The Interplay between Education, Skills, and Job Quality

Abstract

Compared to general education, vocational education and training (VET) has been shown to facilitate young people’s integration into the labour market. At the same time, research suggests that VET falls short in teaching basic skills and, in turn, may lead to less adaptability to labour market changes and long-term disadvantages in individual labour market outcomes. To better understand the relationships between education, skills, and labour market outcomes, we examine to what extent job quality differs between individuals with general education and those with VET with respect to different skill levels. Furthermore, we investigate whether the relationship between type of qualification and job quality differs by skills. We broaden past research by considering four indicators of job quality: earnings, job security, job autonomy, and the match between respondents’ abilities and job demands. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies for Germany, we demonstrate that individuals with academic education and advanced VET score higher in job quality concerning earnings and job autonomy as compared to individuals with initial VET. Comparing the two higher qualified groups, academic education is more associated with higher earnings than advanced VET, while the level of job autonomy is similar. Regarding the abilities-demands match, both groups score lower than individuals with initial VET. Moreover, higher literacy skills are associated with higher levels of job quality irrespective of the type and level of formal qualification. Finally, we find no empirical evidence that skills compensate for or reinforce disadvantages in job quality derived from professional qualifications.

Types of Education, Achievement and Labour Market Integration over the Life Course

“…Taken together, the contributions in this issue provide new insights into the complex relationship between types of education, educational achievement, individual and contextual factors and labour market outcomes at various stages in the life course. The results highlight, on the one hand, that different types of education go along with different employment opportunities and job quality in the long-run, and even for individuals working within the same occupation (Glauser et al, 2019;Korber, 2019;Rohrbach-Schmidt, 2019;Wicht et al, 2019). On the other hand, several contributions provide evidence that-despite these differences-there is considerable heterogeneity within types of education.…”

I Want to Become a Registered Nurse as a Non-Traditional, Returning, Evening, and Adult Student in a Community College: A Study of Career-Changing Nursing Students

“…The results from this study echoed most of those previous studies, in that most participants maintained that their achievements in their nursing programme allowed them to register and become a registered nurse, which is one of the most important elements. With the reflection of a previous study, the results of this study indicated that many participants had the desire to become skilled professionals and receive the appropriate training [81] to gain both general skills (e.g., communication, interpersonal behaviours, foreign language, time management, and mathematics) and specific skills (e.g., social caring, patient management, bookkeeping, data collection and analysis, and hospital management) from their college degree programme in order to upgrade themselves as skilled professionals [82].…”

The German system of vocational education and training: challenges of gender, academisation and the integration of low-achieving youth

“…Apart from facilitating entry into higher education, this further qualification is a central instrument for career progression in manufacturing and industry (Haasler, 2014). Research has also shown that the Meister qualification is linked to higher levels of job quality, including income (Wicht et al, 2019). With regard to the school-based routes, a matching, standardised advanced qualification exists only in certain domains, such as nursing.…”