The reform of secondary vocational education (SVE） remains one of the priorities of China’s educational reform at the present stage. At present, SVE suffers from difficulties in student enrolment and a high dropout rate, while student enrollment in general upper secondary school education （GUSSE） is quite competitive. This is due not to the difference in the returns to education between these two types of education, but to the difference in expected returns. The alternative of GUSSE or SVE involves not only an individual’s or a family’s decision in educational investment, but also the country’s decision in the investment in the construction of the educational system. At the present stage, SVE is ignored because the expected returns to it are relatively low, mainly because the supply of it fails to match the changes in the demands at the labor market. This study, based on the data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), finds the following: The expected returns to GUSSE were lower than those to SVE at any time, but there was a period-based difference between the expected returns to both; the expected returns to GUSSE were lower than those to SVE in the 1990s, but gradually higher than those to SVE in the twenty-first century, with the gap between them tending to be widened; and the disappearance of SVE’s relative advantage in expected returns was among the most important reasons for its current difficulties. To raise the expected returns to SVE, we need to improve its quality, broaden the channels for students’ further education, improve their occupational reputation, and consummate SVE in line with the law of the growth of technical and skilled talents.