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A number of international donors and partners for developments have recently put a special emphasis on helping Bangladesh government in order to improve its TVET sector. ILO's TVET reforms project is in operation, while identical projects of ADB and World Bank are about to come. Although ILO project is a grant receiving one, the projects of ADB and WB will be operated under loan provision. Global patterns always show that the target groups comprising students for VET education are mostly from the underprivileged background. As a result, formulation and moderation of a TVET policy always receives lesser priority. Although, the work undertaken by well-qualified VET graduates often makes better contribution to GDP, the organization under which the work is done and the country as whole prove to be more productive. Payment issue for VET graduates is a neglected one. This attitude always motivates students and their sponsors against VET education.

A positive association between educational attainment and individual earnings has been well-established and verified by many studies. In spite of this extensive investigation, however, the cause and effect relationships underlying the association are not well-understood. More specifically, one might question whether only formal education leads to higher earning potential or whether vocational training might have a similar effect. In the analysis below, this scribe presents some arguments about the impact of vocational training on the earning potential of participants with different levels of formal education. Hopefully, increased understanding of the interrelationships between vocational training and formal education will assist educational and government planners who are currently attempting to formulate policies in this area.

We could imagine a world in which income was determined solely by social status and where education thus raised individual earnings for purely sociological reasons. In the real world we can observe arbitrary levels of formal education required for entry to a wide variety of jobs, without much reference to job characteristics or performance. Similarly, arbitrary promotion of workers to higher levels of pay and responsibility on the basis of educational attainment no doubt occurs, thus reinforcing these artificial entrance requirements. At the extreme, one could imagine education is enhancing income solely by improving prestige and a cleverly forged high school diploma, CPA certificate, medical degree, or plumber's license. This is as effective as the same credential earned through long apprenticeship or expensive study. However, most economists will feel much more comfortable at imagining a contrasting social order in which economic productivity plays a larger role than social prestige in determining income. In this world, well-trained plumbers, doctors, and accountants will receive higher incomes than imposters because of their higher marginal revenue productivity. The market mechanism will tend to produce this result by the elimination of inefficient firms, so that hiring prestigious incompetents will prove self-destructive and short-lived. The data will allow to conclude this article, but for the moment let us assume that economic productivity determines income.