Business Cycles and Apprenticeships

The economic reasons why firms engage in apprenticeship training are twofold. First, apprenticeship training is a potentially cost-effective strategy for filling a firm’s future vacancies, particularly if skilled labor on the external labor market is scarce. Second, apprentices can be cost-effective substitutes for other types of labor in the current production process. As current and expected business and labor market conditions determine a firm’s expected work volume and thus its future demand for skilled labor, they are potentially important drivers of a firm’s training decisions. Empirical studies have found that the business cycle affects apprenticeship markets. However, while the economic magnitude of these effects is moderate on average, there is substantial heterogeneity across countries, even among those that at first sight seem very similar in terms of their apprenticeship systems. Moreover, identification of business cycle effects is a difficult task. First, statistics on apprenticeship markets are often less developed than labor market statistics, making empirical analyses of demand and supply impossible in many cases. In particular, data about unfilled apprenticeship vacancies and unsuccessful applicants are paramount for assessing potential market failures and analyzing the extent to which business cycle fluctuations may amplify imbalances in apprenticeship markets. Second, the intensity of business cycle effects on apprenticeship markets is not completely exogenous, as governments typically undertake a variety of measures, which differ across countries and may change over time, to reduce the adverse effects of economic downturns on apprenticeship markets. During the economic crisis related to the COVID-19 global pandemic, many countries took unprecedented actions to support their economies in general and reacted swiftly to introduce measures such as the provision of financial subsidies for training firms or the establishment of apprenticeship task forces. As statistics on apprenticeship markets improve over time, such heterogeneity in policy measures should be exploited to improve our understanding of the business cycle and its relationship with apprenticeships.

The Vocational Integration of Students-Apprentices in the Context of a Pandemic Crisis: Feedback from the University CFA in Corsica

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated major economic impacts in the vast majority of countries, including falling GDP and global trade, massive job losses, deficits and increased public debt. If quasi-generalized interventionist economic policies have made it possible to cushion the paralysis of the productive devices, the short-term global outlook remains very uncertain. In this gloomy context, what will be the situation on the labour market, and in particular the vocational integration of students? Corsica presents the example of a small island territory in search of a regional development scheme based on the economy of knowledge and competence. In this major structural perspective, the University Apprenticeship Training Centre (CFA UNIV) in the Corsican region has been striving, for a decade, to contribute to the enhancement of students-apprentices vocational integration from the University of Corsica. Within the scope of its activities, are the monitoring and evaluation of the students-apprentices’ professional integration from the University of Corsica. Since 2011, the carrying out the annual surveys on students-apprentices’ future from the University of Corsica has demonstrated the capacity of the sandwich course training in Higher Education simultaneously to boost the employability of skilled human capital and the growth of local business structuring. This contribution will aim to synthesize ten years of CFA UNIV experience and will endeavour to analyse the localized consequences of a global pandemic crisis on the nature of the vocational integration student-apprentices from the University of Corsica in a small territory island.

