Young high-school educated men have a tougher time finding a decent paying job today than they did 20 years ago, Professor of Education Richard J. Murnane said at the Graduate School of Education's centennial celebration yesterday afternoon.

Murnane was one of six featured scholars lecturing during the second day of a three-day event marking the Ed School's hundredth anniversary.

Speaking before a crowd of 150 at the Loeb Drama Center, Murnane said that from 1973 to 1987, young men with only a high school diploma experienced a 25 percent drop in real wages.

In a speech titled "Why Young High School-Educated Males Earn Less Than Their Fathers Did," Murnane said that the present generation of young men is the first since the Great Depression not to achieve a higher standard of living than their parents.

Murnane said the decline in earnings of men between the age of 25 and 34 began during the recessions of the early 1970s.

And despite better economic conditions, he said, the low wages have persisted. "The jobs aren't back for young high school-educated workers," said Murnane.

Murnane's proposed solutions centered on a more practical, vocational high school curriculum which gives students the skills they need for today's job market. He called for greater attention to formal education and cognitive thinking "The importance of at least threshold levels of cognitive skills are much greater than they were 20 years ago," Murnane said.

In addition, Murnane called for a renewed effort to address the educational problems of children living below the poverty line.

"In no other industrialized country is there as little support for children from low-income families as in the case of the United States," he said.

Murnane's explanation for the dramatic drop in earnings focused on structural changes in the economy. He said that today's high-tech manufacturing have de-emphasized the job skills of the traditional high school graduate.

This has shunted high-school-educated men into the service sector, where wages are significantly lower, Murnane said.

Even getting these jobs can be difficult because large numbers of women entered the labor force in the 1970s and generally occupied service sector positions, he added