Attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder

Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training

Table 4 Effect of VET on social positioning on the whole sample and by broad age group. Weighted data, OLS (clustered standard error in brackets)

	Whole sample
(Perceived) quality of education (latent)	0.018 [0.032]
(Perceived) labour market outcomes (latent)	0.071 [0.030]^a
VET enables people to continue to higher education	Yes
VET does not provide soft skills	Yes
VET does not lead to well-regarded jobs	Yes
Likelihood of finding a job (relative to people with general education)	Yes
Being accepted in VET (relative to general education)	Yes
Education	Yes
Attended VET (recently or in the past)	− 0.066 [0.027]^a
Father’s education	Yes
Difficulties in making ends meet
From time to time	0.670 [0.132]^a
Almost never/never	1.319 [0.150]^a
Refusal	0.835 [0.142]^a
Gender	Yes
Age class	Yes
Number of persons in the household	Yes
Current labour market position	Yes
Area	Yes
Country dummies	Yes
Constant	4.419 [0.334]^a
Number of observations	20,055
R squared	0.279

^aSignificant at 5%. The reference group of the variable is in parentheses: VET does not lead to well-regarded jobs (totally agree), Education (no education), VET enables people to go on to university (totally agree), VET does not provide students with soft skills (totally agree), likelihood of VET graduates finding a job compared to general education graduates (more likely), ease of being accepted on a VET course (much easier), age group (15 to 24), current occupation (self-employed), Father’s Education (no education), Difficulties in making ends meet (most of the time), Area (rural area), and number of people in the household (1 person)