Here is an interesting report for understanding and acting on Building Successful careers
High-quality Career and Technical Education (CTE) — as distinguished from older models of vocational education — has great potential to improve student educational attainment and worker earnings, as well as outcomes for firms and the U.S. economy. We begin by making the economic case for high-quality CTE, based on the limited number of young Americans who currently achieve four-year college degrees and the relatively weak employment outcomes of most who do not, as well as relatively high job vacancy rates
observed for some American firms and sectors. We describe the current state of CTE in America, in which overall outcomes have become fairly strong but high variation remains in the quality of programs around the country. For complete report see here