Vocational education, tertiary education, and skill use across career stages

Abstract

Vocational education enhances smooth transitions into the labour market. However, this initial advantage might vanish over the career and eventually turn into a disadvantage because the skills of vocationally trained workers become outdated faster. So far, research has examined this potential vocational trade-off by assessing labour market outcomes such as employment and income. This study uses a different approach, it directly examines how different types of skills used at work change over the career of vocationally trained workers compared to tertiary-educated workers, and how career events shape skill-use changes. With data from the German National Education Study (NEPS), we examine five skills use dimensions based on job-tasks measures: analytical, creative, managerial, interactive, and manual skills. We find that skill-use differentials between vocational and tertiary-educated workers are only small to modest. The clearest differences relate to analytical and manual skills. Looking across career stages, the observed skill-use differentials remain rather stable across career stages - thus, the vocational skill trade-off thesis is only partially supported. Occupational mobility and unemployment contribute to observable changes, whereas job-related further training does not. Our results challenge skill-based explanations of a vocational trade-off. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

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Author Affiliations

Research Unit “Skill Formation and Labor Markets”, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Department of Life Course, Universität Bremen, Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Department "monitoring Society and Social Change, Universität Mannheim, Mannheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany

Funding & Acknowledgements

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG

Grant: 390744482

Funding text 1: The authors thank the participants of the colloquium series of the department ‘Skill Formation and Labor Market’ at the WZB, at the Research Colloquium ‘Analytical Sociology’ at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Alexander Gattig for helpful comments and Ruta Daktariunaite for research assistance. The authors thank Martin Ehlert for helpful advice and for sharing his imputation routines of further training. This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Adults, 10.5157/NEPS:SC6:8.0.0. From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network.; Funding text 2: Research reported in this publication was supported by project funding provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Project ID 390744482).

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF

Funding text 1: The authors thank the participants of the colloquium series of the department ‘Skill Formation and Labor Market’ at the WZB, at the Research Colloquium ‘Analytical Sociology’ at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Alexander Gattig for helpful comments and Ruta Daktariunaite for research assistance. The authors thank Martin Ehlert for helpful advice and for sharing his imputation routines of further training. This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Adults, 10.5157/NEPS:SC6:8.0.0. From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network.; Funding text 2: Research reported in this publication was supported by project funding provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Project ID 390744482).

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2 undefined

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Vocational education, tertiary education, and skill use across career stages

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