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Vocational education and training
Abstract
This article focuses on initial vocational education and training (VET) in industrialized countries. It identifies core dimensions
of VET and discusses their role in shaping adolescent development. These core dimensions include international
differences between VET systems, the description of VET as a learning and socialization environment, the social stratification
and social inclusion properties of VET, and its role in explaining patterns of school-to-work transitions and career outcomes.
The article concludes with a summary of the main points and highlights the most important research gaps.
This anthology deals with vocational teacher education in Ukraine, which is a country facing many social and economic challenges. It is a result of the Erasmus+ project “Improving teacher education for applied learning in the field of VET (ITE-VET)”, a capacity building project focussing on Ukraine, which lasted from October 2016 until October 2018.
The project came up with the following issues which were defined as “working packages” in the context of the EU project guidelines. These issues also represent the major contents and arguments in the chapters of this book:
– Ukrainian VET teacher education and VET system and analysis
of their needs
– Didactical input from EU countries on modern teaching
– Revision of course programmes and curricula
– Implementation of new forms of practice-orientation.
The book compiles contributions from the Ukrainian ITE-VET project partners as well as the ITE-VET partners from the EU and from Switzerland.
This article addresses inequalities in short-and medium-term career outcomes of workers with different vocational education and training (VET) programmes during the early career. In particular, we examine how the degree of vocational specificity of VET programmes affects occupational status mobility throughout individuals' early careers, a topic that has hitherto received little attention. We adopt a life course perspective and combine an individual-level theoretical approach (human capital and signalling theory) with an institutional approach. The former focuses on individuals' skill acquisition during VET and across the early career. The latter emphasises that individuals' allocation to a training programme influences the amount and types of skills they acquire. The multinomial logistic regression analyses are based on a combination of detailed curricula-based occupation-level data on the specificity of training programmes and individual-level data from the Transitions From Education to Employment (TREE) longitudinal dataset. The results show, firstly, that labour market allocation at the beginning of a career has consequences for later labour market outcomes. Second, practical occupation-specific education and training facilitate status stability at labour market entry, while general skills and knowledge are decisive for long-term upward mobility.
We use detailed survey data linked to administrative records from secondary schools in England to investigate potential channels contributing to the socio-economic gap in post-compulsory educational aspirations. We investigate the role of experiences and attitudes including the provision of information, advice and guidance (IAG), bullying victimisation, locus of control and self-perception of academic potential. Our findings indicate a significant socio-economic gap in aspirations to stay in education, to follow the academic rather than the vocational route, and to attend university. We use decomposition analysis to show that the experiences we consider are not statistically correlated with the observed socio-economic gap while differences in attitudes explain up to 22% of the effect. The findings suggest that investing in self-esteem building and attribution training programmes within schools could contribute to equalising educational outcomes.
While the literature on skill formation systems has paid considerable attention to inter-variation between types of national skill formation systems and intra-variation among individual types as in the case of collective skill formation systems, less is known about the role of the European Union in establishing a European model of skill formation. Building on studies in educational governance and decentralised cooperation, this paper analyses the European Alliance for Apprenticeships (EAfA) and explores its relationship to national skill formation systems. We analyse the emergence of a European model of collective skill formation and offer case studies of Ireland and France to understand how this European model relates to these two contrasting skill formation systems. Through deductive qualitative content analysis of official documents, we show that (a) the EAfA, in resembling characteristics of national collective skill formation systems promotes the emergence of a European model of collective skill formation, and (b) that Ireland and France show signs of moving further towards adopting elements of a collectivistic training model centred on apprenticeship training although mediated by path-dependencies of a liberal (Ireland) and statist (France) skill formation model.
This study investigates whether the informal competencies effort, exertion, perseverance
and volition develop differently among youth who enter firm- or school-based
vocational education and training or general education tracks, which offer distinct socialisation environments. The results show that the analysed competencies increase considerably after entry into vocational education and training. Young people in general education show a delayed development and only increase their informal competencies after the age of 18 years.
