Vocational and academic secondary education in Greece: Public and private costs compared

Abstract

Much of the debate on the relative merits of vocational and academic education has focused on the costs of such schooling. The issue has usually been argued in terms of the public costs involved while the private costs have been ignored. This article compares both the public and private costs of technical-vocational and of academic upper secondary education in Greece. For the Greek case, the private costs of education are much higher for academic than for vocational education while the public costs are similar. The implications of this observation for educational policy are discussed.