Do media play a role in promoting vocational education and training? The case of MasterChef

Abstract

It is often suggested that vocational education and training (VET) could be key to cut youth unemployment. VET programmes may provide young people with specific professional qualifications that enable them to successfully compete in the labour market. However, despite the great emphasis placed by governments and other institutions on these programmes, VET appears to be far from reaching its full potential in many countries. One barrier preventing students from pursuing this type of education is the stigma associated with VET. This paper looks at the role of media in changing the negative social perceptions of VET. Specifically, it examines whether in Italy the growing popularity of the cooking television reality show MasterChef has led to an increase in the number of students willing to study for a vocational qualification in hospitality and catering. The empirical results show that an increase in the number of MasterChef's viewers is associated with a higher proportion of students willing to attend hospitality and catering schools. This finding suggests that popular television cooking series like MasterChef may be a vehicle through which the image and the attractiveness of VET can be improved.

“Laying bricks to build integrated career guidance plans”: Best practices in vocational education and training in Andalusia, Spain

“…As Chankseliani et al (2016) warn, policy efforts are needed to disseminate excellence to the entire VET sector, and to publicise these events more widely as an opportunity to make the training of young people visible and more widely recognised. The role of the media as a valuable instrument for promoting VET and as a means of stimulating students, teachers and companies should also be considered ( Di Pietro, 2018 ).…”

Reaching for Gold! The Impact of a Positive Reputation Shock on Career Choice

“…1 A topically comparable paper (Di Pietro, 2018) shows the influence of a television competition "MasterChef," a television show featuring celebrity chefs for becoming master chefs on the choice of this occupation. While the paper is able to identify temporarily random treatments of the population (in Italy), the impact can "only" be measured through the regional differences in the number of yearly enrollments in hospitality and catering Thirdly, we not only have the exact figures on the apprenticeship contracts concluded in the training year following the reputation shock, but also, thanks to the national longitudinal statistics based on individual data, information on the stability of the training contracts concluded in a specific training year and specific training occupation.…”