What Are the Pros & Cons of Vocational Schools?

Advantage --- Job-Specific Degrees and High Level of Training

• One of the key advantages is that a person with a vocational degree holds niche expertise within a given field. This makes the job-seeker a prime candidate over non-degree holders or those who have a more broad-based degree.

  Directly related to the reason why employers often hire a vocational-degree holder over the alternatives is training. All classes taken for a vocational degree relate to a specific topic. A degree in culinary arts requires classes that relate to different aspects of cooking, giving the student a much more enhanced knowledge of that particular area.

Advantage --- Cost Effective and Specialization of Classes

• Courses offered in vocational schools take only two years to complete. This is because the subjects and courses that students take are centralized on the specific technical skill they are studying. General education courses are limited given that vocational schools concentrate on enhancing their students' knowledge about job-specific skills, giving more time for on-the-job training and internships.

  Because of the nature of the courses taken by students, vocational schools are more cost effective than four-year colleges because of the time it takes to finish one's education. Vocational schools are also almost everywhere, reducing or even eliminating the cost of room and board for students because most can commute to school. According to research by the Better Business Bureau, as of 2011, a typical vocational two-year course can cost only $4,700 to complete.

Disadvantage --- Saturated Market

• It is true that being highly specialized in a given field places a prospect in an ideal position to get a job. The problem is that there are usually many vocational school graduates, which can make the job market saturated. This double-edged sword is not always a problem, but can be in cities with an unusually high number of graduates at a given time.

Disadvantage --- Competition With Bachelor's Degrees

• Competing with fellow bachelor's degree graduates is generally not a problem for most vocational fields. There are exceptions; for fields such as information technology, competition for jobs often comes in the form of computer engineers and scientists who have a more comprehensive degree. Many employers prefer graduates with four-year degrees when possible.