be better off without. See Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education for much greater depth and a focus on the US but the same conclusion.
On another note I suggest you add capitalization to your general writing.
It’s a massive wasteful signaling arms race that all would be better off without. See Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education for much greater depth and a focus on the US but the same conclusion.
On another note I suggest you add capitalization to your general writing.
Apparently it's not too common in the States, but our vocational school held tours for local students in the last years of primary school, and they had solid job placement rates for various trade fields. They also did summer programs for local kids.
The article points out that average income/employment outcomes are a bit lower for vocational students, but I like that they try to control for that by looking at things like admissions data.
IME there really is a certain sort of high-scool student who, compared to 4 years of classes, will get a lot more out of guided access to something like a garage, bakery, daycare, machine shop, etc. The vocational school still taught ordinary classes, but on a part-time basis with the student's concentration.
Plus, adventurous locals could sometimes get cheap services. Want to have some fun? Tell your passengers that your car's oil was just changed by a 16-year-old student, while you're on the highway.