Understanding Vocational Education in Industrialized Countries
[We’re pleased to welcome Nuria Rodriguez-Planas. Nuria published an article in ILR Review in March 2015, entitled 
“A Road Map to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries” with co-authors Werner Eichhorst, Ricarda Schmidl and Klaus F. Zimmermann.]
Our contribution to the ILR Review was motivated by a background study of IZA contributing to the Worldbank’s World Development Report on Jobs in 2013. We started from the observation that young people have been among those most affected by the 2008/09 financial crisis and its aftermath in many world regions. While the recession led to steep increases in youth unemployment, policies aimed at stimulating labor demand do not fully tackle the root of the problem. Rather, we also need to understand the institutions governing the transition from school to work. Vocational education and training (VET) is often viewed as the silver bullet for the youth joblessness problem. In
this article, we provide a better understanding of VET in industrialized countries, proposing a typology with three types of vocational systems: 1) vocational and technical schools, 2) formal apprenticeships, and 3) dual apprenticeship systems that combine school training with a firm-based approach. We first describe the strengths and challenges of each system. Then we review the evidence of the effectiveness of VET versus general education and the relative effectiveness of the different VET systems. In our view the results indicate that VET is a valued alternative beyond the core of general education and that the use of apprenticeships combined with institutional learning tends to be more effective than school-based VET. Hence, improving the performance of VET can be one element of a medium-run solution to difficult school-to-work transitions.
The abstract for the paper:
Young people have been among those most affected by the recent financial crisis. Vocational education and training (VET) is often viewed as the silver bullet for the youth joblessness problem. In this article, the authors provide a better understanding of VET in industrialized countries, proposing a typology with three types of vocational systems: 1) vocational and technical schools, 2) formal apprenticeships, and 3) dual apprenticeship systems that combine school training with a firm-based approach. They first describe the strengths and challenges of each system. They subsequently review the evidence of the effectiveness of VET versus general education and the relative effectiveness of the different VET systems. Results indicate that VET is a valued alternative beyond the core of general education and that the use of apprenticeships combined with institutional learning tends to be more effective than school-based VET.
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*Image attributed to UC Davis College of Engineering (CC)
*Werner Eichhorst is affiliated with IZA. Núria Rodríguez-Planas is affiliated with Queens College of CUNY and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). Ricarda Schmidl is affiliated with the University of Mannheim and IZA. Klaus F. Zimmermann is affiliated with IZA and Bonn University. We thank Costanza Biavaschi, Corrado Giulietti, Michael Kendzia, Alexander Muravyev, Victoria Finn, and Janneke Pieters for their input and support. Inquiries can be directed to nrodriguezplanas@gmail.com or Eichhorst@iza.org.
