Abstract
In most of present-day Europe, people spend about a quarter of their life in education and training. About a quarter of the present population of Europe are currently pupils or students, and the various groups of education and teaching professionals are the single largest professional group in the European labour force. The time spent and the attainment achieved in education and training is among the most influential determinants of the opportunities and living conditions later in life. Indeed, the more time is spent in education and training, the longer and more prosperous and advantageous life tends to be. Education plays a crucial role in shaping labour market outcomes, social stratification and mobility, the social disparities in life chances and the reproduction of such inequalities from generation to generation. Formation of human capital is not only individually a profitable investment but also considered essential in the international competition of economies. Education also affects many social, cultural and political domains such as value and attitude formation, political interest and political and social participation.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For instance, in practically all countries with early segmentation disparities between students of different social class background in school performance towards the end of compulsory education are larger than in the international average of countries (see Figure 9.4 below).
- 3.
This does parallel as it appears other ‘liberal’ elements in the UK educational system, such as the high degree of free choice among curriculum subjects left to individual students early in the educational career, the relatively high degree of autonomy of schools or aspects mentioned above in connection with the discussion of Boli et al. (1985) on the civil society characteristics in the early history of educational development. A further related characteristic of the UK system is the considerable role of private schools in secondary education which evidently represents an alternative form of tracking which allows well-to-do families providing privileged educational opportunities to their children.
- 4.
It should be noted, however, that an increase in the enrolment of pupils in general tracks is rather apparent for CEE countries, with Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia having more pronounced growth rates (Kogan 2008).
- 5.
The new apprenticeships that have been introduced recently are more an opportunity to make first work experiences rather than anything of a systematic professional training.
- 6.
For a case study of new fields of work for tertiary education graduates in the United Kingdom see Elias and Purcell (2004). For a discussion on the relationship between secondary-level vocational education and tertiary education expansion see Müller and Wolbers (2003).
- 7.
Binary systems to some extent thus replicate with their parallel structure of different kinds of tertiary institutions the pattern of parallel general vs. vocational tracks at the secondary level.
- 8.
English secondary education pupils take exams in selected subjects at Ordinary or Advanced level. The number of O- and A-level credits obtained determines their chances of admittance to more, or less demanding tertiary studies. The reforms in the 1994 Education Act also make it possible to combine general and vocational secondary qualifications to qualify for tertiary education (see Raffe et al. (1999) on the problems of unifying academic and vocational learning).
- 9.
For an interesting discussion see Pechar and Pellert (2004).
- 10.
Initially the Bologna declaration was signed by the then EU-member states, the then EU-accession countries and Norway, Switzerland and Iceland. While the declaration notes the important contributions to the process by the educational institutions with their autonomy and of non-governmental European organizations with competence on higher education, there is no mention of any EU institution nor has any such institution signed the declaration. The EU, Commission later joined, however side by side with other international institutions and associations such as UNESCO, the European Council, the European University Association and the European Student Union.
- 11.
In Germany, e.g. a law enabling reforms along a bachelor/master structure was prepared to counteract very long study times and high dropout rates from university studies. Similar pressures and initiatives existed in other countries, e.g. in Austria (Pechar and Pellert 2004), the Netherlands and Flanders (Dittrich et al. 2004) or in Italy. In Eastern Europe most countries were to modernize their higher education systems after the fall of communism and welcomed the opportunity to join into a wider European process.
- 12.
Often within-country opposition to the reforms has been given up not by the conviction that something better is coming, but rather by resignation that one’s own country’s idiosyncrasy cannot survive when most others follow a common new track.
- 13.
The most concrete exercise in this direction are the so-called Dublin-descriptors, in which the competences to be required from a holder of a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree’s are described on a two-page leaflet with a number of general definitions. See http://www.jointquality.nl/. An effective observation of the nations’ eagerness for cooperation is that Germany and Austria cannot agree to an identical translation of the English language version of these descriptors into German.
- 14.
Public funds for such courses are only available for universities and the required accreditation criteria make it hardly possible to establish master courses at the Hoghscholen.
- 15.
For detailed discussion see Witte (2006).
- 16.
About REFLEX see: http://www.roa.unimaas.nl/projects/reflexabstract.htm
- 17.
About two-thirds of the graduates work in either Germany (17%), UK (12%), Switzerland (11 %), USA (9%), the Netherlands (7%) or France (6%), and working abroad is concentrated in neighbouring countries. The Dutch, Swiss and Austrians often work in Germany. Graduates from a Scandinavian country most often work in another Scandinavian country.
- 18.
However, it would be wrong to assume that everywhere in the non-European world private financing and private delivery play a similarly strong role as in the countries listed in Table 9.3. While several other populous countries such as Argentina, Indonesia or the Philippines have a similar public/private mix as the countries listed, in India, in contrast, almost all education is publicly financed and publicly provided (OECD 2003).
- 19.
Comparing educational attainment in different countries suffers from various inconsistencies and lack of detail in delivering educational information by different countries to international statistical agencies such as Eurostat or OECD that cannot be discussed here; for a review and suggestions for improvement see Schneider (2008a, b).
- 20.
