Blue-Collar Training in High School Leaves Women Behind

AUSTIN, Texas - Vocational training without a strong college-preparatory focus in blue-collar community high schools led some millennials to face wider gender employment and wage gaps than their peers, according to sociologists at The University of Texas at Austin. Education leaders have clashed over how to prepare high schoolers for jobs in the 21st century, debating whether high school curricula should focus more on college preparation or vocational training, especially training linked to blue-collar jobs. In a study published in the American Sociological Review , researchers considered whether high school graduates in blue-collar communities - those in the top 25 percentile in the research sample for the number of blue-collar laborers - benefit from an emphasis on vocational training in high school. The study showed that blue-collar training without a strong college-preparatory curriculum leads to blue-collar job opportunities for men but penalizes women, who end up earning 78 cents to a man's dollar. 'This has been a real blind spot in the public discussion: the assumption that men and women would equally benefit from high school training for local blue-collar jobs,' said lead author and UT Austin sociology alumna April Sutton, a Frank H.T. Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Population Center. Sutton, along with UT Austin Ph.D. candidate Amanda Bosky and sociology professor Chandra Muller, began their investigation using U.S. Census data and 10 years of U.S. Department of Education data, which tracked 60,000 high school sophomores from 2002 through early adulthood. Data suggested that a stronger focus on vocational training in blue-collar community high schools reduced students?