High school education is an essential vehicle to employment, social mobility, and career advancement. Those without adequate educational experience in high school are less likely to attain employment or educational opportunities. And despite the essentiality of education, not everyone in society has access to education that will grant them opportunities to attain decent work. Scholars have developed the concept of decent education and the decent education model (DEM) to highlight the essentiality of education in work prospects, and created the Retrospective Decent Education Scale (RDES) to measure the construct in the U.S.. This cross-cultural study specifically examined decent education across three national contexts (the United States, South Korea, and Türkiye) to see its applicability. The RDES was translated and validated in Korean (RDES-K) and Turkish (RDES-T) samples, followed by a multigroup structural equation modeling analysis to test the cross-cultural applicability of the DEM. In Studies 1 and 2, confirmatory factor analyses supported the six-factor correlational model encompassing physical safety, psychological safety, equitable environment, social belongingness, quality instruction, and vocational preparation. Both the RDES-K and RDES-T demonstrated strong reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity. Study 3 integrated data from the U.S., Korean, and Turkish college students to test the cross-national model. Results indicated metric-level measurement invariance across countries, confirming that the constructs were conceptualized similarly across cultural contexts. Structural modeling revealed that economic constraints negatively predicted decent education, which in turn positively predicted work volition and career adaptability, both of which predicted stronger perceptions of future decent work. While the magnitude of effects varied, decent education consistently served as a mediating mechanism linking early socioeconomic experiences to work outcomes across all samples. Overall, findings provide robust support for the cross-cultural generalizability of the DEM, establishing the RDES as a reliable tool for assessing educational quality and equity across diverse national contexts.