Why technical high schools help boys more than girls, but work for all

These days trade schools teach everything from the trades to graphics to sound production to pre-nursing.

Will a trade school pay off for your kid?

Eric Brunner, an an economics professor at the University of Connecticut wanted to know too. His interest is personal: He married into a long line of trade workers.

But academics like data, so he studied Connecticut's expansive Technical Education and Career System, which runs popular technical high schools across the state. Demand overwhelms seats, so students must apply.

The fact the system rejects students makes it ripe for research: Scholars typically struggle to determine whether various schools pay off for enrollees, because the students who attend certain schools tend to have different abilities and interests from those who opt into other schools. So researchers tracked students who just barely got accepted, and compared them with students who just missed getting in and instead circulated at public high schools.

"The last person into the school is nearly identical to the first person out, and so we can make reasonable comparisons and draw conclusions about the effectiveness of that school. And we know that everyone who applied is actually interested in going to that school," says co-author Shaun Dougherty, associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University,

Their verdict: There's no downside to Connecticut's technical schools, and some students do really well.

Except, this is all only true for boys.

Girls are not harmed by tech school, but they also do not reap the same benefits as their male peers, for two reasons: one is that the girls who are rejected from tech school tend to do just fine in mainstream public schools, unlike their male counterparts, who struggle.

The second is because girls tend to gravitate toward lower-paying fields like tourism, hospitality, cosmetology, early childhood ed, eldercare and food service.

"The contrast between getting into these schools and not getting in is quite large for boys, because they go into these fields that are really well compensated," Dougherty says.