Males and Schooling – Part 3

Another potential solution: vocational programs.

Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution writes in his book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It:

The third major [educational] policy reform I propose is a massive investment in male-friendly vocational education and training. Our educational system is tilted toward the standard academic track, up to and including a 4-year college degree … [M]any people do just fine without a 4-year college degree. In fact, 16% of people with a high school diploma and 28% of those with an associate’s degree make more money across their working life than the median person with a bachelor’s degree, according to a study by Georgetown’s Anthony Carnevale and his coauthors. As they observe, “The simple advice to high school students to ‘go to college’ no longer suffices.” Carnevale says we need more career counselors in high schools, with the skills and information to help students see a range of options. Sometimes the job title is “College and Career Counselor,” but it is usually the former that gets the most attention. (We should strive for more gender balance here too: right now, only one in four guidance counselors is a man.)

Reeves writes that “On average, male students seem to do better with a more ‘hands on’ and practical approach to learning and so benefit most from a more vocational approach.”  (On that note, in one science class I substituted for, I brought in a version of the Periodic Table of Elements that contained small pieces of all the elements themselves -- excluding the radioactive ones of course.  The boys especially seemed intrigued to see exactly what each element looked like in reality, as opposed to the abstract symbols they were used to seeing on paper copies of the periodic table.)  As Reeves continues:

[T]here has been a precipitous decline in career and technical education (CTE) in American schools, a result of the go-to-college obsession and a residual fear of “tracking” some students away from more academic classes. Between 1992 and 2013 (the last year for which data are available), the number of CTE credits earned by U.S. high school students dropped by 17% … High school curricula need more “hands-on” elements. This does not mean sending all the boys into shop class to learn a trade while the girls polish their college application essays. But it does mean incorporating more practical and more vocational elements (i.e., CTE) into the general curriculum, and especially creating more stand-alone technical schools. The broader goal here is more of what philosopher Joseph Fishkin calls “opportunity pluralism.” Rather than a single narrow path in what he calls a “unitary opportunity structure,” there should be many different routes to success. … A second study examined the impact of a statewide system of sixteen CTE schools in Connecticut, which collectively educate around 11,000 students, 7% of those in the school system. Male students at these schools had a graduation rate 10 percentage points higher than in traditional schools, and their wages were 33–35% higher by the age of 23. Again, there were no apparent gains for female students … By my estimates, there are currently around 1,600 technical high schools in the country, accounting for about 7% of all public high schools. These are clustered in larger urban or suburban school districts in the Northeast. Overall, only 12% of school districts have a CTE school. We should aim to add at least 1,000 new technical high schools across the nation by 2030.

Reeves points out that “These new schools would of course be open to boys and girls,” while also noting that “There is also more widespread gender bias among employers against hiring men into predominantly female jobs than the other way around, as a 2019 study by Jill Yavorsky finds.”

Vocational training could also go a long way toward increasing male labor force participation rates.  As Paul Winfree and Rachel Greszler write in the Wall Street Journal:

An accurate diagnosis of what is affecting the labor market requires careful attention to chronic and acute problems. One chronic problem is that the share of adults working or looking for work has been generally falling for the past 20 years. Most of this decline has been driven by baby boomers’ entering retirement, but that doesn’t explain it all. Another significant factor is that men of prime working age, 25 to 54, are less likely to work today than those of previous generations … We estimate that the entirety of our current employment gap is driven by people without children under 18 at home and most predominantly by young adults [especially men]. While total employment is down 0.28% since the start of the pandemic, employment among 20- to 24-year-olds is down 3.7%.  It’s not that they’re in school. College enrollment has also fallen significantly. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment fell in the last year by about 5% for 18- to 24-year-olds, with the highest decreases in community-college enrollment.

Right now, only the private sector is taking the lead in addressing the lack of vocational training programs:

Employers are addressing gaps by investing in practical workforce education. When Mazda Toyota Manufacturing established a plant in Huntsville, Ala., the company educated thousands of new workers in advanced automotive manufacturing. Bank of America has a career development program called Pathways. Tech companies such as Google, Amazon and IBM have created their own certificate and training programs for employees to acquire high-demand skills. Apprenticeships have also proved a successful alternative. A 2017 study from researchers at Burning Glass Technologies and Harvard Business School estimated the “true scope or potential for apprenticeships in the U.S.” They found that the number of occupations commonly filled through these programs could nearly triple (to 74 from 27); the number of job openings filled could expand eightfold (to 3.2 million) and the occupations ripe for apprenticeship expansion would offer 20% higher wages than traditional apprenticeship occupations. The Trump administration recognized this potential and in March 2017 initiated Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs, which created a new pathway for more flexible, industry-driven alternatives. This quickly led to more than 130 new apprenticeship programs predominantly in high-demand fields with worker shortages, such as nursing. Shortly after coming into office, however, President Biden canceled the initiative and directed the Labor Department to revert to the government-monopoly apprenticeship model that has failed to expand beyond male-dominated manual-labor trades.

Probably some of the best hands-on vocational training occurs in the military, and research shows that type of training helps everyone increase earnings, but especially black servicemembers.  As researchers writing in the Quarterly Journal of Economic in November, 2022, found:

Since the beginning of the all-volunteer era, millions of young Americans have chosen to enlist in the military. These volunteers disproportionately come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and while some aspects of military service are likely to be beneficial, exposure to violence and other elements of service could worsen outcomes. This article links the universe of army applicants between 1990 and 2011 to their federal tax records and other administrative data and uses two eligibility thresholds in the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) in a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of army enlistment on earnings and related outcomes. In the 19 years following application, army service increases average annual earnings by over $4,000 at both cutoffs. However, whether service increases long-run earnings varies significantly by race. Black servicemembers experience annual gains of $5,500 to $15,000 11–19 years after applying while white servicemembers do not experience significant changes. By providing Black servicemembers a stable and well-paying army job and by opening doors to higher-paid postservice employment, the army significantly closes the Black-white earnings gap in our sample.

This concludes this series of essays on males and schooling.

Links to all essays in this series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.