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...

The ENSSURE project entails a component of introducing a Dual VET-Apprenticeship in Nepal. This new formal upper secondary education programme combines about one day of classroom education with about five days of workplace training each week for two years. While this project is in its pilot...

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...

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 ENSSURE project entails a component of introducing a Dual VET-Apprenticeship in Nepal. This new formal upper secondary education programme combines about one day of classroom education with about five days of workplace training each week for two years. While this project is in its pilot...

This paper tests the hypothesis that employment protection legislation (EPL) increases the incentives of firms to train their employees. The identification strategy uses a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits exemptions of small firms from EPL. Using firm-level data from Finland...

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...