Abstract
Research suggests that vocational education and training (VET) tends to reduce youth unemployment by providing them with specific skills, thus smoothing the transition from education to work. However, we still know relatively little aboutwhether vocational education provides higher employment rate and wages over the entire working trajectory than holders of lower education; after several years of experience, both groups may indeed have similar skills and thus similar situations in the labour market. We compare the situation in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, two countries that share a tradition of vocational education but differ in the specificity and standardisation of their VET system. Creating a pseudo-cohort with repeated rounds of the United Kingdom and Swiss labour force surveys, we use regression models and compare the employment rate and hourly wage of our two groups of interest: individuals with vocational education at the upper secondary level and individuals with no more than compulsory education. We find that VET graduates fare better in terms of both employment and wages over the whole career. This advantage is larger for women than men and, contrary to our hypothesis, larger in the United Kingdom than in Switzerland with respect to employment prospects.
Highlights
Vocational education and training (VET) has several advantages, both at the individual and country level
While we can expect a smooth entry into the labour market for VET graduates (OECD, 2010; Shavit & Müller, 1998) and a more difficult one for holders of lower education, it is an open question whether the expected advantage of VET graduates in the labour market persists over the career, and whether it decreases or increases
If they succeed in securing a position and have the opportunity to learn on the job, they may possibly reach a similar skill level as workers with a vocational education certificate. If their productivity is comparable, they are just as likely to get hired and to receive a comparable wage. This leads us to formulate a first hypothesis: H1a: Workers with a VET certificate have an advantage in terms of employment and wages over workers with a lower level of education at the entry to the labour market, which decreases over the career as work experience increases
Summary
Vocational education and training (VET) has several advantages, both at the individual and country level. While we can expect a smooth entry into the labour market for VET graduates (OECD, 2010; Shavit & Müller, 1998) and a more difficult one for holders of lower education, it is an open question whether the expected advantage of VET graduates in the labour market persists over the career, and whether it decreases or increases To address this question, we use a pseudo-cohort design by pooling labour force survey data from more than twenty years. A less standardised VET system may provide VET graduates with a set of skills that is similar to work experience in a firm, resulting in smaller differences between holders of a VET degree and people with a lower level of education We address these questions by comparing the labour market outcomes between a country with a large and nationally standardised VET system—Switzerland—and a country with a less widespread and less standardised vocational system—the United Kingdom—using the UK Labour Force Survey 1993–2014 and the Swiss Labour Force Survey 1991–2014
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