Traditionally, the road to good jobs for young persons in West Germany has been the "dual system" of vocational education and training (VET), similar to apprenticeships in the United States, but practiced on a much wider scale. A large percentage of West German youth usually enter such programs after high school in order to prepare for…

A longitudinal study is being conducted to assess the occupational activities and aspirations of young people trained in West Germany's "dual system" of apprenticeship and part-time jobs. Baseline data were gathered from 21,000 students, and approximately 10,000 of them were contacted one and one-half years later. The sample population…