[HN Gopher] Access to vocational education can boost income over...
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Access to vocational education can boost income over the long term
Author : nabla9
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-01-31 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (voxeu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (voxeu.org)
| hintymad wrote:
| 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.
| jcims wrote:
| 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]
| Leparamour wrote:
| >building a system for serious life-long learning
|
| May I ask, what your personal learning system looks like?
| hintymad wrote:
| 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
| diN0bot wrote:
| 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.
| hintymad wrote:
| > 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.
| scottLobster wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > why not study both
|
| Because time and energy are finite.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| 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.
| jseliger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I guess manipulating abstract terms is not natural to many
| people. It's probably a coincidence that only Europeans
| developed our modern formal systems, while all the other
| civilization happily chugged along without such formal systems.
|
| Unfortunately, it is usually those who can think in abstraction
| can go along way in STEM fields.
| bijant wrote:
| The Idea that modern formal systems are a European Invention
| is a common misconception, but nevertheless wrong. Depending
| on your definition of "modern formal systems" they were
| either first invented by the Babylonians, in India or in
| China but most certainly not in Europe, which at the time was
| at a much earlier state of development.
| hintymad wrote:
| I meant the systematic thinking of axioms, theorems, and
| logical systems like syllogism. I don't know about other
| countries, but I'm pretty sure India or China didn't
| develop rigorous systems line Greeks and Arabics. They
| developed a lot of techniques, for sure, like how to solve
| equation systems, but certainly not generalizations like
| axioms-theorems-proofs
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| Politely, what are you talking about? Indian logic is
| considered one of the three original traditions of logic
| and has sources in 650 BCE.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Algebra was an Arabic inventions.
| hintymad wrote:
| Yeah, Arabic too. My bad. I was thinking about Greeks, and
| Khwarizmi wrote his algebra book al-jibr in medieval times
| circa AD 700 or 800. So I assumed that Arabic carried the
| heritage of Greeks before the Renaissance.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| 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.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| 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.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| 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
| pacbard wrote:
| 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.
| Pamar wrote:
| I suppose it might be relevant to cite this
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280379
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