NCES Issue Brief on Vocational Education

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released an Issue Brief examining postsecondary vocational education within the context of all undergraduate education. Using a new taxonomy that "better reflects the correspondence between instructional fields and the educational requirements of careers in today's economy," all undergraduate majors are now divided into two categories; majors are considered either "academic majors" or "career majors." Career majors are further divided into sub-baccalaureate and baccalaureate majors. Baccalaureate career majors are considered non-vocational, and sub-baccalaureates are considered vocational.

Academic majors are programs of study designed to impart an accumulated knowledge and skill base in a subject area using comprehensive theoretical and decontextualized study (i.e. a mathematics major). Career majors impart accumulated knowledge and skills for an occupation-specific area of study, using more application and a narrower focus than academic studies (i.e. engineering). Career majors may be either vocational or non-vocational.

Using this new taxonomy, NCES concluded that most degree-seeking undergraduate education is career related. During the 1999-2000 academic year, the first year this taxonomy was used to evaluate undergraduate majors of study, about two-thirds of degree seeking students were majoring in a career field and one-third of those were majoring in a vocational career field; only one-fourth of the students were majoring in an academic field.

Fifty-three percent of all degree-seeking undergraduates in 1999-2000 were sub-baccalaureate students. Seventy-one percent of sub-baccalaureate students had career majors. The most common fields of study at this level were computer science, health care, legal services, personal and consumer services, protective services, and trade and industry.

The entire "Issue Brief: Undergraduate Enrollments in Academic, Career and Vocational Education," publication number NCES 2004-018, can be downloaded in pdf format at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2004018.

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