Current status of interaction between vet institutions and enterprises

Introduction. The implementation of work-based learning in the process of joint vocational instruction by enterprises and VET (vocational education and training) institutions is the most important focus of the educational policy in developed countries. In the Russian Federation, over the past decade, such kind of partnership has been developing both through spontaneous self-organisation and purposefully in the form of several government projects. VET education policy was focused mainly on implementing the World Skills championship movement in the domestic field. As a result, no fundamental changes in institutional and economic structure were implemented to make apprenticeship training compelling for enterprises. Nevertheless, no full-fledged accumulation of information on the dynamics of the development of various forms of work-based learning was carried out to prevent the decent assessment of the current state of apprenticeship training in the Russian Federation and to conduct a comparative international analysis.The present article aims to determine the current status of interaction between enterprises and VET institutions, fulfil the lack of quantitative information on the topic, and test the hypothesis that under the current institutional conditions the interaction frequency and intensity between enterprises and VET institutions in the Russian Federation lag behind similar international indicators.Methodology and research methods. In the course of the research, the methods of socio-historical analysis, the instruments of theoretical and methodological analysis, hypothesis building, assessment and generalisation methods were applied. The empirical part of the present research was formed by the methods of secondary analysis of the Russian and foreign studies on the development of the VET and its interaction with the labour market. In addition, the method of comparative and retrospective analysis of statistical data from Russian and international studies was employed. Finally, the method of questionnaire survey and the method of content analysis of websites of educational institutions and enterprises were used. The study involved 603 VET institutions from 29 constituent entities of the Russian Federation.Results and scientific novelty. One of the most significant research findings is a systemic description of the current status of the partnership between VET institutions and enterprises in the Russian Federation. Main directions and forms of interaction between VET institutions and enterprises in Russia at the end of the second decade of the XXI century were outlined (curricula development, internship for students, and participation in education results assessment). The prospects for the development of partnership between VET institutions and enterprises and the influencing factors (economic and institutional) were determined. The particular Russian characteristics of the interaction between the VET system and the labour market were identified and described as an inharmonious partnership with the employer’s active articulation of a request for a high-quality human resource without proportionate participation in its instruction. The quantitative assessment of current interaction between enterprises and VET institutions in Russia allowed comparative analysis with the indicators of foreign countries to be conducted. In our country, the authors revealed a lower level of enterprises investments (especially financial ones) in the students’ human capital development.Practical significance. The sociological toolkit and schemes of dynamic and comparative analysis developed in the course of the research can be used in further research on the education system and on the related issues. The research findings can be applied while planning and implementing educational policy measures.

The costs of standardized apprenticeship curricula for training firms

Standardized curricula define the set of skills that must be trained within a training occupation and thus are a key regulatory element of apprenticeship systems. Although clear economic rationales support the usage of such curricula, they necessarily impose costs, especially on firms that train apprentices, but do not use the full set of skills in their productive process and/or train other skills that are not covered by the curriculum. In this paper, we identify the trade-offs involved in setting up training curricula and use data from the most recent survey on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training among Swiss firms to quantify the associated costs to training firms. On average, training firms state that they do not use 17% of the training content prescribed by the relevant curriculum, and 11% of the companies train additional skills not covered by the curriculum. We show that both kinds of misfit are associated with higher training costs and lower productive output from apprentices. This shows that the regulator imposes costs on firms in order to guarantee broad skills development for apprentices. It also cautions against overly broad curricula that may impose disproportionate costs on firms.

Pengembangan Kompetensi Mahasiswa Melalui Pelatihan Magang Online Saat Pandemi Covid 19

This activity is carried out in collaboration with 3 Universities in the City of Tasikmalaya with the Financial Services Institution in the Capital Market to develop student competencies through an apprenticeship training program. This activity is carried out for 30 working days starting from February 2021 to March 2021 with a rotating system considering the training period during the Covid 19 pandemic. Internships are carried out online and once a week carried out offline with a rotating system to avoid crowds and maintain health protocols. With this work apprenticeship, it is hoped that students participating in the apprenticeship who are final year students can prepare themselves in the real world of work after graduating from college, where apprenticeships are also expected to be able to apply the theories obtained during college to be able to apply them in companies or institutions where they work. This activity is carried out with assistance from lecturers and tutors from the company. The implementation of this internship resulted in participants being able to learn firsthand the stock trading system at the Indonesia Stock Exchange with direct supervision of the trading market and be able to see how the marketing administration of opening a share account.

The value of apprentices in the care sector: the effect of apprenticeship costs on the mobility of graduates from apprenticeship training

This paper provides evidence on the effect of apprenticeship costs on the decision whether care facilities employ apprenticeship graduates after completing apprenticeship training. To account for the endogeneity in apprenticeship costs, we exploit an exogenous reduction in the apprenticeship costs of care facilities by exploiting the fact that the underlying apprenticeship levy was introduced across the German federal states at different points in time. We find that the redistribution of apprenticeship costs increases the probability of leaving the training facility after completing apprenticeship training by 10 percentage points. Furthermore, we use this quasi-experimental setting to estimate the effect of mobility of graduates on their wages, which hints at a negative relationship in the upper quartile of the wage distribution.