THE EMPLOYMENT REWARDS OF ATTENDANCE AT TWO-YEAR COLLEGES BY THE HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 1972: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY.

This study measured annual income, unemployment, job satisfaction, and socioeconomic status of selected respondents to the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) for the period of 1972-1979. Groups chosen for study included those who did not attend college, those who attended a two-year college but did not receive a degree, and those who completed a two-year degree by 1974, two years after high school graduation. The two-year college graduates were further subdivided into those completing academic programs and those who completed vocational programs. Mean comparisons using the two-tailed t-test of the employment indices for each group have been provided for each of the years of the study. Also, both direct and stepwise discriminant analyses have been applied to the 1979 employment data in order to determine the relative contribution of the employment variables to group differentiation. An attempt has been made to control for student background variables (parental socioeconomic status, aptitude, and motivation) in the discriminant analyses. Canonical coefficients of each discriminant function along with the corresponding Wilks Lambda have been provided. There were several important findings in this study. Results indicated that no real income differences existed among the three major education groups, but following graduation, vocational graduates outearned academic graduates in each year of the study. Two-year college attenders and graduates exhibited significantly less unemployment than the nonattenders. Vocational graduates found employment more readily than academic graduates during the first years following graduation. Job satisfaction among the two-year college graduates was generally higher in the areas of working conditions, job security, use of past training, pride and respect received, and in the job as a whole. Job status as measured by the Duncan Socioeconomic Index showed progressively higher status positions held by the respondents with more education. Job status for positions held by vocational and academic graduates yielded no real differences. This study provides evidence for the success of the occupational education function of two-year colleges. Both academic and vocational graduates generally exhibited higher employment returns than those who did not attend college or those who left college before completion of a degree