We estimate a structural model of education choices in which individuals choose between a professional (or technical) and a general track at both high school and university levels using French panel data (Génération 98). The average per-period utility of attending general high school (about 10,000 euros per year) is 20% higher than that of professional high school (about 8000 euros per year). About 64% of total higher education enrollments are explained by this differential. At the same time, professional high school graduates would earn 5% to 6% more than general high school graduates if they both entered the labor market around age 18. The return to post-high school general education is highly convex (as in the US) and is reaped mostly toward the end of the higher education curriculum. Public policies targeting an increase in professional high school enrollments of 10 percentage points would require a subsidy of 300 euros per year of professional high school.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.