Despite high drop-out rates from vocational education and training (VET) throughout most countries and a long research tradition on potential drop-out reasons, little is known about the effects exerted on drop-out intentions by the quality of training. Furthermore, only rarely do scholars distinguish between different drop-out directions, and systematic insights on possibly differing causes are scarce. This study explores the factors influencing four directions of drop-out intention (‘upwards’, ‘downwards’, ‘company change’, ‘occupation change’). Linear regression modelling is used to analyse survey data on the motivation, socio-demographic aspects and competency of 562 trainees as industrial management assistants in Germany and on how they perceived the training quality. The results show that different directions of drop-out intention stem from various factors, with training quality in general having the largest effect. Additionally, the findings indicate a two-tier-scheme of influence factors, ‘core’ and ‘direction-typical’ factors.
The relevance of work-based learning (WBL) as a central element of TVET for improving the quality of TVET programs is increasingly being taken up in international education policy. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank Group (WBG) as well as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) promote the strengthening of WBL in the context of the establishment or further development of TVET systems. WBL in that sense primarily addresses the requirement to increase the labour market relevance through phases of experiential learning at the workplace. In such context, the quality of work with regard to its conduciveness to learning i.e. competence development is decisive. Learning at the in-company workplace – in the meaning of this article – is not to be seen as a result of didactical intervention, but as a consequence of changing work organisation, the digitalization of work, and an increasing quality of work conducive to learning and competence development.
This article presents models of WBL that reflect the proximity to the workplace, the quality of work with regard to its conduciveness to learning, and in-company learning concepts The article concludes with remarks on the company’s training personnel, who play a key role in successfully designing WBL.
http://tvet-online.asia/the-workplace-as-a-place-of-learning-in-times-of-digital-transformation-models-of-work-related-and-work-based-learning-and-in-company-concepts
Adolescents’ occupational expectations are relevant for occupational status attainment. In strong vocational education and training (VET) systems, such as in Germany, school leavers face the challenge of forming occupational expectations that correspond to the competitive VET market. This study investigates students’ target occupations in the application process and its relation to their first training occupation. Do applicants for VET positions apply for occupations of different socioeconomic status over time? Does the status of the target occupations increasingly fit to the finally achieved training occupation? Are there differences by familial socioeconomic background? Analysis are based on longitudinal data on the application process collected from German students in lower secondary and intermediate secondary schools in one urban area. Overall, the status level of the target occupations at the beginning of the application process differs significantly according to school track, but additionally to school grades or family background. At the end of the application process, the application behaviour becomes diversified: applicants with poor school grades and of low status continue to apply for target occupations at a similar status level but at the same time apply for occupations of relative lower status. This lower level does not, however, translate into training occupations.
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the effect of different educational orientations at the upper-secondary level on labour market outcomes across European countries. The study separates safety net effect and the diversion effect of Vocational Education and Training (VET). Using PIAAC data, we show cross-national differences in the early career advantages of vocational qualifications. The results indicate that vocational effects vary according to outcome. In general, negative effects on occupational status are consistent with earlier research. The safety net function of VET is only observable in a few countries. We also studied the impact of different institutional level characteristics. The analysis of the impact of macro-level characteristics reveals VET’s safety net effect is observable only in countries with the highest occupational specificity of VET. At the same time, work-based VET is increasing its diversion effect. Crucial issues are the differences in general competencies between graduates of VET and general upper-secondary school graduates. The major differences are the simultaneous weakening of VET’s safety net effect and the strengthening of the diversion effect.
Our article aims at refocussing the debate in privilege studies from tackling the invisibility to challenging justifications of gender privilege. Focusing on instances in which men acknowledge that they receive preferential treatment, this study sheds light on how privilege is perceived and talked about in interviews with men in female-dominated occupations. In contrast to existing literature on the invisibility of privilege to the privileged, our analysis shows that the privileging of men is indeed known to them. However, our interviewees then employ specific discursive strategies to actively reframe and thereby silence privilege. They either justify privilege as an individual achievement or as a natural advantage of male bodies. In our discussion, we show how these discursive reframings build on existing discourses on gendered bodies and neoliberal subjectivity. Based on our key argument that gendered privilege is not invisible, but it is acknowledged and then actively reframed and thereby silenced, we argue for expanding the focus of privilege studies: Instead of primarily investing in making privilege visible to those who have it, we need to challenge the discourses that allow for reframing and silencing it.
