Transitions to Professional Education in Switzerland: The Influence of Institutional Characteristics of the Swiss VET System

Sander, Fabian; Kriesi, Irene

doi:10.2478/sjs-2020-0031

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 43 publications

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“…Whereas the clear distinction between academic and vocational tracks of higher education has weakened in some countries, Swiss tertiary education has retained its dual structure and distinguishes between universities and vocationally oriented professional education. Access to the former is contingent on a baccalaureate; access to the latter usually requires an upper-secondary vocational education and training diploma (Kriesi and Trede 2018;Sander and Kriesi 2021).…”

Section: The Structure Of Tertiary Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic or vocational education? A comparison of the long-term wage development of academic and vocational tertiary degree holders

Kriesi,

Sander

2024

J Labour Market Res

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Education is a key determinant of wage development. The relationship between education and wages is particularly strong in countries with vocationally oriented educational systems and a clear distinction between general and vocational education, such as Germany and Switzerland. However, whether general and vocational education offer the same returns to education is an ongoing debate. Previous findings from international research are still inconclusive. Against this background and based on theoretical arguments from human capital and signalling theory and the task-specific learning-by-doing approach, our paper examines the long-term wage development of Swiss university and professional education degree holders from the time they obtain their tertiary degree until their late career. It asks how differences between the two groups in wage development may be explained. Our results, produced with regression decomposition methods, show that within the first 20 years after graduation, university degree holders experience steeper wage growth. An important reason for this difference is that university graduates move more often than vocational tertiary degree holders into well-paid labour market positions endowed with formal authority, management responsibility, and a large proportion of cognitive nonroutine tasks.

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Section: The Structure Of Tertiary Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic or vocational education? A comparison of the long-term wage development of academic and vocational tertiary degree holders

Kriesi,

Sander

2024

J Labour Market Res

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Skill Endowment Through Vocational Education and Training Programmes and Early Career Mobility

Grønning

Kriesi

2022

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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.

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Transitions to Professional Education in Switzerland: The Influence of Institutional Characteristics of the Swiss VET System

Cited by 2 publications

References 43 publications

Academic or vocational education? A comparison of the long-term wage development of academic and vocational tertiary degree holders

Academic or vocational education? A comparison of the long-term wage development of academic and vocational tertiary degree holders

Skill Endowment Through Vocational Education and Training Programmes and Early Career Mobility

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