A study examined the perceptions of present and former high school students enrolled in vocational homemaking education courses in Texas concerning the usefulness of consumer education concepts developed in the homemaking education program. Using a project-developed survey instrument, researchers collected data from 490 current and 416 randomly selected former students enrolled in vocational homemaking courses. Both the current and former students perceived the consumer education concepts in child development as the most useful. Comparison of the mean scores of former and current students shows that the former students perceive the consumer education concepts in consumer education, home management, housing and home furnishings, food and nutrition, and clothing and textiles to be significantly more useful than did the current students. Included among the background variables found to influence the respondents' perceptions of the usefulness of consumer education concepts were school enrollment status, community size, and number of homemaking courses taken. Based on these findings, recommendations were made calling for development of additional strategies to motivate students to study concepts such as consumer cooperatives, the consumer price index, credit abuse, consumer legislation, consumer complaints, and international trade. (MN)