Search Results
Title: Pathways to Educational Attainment and their Effect on Early Career Development
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Scott, Marc A. Bernhardt, Annette |
|
Pathways to Educational Attainment and their Effect on Early Career Development NCRVE Publication MDS-1296. Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California - Berkeley, November 1999. Also: http://136.165.122.102/UserFiles/File/mdspubs/mds1296.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men Publisher: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California, Berkeley Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Educational Returns; High School Completion/Graduates; High School Dropouts; Mobility; Wage Growth; Wages, Youth Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. We begin this report by comparing long-term wage growth-a measure of upward mobility-for two cohorts of young white men. These men entered the labor market during very different economic periods, with the original cohort entering in the late 1960s, at the tail of the post-World War II economic boom, and the recent cohort entering in the early 1980s after the onset of economic restructuring. We find that long-term wage growth between the ages of 16 and 36 has both declined and become significantly more unequal for the recent cohort. The declines have been concentrated among less educated workers (i.e., high school dropouts and high school graduates). Also worrisome are our findings for workers with sub-baccalaureate degrees or only some college experience. While these workers have a clear advantage over high school graduates in terms of wage growth, that advantage has not increased noticeably in recent years. By contrast, young adults with a bachelor's degree or higher have seen increases in their wage growth. The rising demand for education and skill in the new labor market has apparently benefited only those with four-year college degrees. It has not trickled down to improve the wage growth of those with some college experience or associate's degrees. Education is not the whole story, however, as we find rising inequality in wage growth within all education groups. Thus, there has been a dramatic reduction in mobility opportunities for less-educated young men, but even among the well-educated, there are now many more extreme winners and losers. Educational credentials no longer ensure success with the certainty that they once did. These trends raise a difficult challenge to public policies aimed at improving the living standards and upward mobility of American workers...The question is whether these emerging pathways have paid off. Descriptive evidence suggests that they have been beneficial for some workers but not for others. In particular, there has been a det erioration in wage growth when interrupting and then returning to school-especially among those with only some college experience or with associate's degrees. It also appears that the new pathways are generating more polar and unequal wage outcomes in recent years, especially those involving interruptions to schooling. |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Scott, Marc A. and Annette Bernhardt. Pathways to Educational Attainment and their Effect on Early Career Development. NCRVE Publication MDS-1296. Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California - Berkeley, November 1999.. |