The Impact of Education on Youth Employability: The Case of Selected Southeastern European Countries

This paper focuses on the processes of school-to-work transitions in a selected group of countries from South-eastern Europe (SEE), namely: Bosnia and Herzegovina; Croatia; Montenegro; North Macedonia; Serbia; and, Slovenia. Each of these countries display the same roots of development in their educational systems: however, due to their transition and integration processes within the European Union, they implemented different concepts of reforms within their educational systems. In addition, the challenges of youth employability are a common problem for each of the selected countries, and the effectiveness of the processes of school-to-work-transition varies across the countries. By using panel data and multiple linear regression models, this paper estimates the impact of different educational levels on youth employability and changes in the rates of NEET population (aged 15–24) in the selected group of countries over the period 2009 to 2019. The results suggest that the impact of the attained level of education has an ambiguous effect on the rates of youth employment; moreover, the relationship with changes in NEET rates are statistically significant and negative in most of the selected group of countries.

Rethinking Education and Livelihoods in India

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a need for rethinking approaches to education and livelihoods. Education in its present dispensation does not provide equitable access to children from marginalized segments of the population. It also suffers from deficits in the areas of social and emotional skills, over-emphasis on the three Rs, language used as a medium of instruction, and excessive competition for scoring marks, among others. There is very low uptake of vocational education. The National Education Policy 2020 tries to address some of these issues and plans on closer integration of vocational education with the school framework. High unemployment rates of educated youth, along with underemployment due to skill mismatch, show poor school-to-work transition and underscore the importance of TVET for youth in the future. Skill already exists in the economy in informal knowledge systems which are largely undocumented and thus not acknowledged in the formal system. These need to be combined with Western-centric knowledge systems so that the imbalance between formally educated/trained workers and informally trained workers is redressed. There is also a need to bring back the joy of learning, as Tagore’s experimentation with education has demonstrated.

The Impact of Cultural Capital on Development of Entrepreneurship in Wales

The focus of this paper is the impact of parental cultural capital on offspring’s occupational choice in relation to entrepreneurship. Despite growing interest to cultural motives for entrepreneurship on an individual level, few studies link these two domains empirically. This study follows the Culture Based Development research paradigm (CBD) developed by Tubadji and explores how culture influences occupational choices of school graduates during school-to-work transition. The main hypothesis of this paper is that sons of entrepreneurs are more likely to choose transitions into entrepreneurship after graduating school. I test three hypotheses on a unique historic dataset from Wales, UK, employing Probit analysis. I found a significant correlation between entrepreneurial background of father and son’s entrepreneurial entry. Poor socio-economic status of a father is also a predictor of entry into entrepreneurship of their son, motivated by necessity. The findings of this research contributed to the applicability of CBD to a historic dataset of earlier periods to capture a significant cultural impact on entrepreneurship development in Wales, UK.

The presence found for opening to the future: points for a pedagogy of resistance

Perhaps, the greatest gift of the post-pandemic period that we are living is the recovery of a presence that we used to take for granted, not exclusively mediated by the screen of our digital tools. We are gradually coming back ‘to presence’: to school, to work, to the gym, to the restaurant. However, We have to deal with what we have experienced, with the crisis that we have gone through ‘and, specifically, we have to give educational value to this ‘rediscovered’ dimension, hoping that it’s definitive. In this regard, we will focus on the opportunity, more timely than ever, to promote, in a problematic key, educational models that, like those inspired by contemplative pedagogy, work not only on the quality of the presence in the here-and-now, a time constitutively dialogic finally rediscovered, a time to be nourished with sense of life and beauty, but that they also educate, focusing on the ability to ethically resolve individual, social, collective problems, to a responsible projection towards the future.

Development and Validation of the Youth Career Development Competency Scale: A Study Based on Hong Kong Youth

The challenging labor market conditions concomitant with economic globalization and advanced technology have made youth career development competency (YCDC)—young people’s ability to navigate transitions through education into productive and meaningful employment—especially important. The present study aims to develop a holistic instrument to measure YCDC in Hong Kong, which has rarely been investigated in past studies. The sample consisted of 682 youths aged 15–29 years (387 male, mean age = 19.5 years) in Hong Kong. Exploratory factor analysis of the 17-item YCDC scale resulted in four competence factors—engagement, self-understanding, career and pathway exploration, and planning and career management—which accounted for 78.95% of the total variance. The final confirmatory factor analysis results indicated good model fit (CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.06, 90% CI (0.05, 0.07), SRMR = 0.03) and good factor loadings (0.78–0.91). Moreover, the results demonstrated a satisfactory internal consistency of subscales (0.89–0.93). Subgroup consistency across subsamples categorized by gender, age, and years of residence in Hong Kong was also demonstrated. In addition, correlations between the YCDC scale and subscales with other career-related and psychosocial outcomes (i.e., career outcome expectancy, career adaptability, civic engagement, social contribution, and social integration) showed good concurrent validity. The results indicated that the YCDC scale is a valid and reliable tool for measuring career development competence among youth in the Hong Kong context. Its development sheds light on how career professionals can holistically assess young people’s navigation competence during their school-to-work transitions.

'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>