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We document and analyse the wage gap between vocational and general secondary education in Portugal between 1994 and 2013. As Portuguese workers have been educated in different school systems, we have to distinguish between birth cohorts. Analysing the wage gaps within cohorts, we find no support for either the human capital prediction of crossing wage profiles or the hypothesis that general graduates increasingly outperform vocational graduates in late career. We discover that the lifecycle wage profiles have shifted over time. We link the pattern of shifting cohort profiles to changes in the school system and in the structure of labour demand. We conclude that assessing the relative value of vocational education requires assessing how the vocational curriculum responds to changes in economic structure and technology. We show that the decline in assortative matching between workers and firms has benefited vocationally educated workers.
This article reports results of an ethnographic study of how girls are
positioned, and position themselves, in relation to gender regimes
in three vocational programmes in Swedish upper secondary
education: Restaurant Management & Food, Health & Social Care,
and Vehicle & Transport. The comparison shows that there are
different possible feminine positions where the girls resist and
comply to varying degrees both within and between the
programmes, with expectations interrelated with discourses of
consumption, caring and production. However, generally the
position of emphasised femininity is most prominent and
becoming a female worker in the programmes’ settings involves
complying with feminine ideals of a caring discourse, regardless of
whether the VET is oriented towards education for masculine
production work, or feminine consumption work.
Comparative research on the impact of the vocational specificity of educational systems on youth labour market integration has expanded rapidly in the past decades. The present study reviews this body of research, focusing on how it has conceptualized the vocational specificity of educational systems and theorized its effect on youth labour market integration. Moreover, this study synthesizes the empirical evidence compiled in this research using a meta-analytical approach. Our review reveals that this research area is theoretically fragmented. A commonly accepted definition of the vocational specificity of educational systems is lacking and various theoretical approaches and conceptual frameworks are invoked to theorize the effect of vocational specificity, while exact mechanisms that are assumed to underlie the effect are often left unspecified. Our meta-analysis includes 105 effect estimates nested in 19 studies, published between 2003 and 2018, that used methods enabling a formal meta-analytical comparison. Results show that the overall average effect is positive and statistically significant but its magnitude is modest and there is substantial variability in the size and even direction of observed effects. We find that this variability is partly driven by which aspect of labour market integration was examined and which measure of vocational specificity was used.
Occupational mobility is becoming increasingly important today owing to technological change and changing requirements in the employment system. This article examines the extent to which institutional characteristics of occupations hamper intragenerational occupational mobility on the labor market. By combining data from the Adult Cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) with occupational information from the German Federal Employment Agency, we test the power of the characteristics of the initial and target occupations to explain horizontal and vertical status mobility. The occupational characteristics that we focus on are the standardization of certificates, occupational licensing, and the specificity of skills. Using multinomial logistic regression, we find that both initial and target occupations with such characteristics might generate mobility constraints and impede the correction of a disadvantageous starting position. Status increases are mainly possible from standardized to nonstandardized, from specific to nonspecific and, in some instances, from nonlicensed to licensed occupations.
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Gender disparities in wages are still fairly large. On average, women earn less than men from the beginning of their careers. This article investigates whether young men and women with vocational education and training receive different returns for occupation-specific and general skills, a topic that has hitherto received little attention. Theoretically, we draw on a culturalist approach, as well as on the varieties of capitalism approach. The analyses are based on a combination of detailed occupation-level data on the specificity of training occupations and individual-level data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey on the incomes of upper-secondary vocational diploma holders. The results of multilevel regression models show that men’s and women’s incomes are affected by a complex interplay between gender and skill endowment. Occupation-specific vocational skills only secure a high income early in the careers of men who trained in male-typed or gender-neutral occupations. Women profit from a high proportion of general knowledge in their training. Furthermore, we find evidence for a general devaluation of female-typed skills. In sum, the findings suggest that employers’ discriminatory remuneration practices, a general devaluation of female-typed skills and young people’s rational skill investment decisions contribute jointly to the gender gap in income.
