Labour market consequences of a high school diploma

Mazrekaj, Deni; Witte, Kristof De; Vansteenkiste, Sarah

doi:10.1080/00036846.2018.1543939

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Conversely, findings suggesting that soft skills are of similar predictive validity regardless of education level may warrant reconsideration of our conceptions of high school occupations and employees, as well as the job advertisement practices of high school job employers. This research could be supplemented by studies conducted outside of the United States to better understand employer expectations of high school–educated individuals internationally (e.g., Krahn et al, 2002; Mazrekaj et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employer Expectations of 21st‐Century High School Graduates: Analyzing Online Job Advertisements

Williams¹,

Wang²,

Holtzman³

et al. 2023

ETS Research Report Series

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Individuals with a high school education represent the largest subset of the U.S. workforce. However, little is known about the employer expectations of these individuals, particularly in the area of soft skills—also known as 21st‐century skills. Online job advertisements offer useful data for examining these expectations, as they may supplement employer survey data and reflect actual recruitment practices. Our analysis of 68,505 online job advertisements suggests that employers hold generally lower expectations for the soft skills of high school–educated individuals than they do for postsecondary‐educated individuals. However, employer expectations for two soft skills—professionalism and customer service skills—appear to be substantially higher for high school–educated individuals than for postsecondary‐educated individuals. Additional results highlight similarities and differences within the high school–educated workforce across nine workplace industries. We discuss the implications of these results not only for high school–educated individuals and the organizations that employ them but also for practitioners and educators charged with assessing and providing training for these skills.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employer Expectations of 21st‐Century High School Graduates: Analyzing Online Job Advertisements

Williams¹,

Wang²,

Holtzman³

et al. 2023

ETS Research Report Series

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Nonetheless, most students actually drop out from vocational education (European Commission, 2013). Dickson & Harmon, 2011;Balestra (the region studied in this article), Mazrekaj et al (2019) found that the labour market outcomes of students with and without a diploma differ depending on the education track a student followed in secondary education (general or vocational education). This is because students in vocational education are trained for a specific profession and to perform specific tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…An interesting strand of literature compared the dropout risk and subsequent labour market outcomes of students in general and in vocational education (e.g. Dickson & Harmon, 2011;Balestra (the region studied in this article), Mazrekaj et al (2019) found that the labour market outcomes of students with and without a diploma differ depending on the education track a student followed in secondary education (general or vocational education). Thus, as vocational education students often have different observed and unobserved characteristics than students in other educational tracks (Chankseliani et al, 2016), and as dropout is more multi-dimensional in vocational education, it is unclear whether the results obtained in previous studies for general and pre-university education also hold for vocational education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of modular education on school dropout

Mazrekaj

Witte

2019

British Educational Res J

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Modular education refers to the division of conventional courses into smaller components or modules. Each module enables students to obtain a partial certificate that can be combined into a qualification. This article evaluates whether modular education, which is widely used in secondary and tertiary education, has been effective in reducing school dropout. For this purpose, the study exploits a policy change in the Flemish Community of Belgium, which recently introduced modular education for some programmes. Using a difference-in-differences framework with diverse adoption dates per school, the results indicate that modular education may significantly reduce school dropout by 2.5 percentage points, with the largest effects on foreign origin students. Therefore, modular education is likely to be an effective policy to tackle school dropout and reduce the ethnic attainment gap. Additionally, students enrolled in modular education are more likely to be employed and to incur higher earnings on the labour market.

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“…Much of the discussion on how to best prepare youth for the labour market centres on whether education should be either vocationally or generally oriented (Ryan, 2001;Eichhorst et al, 2015). Research indicates that vocational education, in comparison to general education, is linked to higher earnings, a shorter job search, and better matches between skills and job requirements at the start of the career (Müller and Gangl, 2003;Mazrekaj, De Witte and Vansteenkiste, 2019). These relative advantages, however, do not seem to persist over time (McIntosh, 2006;Brunello and Rocco, 2017;Rözer and Bol, 2019;Neyt, Verhaest and Baert, 2020) and may, at later points in the career, even turn into disadvantages (Forster, Bol and Van de Werfhorst, 2016;Hampf and Woessmann, 2017;Hanushek et al, 2017;Forster and Bol, 2018;Verhaest et al, 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocational education, general education, and on-the-job learning over the life cycle

Tobback

Verhaest

Baert

et al. 2023

European Sociological Review

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We investigate whether vocationally and generally educated individuals differ in their on-the-job learning and how this difference evolves over the career. To this end, we exploit the European Skills and Jobs Survey dataset and rely on instrumental variable estimation. While our descriptive results suggest that workers with a vocational degree experience on average more learning, this conclusion largely changes once endogeneity is taken into account. First, we find that, immediately after graduation, workers with a vocational education are less likely to further improve their skills in their jobs. Second, while this gap in on-the-job learning gradually fades over time, it takes almost a full career to catch up in terms of further on-the-job learning with those with a general degree. Finally, the effects are driven by individuals residing in dual system countries and those with a programme involving workplace learning. We argue that these results are likely explained by a combination of compensating (because vocationally educated obtained their specific skills already during education) and complementary (because general skills lay down a foundation for further learning) effects.

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Labour market consequences of a high school diploma

Cited by 6 publications

References 36 publications

Employer Expectations of 21st‐Century High School Graduates: Analyzing Online Job Advertisements

Employer Expectations of 21st‐Century High School Graduates: Analyzing Online Job Advertisements

The effect of modular education on school dropout

Vocational education, general education, and on-the-job learning over the life cycle

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