While humanities graduates can aspire to many fields of work, these labour markets are mostly fragmented and relatively small. In order to be able to enter one of these potential professional fields in a targeted and successful manner, students in the humanities need to develop an individual professional profile. This profile comprises individual…

We use vocational training curricula to investigate how IT skills are trained within broader "skills packages" and how these relate to labour market outcomes. Skills packages are the typical combinations of IT skills (e.g., CNC) and technical or nontechnical skills (e.g., material sciences or work safety) that are jointly required in the…

One of the important roles of HE institutions is to train graduates who will smoothly enter the labour market. The literature review demonstrates that one effective method to facilitate this transition is to ensure students acquire professional experience. The aim was to establish the scale and characteristics of employers' demand for work…

Purpose: This study illuminates the assumption that internships facilitate labor market entry and answers the question of why internships have a positive effect on students' self-perceived employability. It is assumed that internships enable more positive employability perceptions by reducing career-entry worries -- the worries of not finding a…

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational…

A decade ago, the world was not prepared for the widespread impact of the global financial recession. Gradually, the operating focus of higher education sector in many high-income countries around shifted, causing budget-cuts to become a recurring and dominant theme. Yet, at the same time, the expanding middle-class in emerging countries were keen…

Drawing on an ethnography in regional employment offices in a French-German canton in Switzerland, it is the aim of this article to articulate the complexities involved in the practices revolving around and geared towards the role of language competences in the process of professional reintegration, particularly so with regards to migrants who…

With the rise of mass higher education, competition between graduates in the labour market is increasing. Students are aware that their degree will not guarantee them a job and realise they should add value and distinction to their credentials to achieve a positional advantage. Participation in extra-curricular activities (ECAs) is one such…

This paper analyses whether tertiary education of different types, i.e., academic or vocational tertiary education, leads to more or less favorable labor market outcomes. We study the problem for Switzerland, where more than two thirds of the workforce gain vocational secondary degrees and a substantial number go on to a vocational tertiary degree…

Young women in advanced industrial countries have been outperforming young men in educational attainment at the same time that their labor market outcomes are still lagging. Sex segregation in education and the labor market is identified as an important source of this imbalance. In this article, the authors advance some thoughts about this…