The construct of career adaptability has recently gained importance in research on vocational development and has led to a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches. Alongside with vocational identity it has been theorised as the crucial meta-competency of modern career construction. Due to its roots in adolescent career development, career adaptability is not limited to the vocational adjustments of working adults, but is also highly relevant for the pre-occupational orientation processes of adolescents initially developing a vocational identity. Despite the recent increase in empirical research on career adaptability, the field of vocational education has been largely neglected so far. Therefore, a quantitative survey among nearly N = 400 commercial apprentices within the German dual system of VET has been conducted. This study focuses on the replication of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) among commercial apprentices within the German dual system, and its discrimination against alternative operationalisations of career adaptability. Furthermore, the relationship between career adaptability and vocational identity (operationalised as occupational and organisational identification) was explored. Results showed that the four-dimensional structure of career adaptability covered by the CAAS could be largely replicated in the dual system. In addition, it was found that the CAAS can in part be separated from alternative operationalisations. Finally, the results confirmed career adaptability positively predicts both foci of identification in a cognitive and affective manner. This indicates that career adaptability can be seen as a beneficial factor for vocational education and training as it fosters the vocational ties of apprentices in terms of their identity.
This paper addresses the mechanisms leading to income differences during the early career, both between individuals and between occupations. It compares the level of standardization, vocational specificity, and vertical differentiation of vocational education and training (VET) programmes and examines how these differences affect VET diploma holders’ incomes in their early careers. We go beyond previous research by developing refined theoretical concepts of vocational specificity, standardization, and differentiation and by measuring them with novel curriculum-based data. Theoretically, the paper assumes that training programmes’ institutional characteristics determine income by influencing diploma holders’ productivity as well as the signalling power of the degree. We test our hypotheses by combining institutional data from VET curricula with individual-level data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey and by applying multilevel regression analyses. The results show that the institutional dimensions, in particular vocational specificity, are multifaceted and consist of several subdimensions, which impact young workers’ incomes to different degrees at various time points during their early careers.
Over the last 15 years, research on the effects of different types of education on labour market integration and labour market outcomes has evolved. Whereas much of the early work analysed school-to-work transition outcomes, the Focus of more recent studies has shifted to the relationship between educational achievement and mid- and long-term labour market outcomes. The overarching question of this body of research asks whether the allocation to different types of education leads to different skill sets, to different employment opportunities and to jobs offering unequal wages, job autonomy r job security. However, pivotal issues related to the comparison of vocational and general types of education or upper-secondary and tertiary-level qualification remain ambiguous and are hampered by a lack of suitable data and
methodological problems. The aim of this issue is to further this debate and to provide more insights into the relationship between individual and contextual factors, allocation within the educational system, educational achievement and labour market outcomes over the life course. The 12 articles collected in this issue highlight the importance of focussing on the specific features and functions of different education tracks and programs, of applying data and methods suitable for such analyses and of considering the interplay of different determinants of education outcomes, such as social origin, gender or ethnicity.
This research summary brings together the key findings from two research projects looking at the aspirations, intentions and choice of students considering vocational education and training. The research investigated student’s post school career and education aspirations, the drivers influencing behaviour, awareness of vocational training options and career pathways, as well as how choices are made in a competitive training market. Implications for schools, vocational training providers and government policy are identified in this summary.
This chapter presents a cross-country comparative analysis of the variation in European youth-related school-to-work (STW) transition regimes. The chapter assesses youth labor market performance during the Great Recession in eight countries belonging to five different institutional clusters, as well as the effect of recent policy innovations on each STW transition regime’s structure and logic. The analysis shows that the institutional configurations of STW regimes in Europe are currently in flux as a result of ongoing dynamics of regime hybridization. Despite some emerging trends of convergence across regimes in the design of youth-transition policy instruments, institutional change remains limited at the level of policy implementation. Although positive policy intentions improve the efficacy of STW transition policies, performance differences across regimes persist. This is due to a combination of institutional and macroeconomic factors, together with a common trend of progressive deterioration in the quality of youth transitions across the board.
We investigate gender discrimination in a nationally-representative sample of German firms using a factorial survey design. Short CVs of fictitious applicants for apprenticeship positions are presented to human resource managers who are asked to evaluate the applicants. Women are evaluated worse than men on average, controlling for all attributes of the CV. This measure of discrimination is robust to differences in the variance of unobservable productivity characteristics (“Heckman critique”). Discrimination against women varies across industries and occupations. Controlling for all occupation- and firm-related variables that we observe, only the share of women in an occupation correlates with discrimination.
