Abstract: This paper evaluates a mass training program for in-service vocational school teachers in Indonesia. The government rolled out an intensive, field-specific professional development program to enhance teachers’ vocational skills. Training was provided by experienced private sector firms. We assess its effects on teachers’ knowledge, classroom practices, and expectations of students’ outcomes using a randomized evaluation. The results show minimal impact on these areas. Survey data from training applicants suggest several reasons for the lack of effect: a mismatch between training offerings and existing skills gaps, insufficient post-training support, and untreated teachers accessing training from alternative providers.

Abstract: Workers with different education levels consistently do the same jobs differently. We introduce a model in which each education level affords workers a menu of skill packages. While we classify skills into four broad categories, we allow the productivity and substitutability of skills to differ across occupations. Moreover, the change in productivity over time is specific to each skill and occupation. Consequently, we implicitly allow the nature of skills within these broad aggregates to differ among occupations. We identify the cost of acquiring different skills based primarily on these within-occupation differences. We find that more educated workers have lower costs of investing in social, adaptive, and abstract skill while less educated workers acquire manual skill at lower cost. These cost differences are consistent with the occupations workers with different levels of education choose.