http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
study of the impact of vocational education on income, employment and attrition in selected school districts in Texas
This dissertation measures the impact of selected vocational education programs on wages, unemployment rates and drop-out rates of high school students from a sample of Texas school district. In addition, these wage and unemployment rates are translated into sales tax revenues and welfare payment savings for the state and these benefits are compared to the differential cost of the vocational education programs. While this dissertation does not comprise a complete cost-- benefit study of vocational education, it does constitute a departure point for such studies and addresses the data and methodology problems of such. The analysis contained in this dissertation provides substantial evidence that, in general, vocational education program completers experience wage rates which are higher than and unemployment rates which are lower than those experienced by their non-vocationally trained counterparts. In addition, vocational education students exhibit drop-out rates that are lower than those exhibited by "academic" students. But, on the whole, these benefits arising from vocational education programs, measured one year after the students completed high school, are insufficient to offset the differential costs of these programs. This dissertation concludes with a list of possible future studies and suggestion for the methodology of such studies.