No abstract

IntroductionSwitzerland is among the countries with the lowest baccalaureate rate and therefore also among the countries with relatively limited access to universities (SKBF, 2014). Moreover, each year, some 20% of baccalaureate holders do not start any form of university study, thus limiting the numbers even more. Although, unlike in most other countries, Swiss universities are not allowed to carry out any form of selection of their students, given the low baccalaureate rate, it can nevertheless be assumed that, on average, they attract students with good to very good academic abilities. Before the Bologna reform (five-year Licentiate degree courses), between 1975 and 2001, over one third of the students had not completed their studies within ten years 1 and most had definitively dropped out. Of those who started a three-year Bachelor degree course after the implementation of the Bologna reform, the failure rate after six years was 28.1%. 2 Even if not all students who drop out of their degree courses at university end up without a university degree -some obtain a degree in Switzerland at a university of applied sciences or a pedagogical university, or a university degree abroad -the question of who drops out of university in Switzerland and why is of great importance, as the call for a higher baccalaureate rate to cover the oftlamented shortage of academics would have to be seen in a new light if such an increase were to be associated with higher drop-out rates at universities. We therefore need to know more about whether dropping out is due to personal decisions which are difficult to influence and about how many drop-outs today are the result of poor preparation for study and/or of poor performance during the degree course. Should the latter predominate, there would be a great risk that simply raising the baccalaureate rate in Switzerland would not bring the desired increase in academics or, to a lesser extent, at very high social and individual costs.This article assesses the university careers of all students who started a degree course at a Swiss university between 1975 and 2008. The key advantage of the available data is that they cover the entire student population over a long period and thus warrant against distortions which might arise in random samples or against non-representative results, for instance when special effects only involve specific student cohorts. The disadvantage is that such administrative data only contain a limited number of personal characteristics relating to the students and therefore many questions either cannot be answered or can only be answered approximatively. To compensate somewhat for this drawback, we refer to the results in the research literature of a recent Systematic Review on university drop-outs to interpret our empirical results.This article is structured as follows: following a summary of the findings from the Systematic Review, the data and definitions are set out. The descriptive results bs_bs_banner

No abstract

This paper investigates the phenomenon of qualification mismatch (overeducation) among graduates from universities of applied sciences. Using data from the Swiss graduate surveys, it analyses the incidence of mismatch, determinants, and the connections with earnings and job satisfaction. Analyses show that a year after graduating around one sixth of those employed (17%) are in a job which does not match, or only partially matches, the qualifications they have acquired, and that this proportion is not diminishing significantly in the medium term. The risk of mismatch varies considerably, however, by subject area and final grade. In addition, the results indicate that employment below the level of qualification on entering professional life significantly raises the probability of mismatch in the following years too. Analyses of the impacts suggest that employment poorly matched to education and training is associated with an income penalty of around 5% in the short to medium term. Graduates in a mismatch situation also demonstrate less job satisfaction than those in a position matched to their qualification.