Educationally Disadvantaged Older Youth: Attainment of GED or High School Diploma

Three of the four programs with a primary focus on employment and a secondary focus on education had generally positive effects on attainment of GEDs or high school diplomas (JC, JS, JTPA). For instance, participants in Job Corps (JC1, JC2) and JOBSTART (JS2) were more likely to have obtained a GED than youths in the control group. In JOBSTART, 42 percent of participants earned a GED, compared with 29 percent of youths in the control group. The impact was particularly strong on younger participants, with 47 percent of them having received GEDs, compared with 36 percent of control group members (JC2). In addition, when looking at GED and high school diploma attainment together, the findings indicate that participants were more likely than control group members to have received one or the other by the end of the program (33 percent vs. 17 percent) (JS1).

One interesting finding is that while participants in Job Corps were more likely than youths in the control group to have earned a GED by the end of the program, participants were less likely to have earned a high school diploma. This finding should be expected because Job Corps' primary focus is employment, not attainment of a high school diploma. Nevertheless, education outcomes are important for programs that focus primarily on employment, since most jobs require at least a high school diploma or GED for full-time workers. Also, in general, employers value a diploma more than a GED (Cameron & Heckman, 1993; Murnane, Willett, & Tyler, 2000), so substituting a GED for a diploma may not be advantageous in the long-term.