Collective skill formation systems thrive if employers' skill needs are reflected in apprenticeship training programmes and firms offer apprenticeship positions. Occupation-level adaptation processes underpin these systems, which offer upper-secondary level vocational education leading to hundreds of occupations. Yet, it is considered challenging…

In recent years Norway and Switzerland have introduced local training agencies (TAs), local intermediary organisations consisting of firms involved in apprentice training. In both countries, the starting point for the formation of the TA was roughly similar: enabling more firms to participate in apprentice training. Despite similar tasks, TAs have…

What is the significance of regulations of job contracts and wages when it comes to young people's access to labour market? This is an issue that has attracted and continues to attract a great deal of interest in both research and politics. Proposals for deregulated employment protection and reduced entry-level pay recur regularly in public…

This paper argues that country size can play a crucial role in shaping the type of gradual change observed in collective skill formation systems. Collectively governed dual-apprenticeship training has its base in the industrial and crafts sectors of the economy and builds on the decentralised cooperation of multiple public and private…

This handbook, first published in 2014, aims at helping policy makers and social partners understand some of the ways in which learning in the workplace can be encouraged and how its quality can be improved. It is also intended to help them understand some of the ways that such learning can be organised in a structured manner so that it benefits…

Austria, Germany and Switzerland are renowned for their extensive systems of collective vocational skill formation, which, however, have developed largely in separation from higher education. This divide has become increasingly contested as a result of a variety of socioeconomic factors that have led to an increasing demand for higher level…

This article presents a comparative analysis of governance structures in the dual vocational education and training (VET) systems of Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. First a theoretical framework for the classification of plural systems such as dual apprenticeship training is discussed. It is argued that governance in VET can be…

The demand grows constantly more urgent for the closer adaptation of schools to the needs of the communities in which they are located and by which they are supported. Some countries have succeeded in this better than others. Among those that have succeeded best are the Swiss Cantons. Believing that a careful study of the methods by which they…