Post Training and the Labor Market

Is It Worth It? Postsecondary Education and Labor Market Outcomes for the Disadvantaged
By Harry Holzer, 2015 Visiting Scholar

A variety of technical certificates and Associates Degree programs offer high payoffs in the job market, which can make a difference for disadvantaged students. Instead, many students choose general humanities programs at the AA or BA level that have low rates of completion and lead to low-paying jobs afterwards.

This 2014 working paper from the Calder Center, co-authored by economist Harry Holzer, examines a range of postsecondary education and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on minorities and/or disadvantaged workers. 

Holzer is a professor of public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He has previously served as a faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. He is currently a Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, the Brookings Institution and at Harvard’s Program on Inequality and Social Policy.