School-to-work transition and vocational education: a comparison across Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1411-1437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Brunetti ◽  
Lorenzo Corsini

Purpose Youth unemployment is one of the major problems that the economic systems face. Given this issue, the purpose of this paper is to assess whether school-to-work transition is easier for individuals with secondary vocational education compared to general secondary education. The authors want to explore which vocational systems across Europe produce better effects. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data from a module on “Entry of young people into the labour market” from the 2009 and 2014 European Labour Survey and they estimate multinomial probit models, allowing for violation of the irrelevance of the alternative assumption. Findings The authors find that in countries with the dual vocational system, vocational education improves employability both in the short and medium run, whereas in countries with a school-based vocational system, results are mixed and, only in some cases, the effect of vocational studies is significantly positive. Research limitations/implications Sample size for short-run analysis is a bit small in a few countries (Austria and Germany). Moreover, even if the authors have reason to believe that the methods adopted are mitigating the omitted heterogeneity issues and robustness checks are run on these aspects, these issues cannot be fully excluded. Practical implications The authors provide policy implications, showing that dual vocational systems can improve school-to-work transitions and that vocational structure is particularly effective in this case. Social implications The authors provide information on which education model may offer better chance in terms of labour outcomes. Originality/value Given the relevance of youth unemployment, the authors provide valuable information on how to mitigate this problem. The use of cross-country comparisons offers great insights on which vocational systems appear to be well-suited to enhance employability.

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Martín Artiles ◽  
Andreu Lope ◽  
Daniel Barrientos ◽  
Benjamí Moles ◽  
Pilar Carrasquer

This article has two objectives: to analyse the implementation of dual vocational education and training (VET) in Spain and to study the school-to-work transition of young people who complete dual VET. The article draws on a study that was based on 43 interviews, a discussion group and document analysis. The results show that dual VET has been implemented through a school-based model, as opposed to the firm-based ‘German’ model. Participants may be employed on the basis of training contracts or internships. Whichever approach was taken, we found that young people who have completed dual VET enjoy a rapid school-to-work transition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Ghignoni ◽  
Giuseppe Croce ◽  
Alessandro d’Ambrosio

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the enrolment at university and the subsequent possible dropout as a piece of the school-to-work transition and ask whether it improves or worsens the labour market outcomes a few years after graduation from the high school. Design/methodology/approach The analysis exploits data from the upper secondary graduate survey by ISTAT on a cohort of high school graduates and investigates the effect of dropping out four years after graduation. The labour market outcomes of university dropouts are compared to the outcomes of high school graduates who never enrolled at university. A propensity score matching approach is applied. The model is also estimated on the subsamples of males and females. Findings The findings show that spending a period at university and leaving it before completion makes the transition to work substantially more difficult. Both the probability of being NEET and getting a bad job increase in the case of dropout, while no relevant effect is found on earnings. Moreover, the impact of university dropout tends to be more harmful the longer the spell from enrolment to dropping out. Separate estimates by gender point out that females appear to be relatively more affected in the case of dropping out without a fallback plan. Originality/value While the existing studies in the literature on the school-to-work transition mostly focus on the determinants of the dropout, this paper investigates whether and how the employment outcomes are affected by dropping out in Italy. Moreover, university dropouts are compared to high school graduates with no university experience, rather than to university graduates. Finally, evidence on the mechanisms driving the effect of dropping out is provided, by considering timing and motivations for dropping out.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Mussida ◽  
Dario Sciulli

PurposeThis paper evaluates how the first job when individuals entered the labor market affects the probability of youth being currently employed in formal or informal work in Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on data from the ILO School-to-Work Transition Surveys. The authors use a full-information maximum likelihood approach to estimate a two-equation model, which accounts for selection into the labor market when estimating the impact of entry status on current work outcomes. The main equation outcome follows a multinomial distribution thus avoiding a priori assumptions about the level of individual’s utility associated with each work status.FindingsThe authors find that entering the labor market in a vulnerable employment position (i.e. contributing family work or self-employment) traps into vulnerable employment and prevents the transition to both informal and, especially, formal paid work. This finding holds when accounting for endogeneity of the entry status and it is valid both in the short and in the long run. Young women are less likely to enter the labor market, and once entered they are less likely to access formal paid wok and more likely to being inactive than young men. Low education anticipates the entry in the labor market, but it is detrimental for future employment prospects.Originality/valueThe findings indicate the presence of labor market segmentation between vulnerable and non-vulnerable employment and suggest the endpoint quality of the school-to-work transition is crucial for later employment prospects of Bangladeshi youth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1438-1457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghassan Dibeh ◽  
Ali Fakih ◽  
Walid Marrouch

