Extending work constructed for an earlier paper on career education programs and wage outcomes in California, I produced a poster examining wage outcomes among the state’s diverse regions. Individual fixed effects regressions are still applied in this extension.
The abstract is beow, and a pdf of the poster may be found here.
Abstract:
Career education (also known as career technical education, or CTE) programs at California’s community colleges provide a critical component to the state’s labor market. The programs have the ability to not only improve students’ economic well-being through earning middle-income wages, but also address employers’ workforce needs. However, some regions have greater demand for middle-skilled (less than bachelor’s but more than high school attainment) jobs than others which require at least a bachelor’s degree, and high job growth does not always mean high earnings for middle-skilled workers evenly across the state. This study extends work of an earlier paper on a statewide view of career pathways and economic mobility at California’s community colleges, with an emphasis on regional outcomes.
In particular, this study quantifies the wage returns of sub-baccalaureate certificates for students who earn the same category of credential, but across different regions across California. This study uses student-level longitudinal data combining California’s Community Colleges with statewide earnings data, and employs a multiple regression framework to analyze returns to awards. To estimate the returns we use student fixed effects to compare an individual’s earnings before and after earning an award. In addition to the student fixed effects models, this study explores the wage returns by region, program type, and award length as well as demographic characteristics such as age to determine whether the returns of awards differ within these subgroups.
Some of California’s economic regions have higher costs of living than less costly regions of the state, so this study uses measures of earnings levels for occupation groups based on poverty thresholds created by the California Poverty Measure (CPM). The CPM thresholds vary across counties and regions to reflect the differences in cost of living across the state, and using the CPM enables comparability of the wage outcomes of the career education awards across the state.
Findings suggest that there exist differences in wage outcomes in program type and by award length. For example, health awards show relatively large returns across program length, whereas engineering and information technology programs show smaller returns. Even when adjusting for regional cost of living, differences by program length and award type continue to persist, suggesting that wage outcomes carry more weight in regions with greater middle-skill demand. For example, the Inland Empire region has greater middle-skill demand than the neighboring Orange County region; for students who earn an associate’s degree in the engineering fields, the wage returns increase 13.3% in the Inland Empire as compared to 9.8% in Orange County. These findings carry implications for areas outside of California, which may closely resemble one of the state’s many regions, especially as these areas consider developing middle-skilled workforces earning at least livable incomes.