Investigating the Relationship Between Career and Technical Education High School Course-Taking and Early Job Outcomes

This study examined how high school course-taking patterns (i.e., career and technical education [CTE] vs. academic vs. no concentration), personal characteristics embedded in a social cognitive theory framework (e.g., self-efficacy, academic expectations), and contextual variables (e.g., parental expectations, socioeconomic status [SES]) interact with each other in the prediction of students' income and job satisfaction 8 years after graduating from high school. Using a nationally representative data set (the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002), we found significant differences by sex and course-taking pattern in the prediction of income: Among men, CTE concentrators had the highest income, whereas among women, academic concentrators reported the greatest earnings. We observed similar levels of job satisfaction among academic and CTE concentrators. We also found that SES significantly moderated the effect of English self-efficacy and academic expectations in the prediction of income and general effort in the prediction of job satisfaction. Our findings highlight how a social cognitive framework can be used to investigate the links between high school course-taking, personal and contextual factors, and job outcomes. They additionally suggest the need to consider a broader set of outcomes for evaluating the benefits of CTE participation.