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Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training
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The Economics of Vocational Education and Training

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Edited by:  Prof. Dr. Samuel Mühlemann, LMU Munich, Germany and Prof. Dr. Harald Pfeifer, Maastricht University, Netherlands and BIBB, Germany

The labour markets of many industrialised countries are facing extensive technological and demographic changes. Digitalisation, networking, and robotics all transform the world of work and with it the demand for skills and qualifications. This development is accompanied by a decreasing number of young people undertaking vocational training. Instead, school graduates are increasingly pursuing academic qualifications. Furthermore, many regions are struggling to integrate refugees and people with a migration background into the labour market.
Vocational education and training (VET) is often valued for its ability to help young people transition smoothly from education to employment. VET also allows those already employed to adapt to the changing demands of their fields. Despite an increasing amount of research in this area, many questions in the field of the Economics of VET remain unanswered. These questions pertain to both the decision to invest in VET and the outcomes thereof on the individual, firm- and state levels. 
The special issue on the Economics of VET therefore strives to bring together theoretical and empirical work addressing topics related to this field of study.

  2. Standardized curricula define the set of skills that must be trained within a training occupation and thus are a key regulatory element of apprenticeship systems. Although clear economic rationales support the...

    Authors: Jürg Schweri, Manuel Aepli and Andreas Kuhn
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2021 13:16
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. German establishments heavily rely on the apprenticeship system for skill supply. With one in four apprenticeship contracts ending before successful completion, it is in the interest of establishments and poli...

    Authors: Caroline Neuber-Pohl
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2021 13:12
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. This study seeks to reveal the heterogeneity in occupation-specific wage returns among graduates of the German vocational education and training (VET) system. We distinguish between VET graduates with and with...

    Authors: Anett Friedrich and Sandra Hirtz
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2021 13:6
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. The aim of this article is to identify the main stakeholders of institutions of professional higher education in the field of internal security in selected countries, and the most important collaboration pract...

    Authors: Anne Valk and Mairit Kratovitš
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2021 13:4
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. This paper contributes to the literature on non-monetary benefits of Vocational Education and Training (VET) by investigating its influence on a firm’s innovation process. While an increasing number of studies...

    Authors: Christian Rupietta, Johannes Meuer and Uschi Backes-Gellner
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2021 13:1
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Since 2008, the Austrian Vocational Training Act has given young people the opportunity to obtain vocational qualifications in supra-company training workshops. In addition to the traditional full-time vocatio...

    Authors: Peter Schlögl, Martin Mayerl, Roland Löffler and Alexander Schmölz
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2020 12:17
    Content type: Research Published on:

  8. This paper shows that young men who completed an apprenticeship education plus a tertiary vocational education have considerably higher earnings during the first half of their career than those who obtained an...

    Authors: Veronika Lukesch and Thomas Zwick
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2020 12:16
    Content type: Research Published on:

  9. Despite the ongoing debate about how much academic versus vocational upper-secondary education is favorable for a country and large differences across countries of those two types of education exist, the inter...

    Authors: Katharina Jaik
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2020 12:10
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. Digital skills are thought to be a key competence of the twenty-first century. With the rapid growth of internet and communication tool (ICT) usage among both students and teachers, cooperative (co-op) educati...

    Authors: Steffen Wild and Lydia Schulze Heuling
    Citation: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 2020 12:5
    Content type: Research Published on:
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Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    1.3 - 2-year Impact Factor
    1.6 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.194 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.513 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    11 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    213 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage
    279,678 downloads
    20 Altmetric mentions

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Society affiliation

Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training is an initiative of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) (Bern, Switzerland), in collaboration with the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BiBB). The publication costs for the journal are covered by the Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education (SCCRE), so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

  • ISSN: 1877-6345 (electronic)