This fascinating comparative study presents the latest research into the value of qualifications for the attainment of first job, and in securing employment. A team of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field examine the ways in which educational qualifications affect the occupational outcomes of men and women in thirteen countries. The book features chapters on each of these countries, together with a lead chapter which integrates them, and analyses them comparatively. The authors present a wealth of rich and detailed information on educational institutions in these various countries, as well as reports on rigorous statistical analyses of the associations between qualifications and occupations. The data reveals marked differences between countries in how education shapes occupational attainment, and indicates that these differences are related, in very systematic ways, to the institutional characteristics of school systems. The book offers a range of insightful policy-oriented observations, for example that vocational education is valuable in countries where training is occupationally specific, but is of little value where the curricula are general in content.
Vocational education enhances smooth transitions into the labour market. However, this initial advantage might vanish over the career and eventually turn into a disadvantage because the skills of vocationally trained workers become outdated faster. So far, research has examined this potential vocational trade-off by assessing labour market outcomes such as employment and income. This study uses a different approach, it directly examines how different types of skills used at work change over the career of vocationally trained workers compared to tertiary-educated workers, and how career events shape skill-use changes. With data from the German National Education Study (NEPS), we examine five skills use dimensions based on job-tasks measures: analytical, creative, managerial, interactive, and manual skills. We find that skill-use differentials between vocational and tertiary-educated workers are only small to modest. The clearest differences relate to analytical and manual skills. Looking across career stages, the observed skill-use differentials remain rather stable across career stages—thus, the vocational skill trade-off thesis is only partially supported. Occupational mobility and unemployment contribute to observable changes, whereas job-related further training does not. Our results challenge skill-based explanations of a vocational trade-off.
Given rising skill demands on the part of business and the increasing aspirations of young people for higher skills, the relationship between vocational and academic worlds of learning has become a major policy challenge in collective skill formation systems. While the need to enhance institutional permeability between these two worlds of learning is increasingly felt by all stakeholders, the actual building of programmes that promote such permeability is highly demanding as it often requires the cooperation of actors who have been largely isolated from each other and often have diverging interests. How is permeability made possible through cooperation? While various initiatives to increase permeability have recently been launched, little is known about how actors cooperate in the establishment and implementation of these permeability-enhancing projects. This chapter develops a conceptualization combining institutional permeability and types of cooperation in collective skill formation systems. This enables exploring the intensity of cooperation between key actors from the largely separate worlds of vocational and academic learning—which contributes to understanding how actors in collective skill formation systems adapt to the demands of the knowledge economy. Based on document analysis and expert interviews, the chapter provides an in-depth study of double qualification programmes in Germany in which vocational and academic learning are systematically combined. It is shown that increasing permeability is by no means a trivial task and that a fine-grained understanding of both permeability and cooperation can help uncover how actors take a differentiated approach to enhancing institutional permeability in collective skill formation.
Compared to other countries, the Swiss vocational education and training (VET) system enjoys a high reputation. The VET system is reformed continuously, including regular revisions of VET programmes and the establishment of VET pathways from initial VET (IVET) to higher vocational or academic education. Both are essential means to strengthen the standing of VET pathways. This chapter addresses two challenges linked to these issues: (1) The quality of apprenticeships and concerns about how to secure high learning opportunities in workplaces and vocational schools; and (2) The career development opportunities of IVET graduates, which seem limited and might discourage high performing school leavers from choosing an IVET programme at the upper secondary level rather than enrolling in general education (gymnasium). Based on a situational resources approach and two surveys, we examine core elements of quality apprenticeships, including task-related (e.g., learning opportunities, autonomy) and social characteristics (e.g., instruction quality) of workplaces and vocational schools. We identify situational resource profiles and explore apprentices’ attitudes towards their pathways and occupations (study 1) and compare the jobs and careers of IVET graduates without higher education degrees with those of IVET graduates who had also achieved a higher education degree and graduates from university (study 2). Drawing on the findings, we advance some propositions on how to ensure that the standing of VET remains high and VET pathways attractive. We conclude by emphasising that workplaces should offer possibilities for learning, personal growth, and positive career development to all employees – independent of their level of qualifications.
