Vocational and general secondary education: the rate of return across regions in Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find the difference in rate of return to upper secondary vocational education and upper secondary general education in each region in Thailand by applying the concept of Mincerian earning function. The result shows that the returns to schooling for upper secondary vocational school graduates are higher than secondary general school graduates. The region that has the highest return gap between the two different tracks of education is Northeast, while Bangkok has the lowest return gap. It can be interpreted that in Bangkok the different education attainment of individuals has less impact on earning comparing to other regions. In contrary, the result from Northeast shows that the difference in type of education attainment has a significant influence on income. The findings also call into the question of the belief that the people further study in general school track more than vocational track.