Higher ed. doesn’t mean higher paychecks: Vocational grads earning more in labor crunch

Higher education no longer automatically means higher salaries in the Netherlands. Secondary vocational graduates in technology, nursing, and transport now receive a higher gross hourly wage 1.5 years after graduating than many higher vocational graduates, De Telegraaf reports based on the new Keuzegids MBO.

The gross hourly wage for an MBO graduate in process engineering is 20.90 euros a year and a half after graduating. MBO graduates in nursing, transport, caring, and shipping all earn just below that. The average gross wage for HBO has been around 16 euros per hour in recent years.

This seems to be a “kind of emancipation of MBO,” Ton Withagen, labor market professor at Tilburg University, said to the newspaper. “For a long time, the idea was that the higher your education, the more you earn, but the market is now really starting to treat MBO students differently. For too long, a negative value judgment was attached to that.”

And that negative image has led to a steady decrease in vocational students. In 2005, over 50 percent of students opted for an MBO course. That percentage has since fallen to 40.3 percent last year, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands.

According to Withagen, it is time that parents change their tune about secondary vocational education because MBO will currently give their children the best chance in the labor market. Parents often have an influence on their children’s choice of study.

The media also plays an important role here, according to Rabobank economist Nic Vrieselaar. Media attention for this type of news can “hopefully ensure that more people, and parents, think: hey, if my child does a good technical education, they can be really satisfied.”