We study labor market returns to vocational versus general secondary education using a regression discontinuity design created by the centralized admissions process in Finland. Admission to the vocational track increases initial annual income, and this benefit persists at least through the mid-thirties, and present discount value calculations suggest that it is unlikely that life cycle returns will turn negative through retirement. Moreover, admission to the vocational track does not increase the likelihood of working in jobs at risk of replacement by automation or offshoring. Consistent with comparative advantage, we observe larger returns for people who express a preference for vocational education. (JEL D15, I21, I26, J24, J31, O33)
Internationally, vocational education and training (VET) faces some major challenges, one of them certainly constituting the number of premature terminations of contract. A large part of former research within this context has concentrated on the identification and analysis of dropout reasons from the apprentice’s point of view. Due to differing foci within previous studies, gaining a comprehensive overview of reasons for premature termination of contract has been impeded. Hence, it was the aim of this paper to summarize central cross-study and cross-sector findings within this context. Therefore, the present state of research was systematically reviewed and meta-synthesized: 70 studies were extracted, including 666 potential dropout variables that were aggregated based on 68 categories. As a result, a collection of empirically retrieved factors was developed and integrated within a framework model of premature termination of contract. Results indicate that former research has mainly focused on dropout drivers within the individual. Simultaneously, there has been far less focus on the learning environment in the workplaces. In addition, only for a small number of dropout categories are the findings consistent. Results of quantitative studies indicate that the dropout probability increases with a low training wage, a training occupation not representing the apprentice’s dream job, an apprentice’s low educational level, a poor performance level within training, a learning disability, increasing age and a migration background. Finally, studies find significant differences concerning the respective training occupation.
Vocational education and training (VET) is theorized to play a dual role for inequality of labor market outcomes: the role of a safety net and the role of socioeconomic diversion. In this paper, we test these hypotheses by examining the long-term labor market returns to track choice in upper secondary education in Denmark using an instrumental variable approach that relies on random variation in school peers’ educational decisions. We report two main findings. First, VET diverts students on the margin to the academic track away from higher-status but not higher-paying occupations. Second, VET protects students on the margin to leaving school from risks of non-employment and unskilled work, also leading to higher earnings. These results suggest that in countries with a highly compressed wage structure, a strong VET system benefits students unlikely to continue to college, while causing few adverse consequences for students on the margin to choosing academic education.
To combat negative trends in the youth labour market, policymakers around the world support vocational education and training (VET) programmes. This paper investigates how enrolment rates in upper‐secondary education programmes – general education, school‐based VET and dual VET – affect ten youth labour market indicators on integration and job quality. We run first‐difference generalized method of moments regressions on panel data of 36 countries for 2004 through 2014. We complement the existing literature by dealing with unobserved heterogeneity across time and reverse causality and by analysing non‐linear effects that might arise due to general equilibrium effects. Our findings show that school‐based VET and dual VET have different effects: school‐based VET's effect on the labour market depends on the outcome indicator and country, whereas dual VET overall improves both labour market integration and job quality. Depending on the labour market indicator, we find evidence for both linear and non‐linear effects. In educational reforms, policymakers should therefore consider the non‐linear and heterogeneous effects of VET.
In this article, the authors ask how the institutional design of vocational education and training (VET) affects worker adaptability to changing skill demands over the life cycle. They compare two types of VET systems. Collectivist systems have high employer involvement and focus on specific skills, whereas Statist systems have lower employer involvement and focus more on general skills. Based on prior research demonstrating the importance of general skills in learning new skills, the authors hypothesize that worker adaptability will be higher in Statist VET systems than in Collectivist VET systems. Using a triple-difference model on data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, they find that as age increases, a significantly steeper decline in worker adaptability occurs within Collectivist systems compared to Statist systems. Results provide an explanation behind the diminishing employment returns to employer-dominated VET systems found in prior studies.
Gender-typical educational and occupational goals are an important precursor of educational gender segregation and unequal opportunities of men and women in the labour market. However, little is known about how gender-typical aspirations develop during childhood and adolescence. Drawing on identity and opportunity arguments from a developmental perspective, this paper attempts to fill this gap by examining whether and to what extent gender-typical aspirations change during adolescence and how track allocation in secondary school is related to the development of gendered occupational aspirations between the ages of 15 and 21. The analyses are based on the Swiss Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. They include an observation span of six years, during which respondents were surveyed at the ages of 15, 16, 18 and 21.