PurposeEmployment and skill mismatch among youth constitute a major obstacle for access to the job market in the Middle East and North African region. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors explaining employment and the perception of the skill-mismatch problem among the youth in Lebanon using a novel data set covering young people aged from 15 to 29. The paper provides a set of empirical insights that help in the design of public policy targeting school-to-work transition.Design/methodology/approachThe authors control for a rich set of youth and household characteristics to jointly estimate the probability of being employed and the likelihood of reporting a skill-mismatch problem. The empirical analysis uses a bivariate probit model where the first equation estimates the employment status while the second estimates the determinants of skill-mismatch perceptions. The bivariate probit model considers the error terms in both equations to be correlated and the model tests for such a correlation. The authors estimate the model recursively by controlling for the employment dummy variable in the skill-mismatch equation since employed youth could be more or less likely to perceive the skill mismatch. The estimation is conducted first over the whole sample of youth, and then it is implemented by gender and region.FindingsThe authors find that youth employment is mainly correlated with age, being male, being single, having received vocational training and financial support from parents, living with parents and receiving current education. The skill-mismatch perceptions are mainly driven by being male, being single, having received post-secondary education and belonging to upper and middle social classes. The authors also find that employability level and skill-mismatch problems are jointly determined in the labor market for males and in the core region only.Originality/valueThe paper covers a country that is neglected in the literature on the employment-skill mismatch nexus in the context of school-to-work transition. The study also uses a novel data set focusing on youth. The paper contributes to our understanding of the school-to-work transition in particular and to the youth-to-adulthood transition in general.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Selwaness ◽  
Rania Roushdy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the school-to-work transition of young people from subsequent school exit cohorts between 2001 and 2012 in Egypt, thus, presenting an early evidence on the adjustments of the labor market in terms of patterns of youth transition to a first job following the 2011 Egyptian uprising. Design/methodology/approach The analysis compares the early employment outcomes of those who left school after the January 25, 2011 uprising to that of those who left before 2011. The authors also separately control for the cohorts who left school in 2008 and 2009, in an attempt to disentangle any labor market adjustments that might have happened following the financial crisis, and before the revolution. Using novel and unexploited representative data from the 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE), the authors estimate the probability of transition to any first job within 18 months from leaving education and that of the transition to a good-quality job, controlling for the year of school exit. The authors also estimate the hazard of finding a first job and a good-quality job using survival analysis. Findings School exit cohorts of 2008–2009 (following the financial crisis) and those of 2011–2012 (in the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings) experienced a significantly higher likelihood of finding a first job within 18 months than that of the cohorts of 2001–2007. However, this came at the expense of the quality of job, conditional on having found a first job. The results of the hazard model show that school leavers after 2008 who were not able to transition to a job shortly after leaving school experienced longer unemployment spells than their peers who left school before 2007. The odds of finding a good-quality job appears to decline with time spent in non-employment or in a bad-quality first job. Originality/value This paper contributes to a limited, yet growing, literature on how school-to-work transition evolved during the global financial crisis and the Egyptian 2011 revolution. Using data from SYPE 2014, the most recent representative survey conducted in Egypt on youth and not previously exploited to study youth school-to-work transition, the paper investigates the short-term adjustments of the youth labor market opportunities during that critical period of Egypt and the region’s history.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1458-1481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamalbek Karymshakov ◽  
Burulcha Sulaimanova

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it analyses the relationship between educational level, the school-to-work transition period for youth and positions which suffer from an education-job mismatch in Kyrgyzstan; and second, it investigates the effect of the education-job mismatch on the wages of youth in Kyrgyzstan. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the International Labor Organization 2013 data from the school-to-work transition survey for Kyrgyzstan. The Kaplan–Meier failure analysis is employed to demonstrate the relationship between school-to-work transition and mismatch status. To investigate the effect of an education-job mismatch on wages, a Mincer-type equation with OLS estimations is used. Along with this, taking into consideration potential unobserved heterogeneity issue, a propensity score matching method is applied. Findings The results indicate a large difference between those with tertiary education and those with non-tertiary education in terms of the probability of being employed with a wrong match. Young individuals without tertiary education are more likely to be employed with a right match. Analysis of the impact of overeducation on wages shows that the impact of overeducation depends on how it is measured. According to the objective approach, overeducated male individuals receive low wages compared to well matched, but estimation results based on the total sample of subjective approach indicate the positive effects of overeducation on wage. Originality/value This paper contributes to the existing literature on the school-to-work transition and overeducation by focusing on one of the transition economies, which has been largely neglected by the literature.


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