This paper analyzes how apprenticeship training, i.e., work-based secondary education, affects personality traits compared to full-time school-based vocational or general education. Employing an instrumental variable approach that exploits the regional differences in the relative weight of...

This paper proposes a new approach to measuring changes in the social status of education programmes, a type of social status that the literature has greatly neglected so far. We focus on the dual Vocational Education and Training (dual VET) system in Switzerland, which has recently received...

Despite improved access to all educational levels, many countries around the world struggle with integrating young people into the labor market. The 2007 economic crisis exacerbated the problem, but not all countries were affected in the same way. This led to a vivid debate about how education...

This paper analyses how the social status of vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland has changed over time and how it differs across population groups. The applied measure for the social status of VET compares the cognitive abilities (measured by PISA scores) of prospective...

To fight negative trends in the youth labour market, policymakers around the world foster vocational education and training programmes (VET). We therefore investigate how the share of three upper secondary education programmes, i.e. general education, school-based VET, and dual VET, affect the...

This paper sheds light on the questions how important competences are and which competences can best be learned at school and which competences can be acquired better in the workplace. Exploiting data from a survey among professional tertiary education and training business administration...

The Swiss vocational education and training (VET) system is held in high regard by other countries. Young skilled workers from Switzerland consistently secure top marks at world skills competitions. But how has the social status of VET developed relative to that of baccalaureate schools? What...