[_dps]

I think you've misunderstood what I meant; I mean incentives for businesses to pay their people more (or to offer something like apprenticeships).

As for status not being lowered by words, we'll have to agree to disagree. No one in practice (in the US) calls medical school "vocational school" precisely because it is a phrase associated with lower status work in the trades.

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, people use vocational school to refer to schooling that requires less time, cost, and generally has lower barriers to entry. This results in a higher supply relative to demand, resulting in lower prices for the labor, and that is the causative factor for lower “status”.

You can change the name from vocational school to Nobel school or whatever, but as long as people are not earning high wages, it is not going to change any perceptions of “status”.