Outside of apprenticeships, allocations of public funds across vocational education and training (VET) courses are often made on the basis of government forecasts, with limited competition between (mostly public) colleges. This centralised model is often blamed for stifling responsiveness to...

During the 2001-8 period, the employment rate of people with a disability remained remarkably low in most western economies, hardly responding to better macroeconomic conditions and favourable anti-discrimination legislation and interventions. Continuing health and productivity improvements in...

By OECD standards, the share of the Australian labour force with at least a secondary school qualification is low. One way to rectify this shortfall is to improve rates of re-engagement in education among early school leavers. This paper examines the patterns of re-engagement among early school...

Relatively low rates of school completion among students from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds is a key transmission mechanism for the persistence of intergenerational inequality. Using a rich dataset that links data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) with data from...

Previous studies have linked Catholic schooling to higher academic achievement. We add to the literature on Catholic schooling by examining its effect on long-term wage rates in Australia, independent of effects on academic achievement. Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour...

Education and training among the working-age population has become an increasingly important policy issue as working lives have lengthened and the pace of technological change has quickened. This paper describes the effects of a reform that replaced a supply-driven model, in which government...

People with disability face considerable difficulty participating fully in work and the wider community, due in part to poor schooling outcomes. To enable students with disability to meet their potential, the governments provide extra funding to schools to help them meet their special learning...

This study uses longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to study the long-run effects of completing vocational education and training (VET) on a set of labour market outcomes (employment, wages, earnings, hours and occupational status). It...

Education is often claimed to reduce social exclusion and crime, yet there is little empirical evidence beyond that for increased schooling. In this study, we estimate the crime-reducing effects of participating in post-secondary vocational education and training (VET) between ages 16 and 44,...

Governments are responding to fiscal pressures associated with aging populations by increasing the eligibility age for publicly-funded retirement benefits. However, recent studies show large resulting increases in the receipt of disability and unemployment benefits, which raises concern that...