Students want the credentials that will help them get ahead." .
The reason why they so highly appreciate vocational education is because it directly leads to careers in a variety of fields and to economic benefits. The book, Poverty and the Government in America, suggests that "after graduation, students earned 2 percent more for each vocational education course they took" (Sreenivasan). This economic benefit reveals that vocational education helps students to increase their earnings. Also, Stephen M. Coan, president and chief executive of the Sea Research Foundation, states that "STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations are expected to grow 17 percent in 2008-2018, versus 9.8 percent for non-STEM jobs, and earn 26 percent higher wages." It means that students can gain economic benefits by receiving job-focused education, for demands for STEM jobs in our economy will grow more increasingly than non-STEM ones. Taking these statements into account, I define vocational education as one which provides students with practical skills and knowledge for specific jobs and leads to distinct economic benefits. Technical skills and occupationally specific skills provided in vocational education increase job access and job stability. Thus, vocational graduates can entry into a labor market and get jobs more easily than liberal arts graduates can do and can have well-paying highly skilled careers.
Those who argue that schools should do vocational education offend liberal arts education, emphasizing its disadvantages from an economic point of view. Johann Neem, associate professor of history at Western Washington University, clearly mentions that "The liberal arts and science have no economic value." According to Neem, "The liberal arts are declining because today's students do not have the leisure to study, much less to study hard. They are worried about their student debt and how to pay it off.