The findings show that gender-typical occupational aspirations were most prevalent at the age of 15. Their level and development differed by upper-secondary school track and gender. Young men’s aspirations were considerably more gender-typical than those of young women. Aspirations became less gender-typical for women in baccalaureate school and in initial vocational education and training programmes with high academic requirements and, in particular, for young men who entered vocational education and training with low requirements. Overall, our results support the assumption that changes in gender-typical aspirations during adolescence are the result of an interplay between opportunity structures offered by the upper-secondary school track, identity and status considerations.
This paper develops a new approach to measuring human capital specificity, in the context of college majors, and estimates its labor market return over a worker’s life cycle. To measure specificity, we propose a novel method grounded in human capital theory: a Gini coefficient of earnings premia for a major across occupations. Our measure captures the notion of skill transferability across jobs. Education and nursing are the most specific majors, while philosophy and psychology are among the most general. Using data from the American Community Survey, we find that the most specific majors typically pay off the most, with an early-career earnings premium of about 5-6% over average majors (15-20% over the most general majors), driven by higher hourly wages. General majors lag far behind at every age. Despite their earnings advantage, graduates from specific majors are the least likely to hold managerial positions, with graduates from majors of average specificity being the most likely to do so. It may be that managerial positions require a mix of specific knowledge and broadly applicable skills.
The learning of apprentices is always embedded within the overall learning culture of an enterprise. The structures for learning, as well as the attitudes, values and beliefs of the members of the organisation in respect to training, influence the ways in which apprentices are socialised and prepared for the labour market. This qualitative case study focuses on the experience of apprentices within a large communications enterprise in Switzerland. It provides insights into an innovative learning culture and reflects on attitudes, values and practices of apprentices, work advisors, coaches and vocational education and training (VET) managers that support and encourage independent learning, benefitting both the organisation and the individual apprentice. The study shows which factors contribute to a positive learning experience for apprentices and how these support the development of competences that are essential in the modern workplace. They include taking initiative, acting autonomously, communicating challenges and seeking advice, critical thinking, self-management, ability to work in different teams and the apprentices’ management of their own learning processes. In addition, a number of innovative structural practices that shape the learning culture of the enterprise and serve as framing conditions within the socialisation process of the apprentices have been identified.
Gender segregation in education is still prevalent in Western countries. It affects young people’s further educational trajectories and occupational attainment and is thus closely linked with gender segregation in the labour market and social inequality. This contribution provides an overview of the main segregation patterns, theoretical explanations and consequences of educational gender segregation. We first outline how gender segregation in education has been conceptualized and measured and summarize the patterns of gender segregation in secondary and tertiary education. We then review the dominant theoretical explanations of gender segregation in education: as a result of future-oriented rational choices, of present-oriented gender identity expression, social approval and gatekeeping, and of past socialization of interests, values and perceived skills. Furthermore, macro-level opportunity structures, such as cultural value systems and the structure of the education system and the labour market are discussed. After reviewing research on the labour market consequences of gender segregation, the contribution concludes with a discussion of the main gaps in sociological segregation research.
Purpose
Youth unemployment is one of the major problems that the economic systems face. Given this issue, the purpose of this paper is to assess whether school-to-work transition is easier for individuals with secondary vocational education compared to general secondary education. The authors want to explore which vocational systems across Europe produce better effects.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use data from a module on “Entry of young people into the labour market” from the 2009 and 2014 European Labour Survey and they estimate multinomial probit models, allowing for violation of the irrelevance of the alternative assumption.
Findings
The authors find that in countries with the dual vocational system, vocational education improves employability both in the short and medium run, whereas in countries with a school-based vocational system, results are mixed and, only in some cases, the effect of vocational studies is significantly positive.
Research limitations/implications
Sample size for short-run analysis is a bit small in a few countries (Austria and Germany). Moreover, even if the authors have reason to believe that the methods adopted are mitigating the omitted heterogeneity issues and robustness checks are run on these aspects, these issues cannot be fully excluded.
Practical implications
The authors provide policy implications, showing that dual vocational systems can improve school-to-work transitions and that vocational structure is particularly effective in this case.
Social implications
The authors provide information on which education model may offer better chance in terms of labour outcomes.
Originality/value
Given the relevance of youth unemployment, the authors provide valuable information on how to mitigate this problem. The use of cross-country comparisons offers great insights on which vocational systems appear to be well-suited to enhance employability.