The extreme case is probably Spain, where 90% of the oldest cohort have received but a few years of elementary schooling, while almost half of the youngest has gained tertiary degrees.
- 21.
- 22.
Much research in this area has followed Mare’s (1980) exemplary study for the USA on social disparities in the successive educational transitions individuals make when they move through the various stages in the educational system.
- 23.
The databases used by Breen et al. (2009a, b) are considerably larger than those used by Shavit and Blossfeld (1993), and hence allow more stable and reliable estimates for change over time with less random noise. The former also use variable definitions more comparable across countries.
- 24.
For a review of respective findings see Breen and Jonsson (2005) and Breen et al. (2009a).
- 25.
It should be mentioned that the understanding of binary versus diversified systems by Arum et al. (2007) differs somewhat from the characterization of systems given in Section 2.4. For instance, Arum et al. classify both France and the United Kingdom as binary systems of higher education while they include Sweden among the diversified systems.
- 26.
Furthermore, after controlling for social origin the original disadvantage of Spanish and Portuguese youth in Germany turns into advantage − i.e. these groups appear to outperform native Germans.
- 27.
- 28.
If anything, for two classes the class disadvantage for girls is somewhat smaller than it is for boys in the same classes: Compared to the education received by girls and boys in the upper classes the class disadvantage in families of farmers and self-employed is somewhat smaller for girls than for their brothers. Given the situation of these classes, girls receive relatively more education than their brothers, probably to recompensate that the brothers are more likely to inherit the parental business, a regularity that is confirmed for various countries in Europe. Also see Buchmann and DiPrete (2006) for an interesting study, how in the United States effects of low parental education, which earlier worked to the disadvantage of girls, have changed and now works to the disadvantage of boys.
- 29.
Interestingly, countries that rank high in continuing vocational training reach this position through a high level of training involvement in all sectors and kinds of firms. In countries with lower overall training, in contrast, differences between sectors, between large and small firms, and between innovative and non-innovative firms are much more pronounced.
- 30.
Theoretically, matching models (Kalleberg and Sørensen 1979; Logan 1996) are probably the most useful starting point to understand the allocation of individuals to jobs, the effect of institutions, and why similar skills acquired through education and training may have different labor market outcomes across educational systems and countries. Matching models explain the outcome of decisions of two contracting actors − in the classical paper these were men and women matching for a marital union (Gale and Shappley 1962). In our case, the matching partners are workers with their certified qualifications and employers with specific jobs. Employers try to recruit those applicants they perceive to be both most productive and least costly to train for the kind of work the job requires (Thurow 1976). They use qualifications as signals to assess actual and/or potential productivity and costs. Workers with given preferences strive to obtain the jobs that promise the best possible returns for their educational investments − monetary and non-pecuniary rewards, status, security or other aspects of job quality. For a further discussion how varying institutional arrangements affect the matching of individuals and jobs, see Müller and Jacob (2008).
- 31.
Characteristics of educational systems have also to be seen as related to different arrangements of labour market segmentation. Educational systems with a high degree of occupational specificity support the prevalence of occupationally segmented labour markets while firm internal labour market structures prevail in countries with little occupation related training in the educational system (Maurice et al. 1982; Blossfeld and Mayer 1988; Marsden 1990).
- 32.
Respective findings are shown below, but see also Brauns et al. (2003); Müller et al. (2002); Kogan and Schubert (2003) and Smyth and McCoy (2000). One case that does not seem to fit into these patterns concern some of the countries of Southern Europe, where graduates with different levels of education differ less from each other in length of search for first job and unemployment in early careers than in other countries (Scherer 2004; Gangl 2003b; Iannelli 2003; Iannelli and Bonmati 2003).
- 33.
The data derive from the European Union Labour Force surveys, either from the regular annual surveys or from the special ad hoc module on transitions from school to work (data collected in 2000).
- 34.
Breen (2005) has developed a formal model to explain and test the risks of unemployment of workers at school leaving age compared to the risks of the experienced workforce. The model shows how these risks should vary between countries with different signalling capacity of the education and training system and with a different extent of labour protection in the countries.
- 35.
We cannot enter here a discussion of the ‘over-qualification issue’ appropriate to the complexity of the problem; for exemplary work see Halaby (1994) or Büchel et al. (2003).
- 36.
We should also note here a core problem for the assessment in a European comparative perspective labour market outcomes of education and their change over time: In pertinent European Union databases such as the EU Labour Force Survey or the European Community Household Panel information on education is only available in rather broad educational categories. So, developments that might become evident when educational information were available in finer grids (as they often are at the national level) may not or less clearly appear in a comparative perspective.
- 37.
For further discussion of specific problems for persons with low qualifications see Solga (2008).
- 38.
- 39.
Similarly to the trust in the European Parliament, trust in the European Commission is questioned in the Eurobarometer, and the ranking of countries is quite similar to the one shown.
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We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments to an earlier version of the paper by Richard Breen, Robert Erikson, Karl-Ulrich Mayer, Ulrich Teichler and the Editors of the volume.
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Müller, W., Kogan, I. (2010). Education. In: Immerfall, S., Therborn, G. (eds) Handbook of European Societies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88199-7_9
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