Modeling Enrollment in and Completion of Vocational Education: The Role of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills by Program Type

Leslie Stratton, Nabanita Datta Gupta, David Reimer () and Anders Holm ()
Additional contact information
David Reimer: Aarhus University

No 10741, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study provides evidence of the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive skills to enrollment in and completion of three types of vocational training (VET): education and health, technical, and business. Math and language exam scores constitute the key measures of cognitive skills; teacher-assigned grades the key measure of non-cognitive skills. The data consist of two nine-year panels of youth completing compulsory education in Denmark. Estimation of completion proceeds separately by gender and VET type, controlling for selection and right censoring. The authors find that all skills are inversely related to VET enrollment, results that are robust to family-specific effects. Estimates for completion vary considerably by program type, demonstrating the methodological importance of distinguishing among different VET courses. While math scores are positively related to certification for all VET tracks, language skills are more important for the nontechnical track, and non-cognitive skills appear important only for the business track.

Keywords: vocational education; enrollment; completion; vocational certification; ability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, 2018, 18(4), 1-17.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10741.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Modeling Enrollment in and Completion of Vocational Education: The role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills by program type (2017)
Working Paper: Modeling Enrollment in and Completion of Vocational Education: The Role of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills by Program Type (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10741

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().