The formation of occupational aspirations is an important developmental task during adolescence, and aspirations are an important predictor of occupational attainment in adulthood. This
paper investigates the formation and development of occupational aspirations in a tracked educational system. We focus on the social status of occupations and take Switzerland as an example. We use data of the Swiss Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine how characteristics of the educational pathway influence the status of adolescents' occupational aspirations between the ages of 15 and 21. Our findings show that the level and development of
adolescents' occupational status aspirations differ by tracks of upper-secondary education. Whereas young people in baccalaureate school decrease their status aspirations slightly over time, those in some types of vocational education and training increase their aspirations considerably. Overall, the results support the assumption of a strong relationship between the development of occupational status aspirations and the structure of the educational system.
We distinguish between social and liberal collective skill formation systems and demonstrate that the German VET system is a social system with a strong (parity) role for trade unions in its governance. In contrast, unions play a considerably weaker role in the more liberal Swiss system, which privileges employers’ interests. We show that the different position of unions in VET systems has the expected consequences on a range of indicators. We further examine why unions are less important in Switzerland and show how, after the First World War, differences in the institutional environment and power resources of the union movements set Germany and Switzerland on different paths, which are still visible today.
The recurrent debate about general education in vocational education and training (VET) includes the understanding of and functions of general education as well as the pedagogical principles employed to establish the interrelation of VET with general education. Using the reform of Danish VET as a case, this chapter discusses central issues in relation to general education in VET, including how the proportion of general education reflects assumptions about how to find solutions to current challenges in VET, such as low student intake or high drop‐out rates. The chapter also discusses the implications of an increasing proportion of general education in VET for the development of teachers’ pedagogical qualifications in relation to practice‐based teaching.
This chapter argues that competency‐based education training denies students access to the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It focuses on vocational education to demonstrate that competency‐based education results in impoverished curriculum offered mainly to disadvantaged students and that it reinforces social inequality. It uses the sociology of Basil Bernstein to undertake this analysis, and outlines his conceptual framework that includes concepts of singulars and regions to describe academic and applied academic disciplines, respectively, and classification and framing to describe the way in which knowledge is structured in curriculum. It applies this analysis to debates about competency‐based education that are emerging in North America, where it is being introduced without any examination of experiences in other Anglophone countries where it has been in place for more than 30 years.
Vocational education and training (VET) has received growing attention in recent years from both economists and policymakers. High youth unemployment rates in many countries, particularly after the financial crisis in 2008, have been associated with a failure by national education systems to provide individuals with the relevant skills for a successful transition into the labor market. In contrast, youth unemployment rates have remained low in Germany, a country with a traditional dual apprenticeship system. As a result, many policy initiatives have emerged with the aim of increasing the willingness of companies to offer VET in the workplace. From a business perspective, the costs and benefits of providing VET are important determinants of a company's training decisions. This article discusses the theoretical literature and various empirical attempts to measure VET performance, before looking at how these measures relate to an employer's decision to engage in workplace training.
This chapter asks what an occupation means under contemporary social, economic, and policy conditions and examines the strength and nature of the relationship between education, training, and occupation. It reviews key historical aspects of socioeconomic and institutional change that underpin debates about the concept of occupation and its changing relationship with apprenticeship. The discussion draws on two contrasting examples to illustrate how different concepts of occupation affect the nature and quality of the associated apprenticeships. The chapter argues that in the context of mass higher education, programs of publicly funded vocational learning (including apprenticeships) and the qualifications associated with them need to generate hybrid benefits, through providing a vehicle for the achievement of occupational expertise and educational progression.
Collective training systems are based on the cooperation of multiple public and private stakeholders in order to work. However, such cooperation is not self-sustaining and depends, for instance, on public policies, capable intermediary organisations and shared logics of action. In this conceptual paper, we first review the political economy literature on cooperation in collective skill formation and find that it has given insufficient attention to the systematic comparative analysis of cooperation at the decentralised level as well as the actual social practices of cooperation. The paper then develops a multidisciplinary analytical framework that allows future research to examine decentralised cooperation at the regional, sectoral and occupational levels more systematically. This framework is grounded in a synthesis of three strands of empirical research on vocational education and training, namely the comparative political economy literature on governance, corporatism and coordination, institutional labour and societal economics as well as the educational science literature.