The linkage between the education and employment systems: ideal types of vocational education and training programs

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the literature by proposing a methodological approach that scholars in all research fields can use to develop high-quality explanatory typologies. We argue that every typology should be constructed using a systematic, transparent process and must have a strong theoretical foundation to validate its explanatory value. Drawing on Max Weber’s typology theory, we apply our approach to construct three ideal types of vocational education and training (VET) programs. By bypassing heterogeneous context conditions, our typological approach enables us to compare VET programs based on the criteria that are relevant to an explanation of youth labor market outcomes. We build on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, which helps elucidate the significance of the linkage between actors from the education and employment systems in VET. The first ideal type, with maximal linkage, entails equal power-sharing between both kinds of actors. We expect such a VET program to have the most favorable outcome. The other two ideal types, in which one system has all the power, result in either undesirable youth labor market outcomes, such as unemployment or skills mismatch, or lack of access to further education.

KEYWORDS:

• Education system
• social systems theory
• ideal types
• typology
• vocational education and training (VET)

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Gebert Ruef Foundation. We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their valuable comments and suggestions. In addition, for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article, we thank Thomas Bolli, the members of the Swiss Leading House on the Economics of Education, the participants of the Conference on Sociological Perspectives on Education at the Zurich University of Teacher Education and of the Congress on Research in Vocational Education and Training at the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. For editorial help, our thanks go to Natalie Reid. All responsibility for remaining mistakes lies with the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Gebert Ruef Foundation [GRS-043/13].

Notes on contributors

Ladina Rageth

Dr. Ladina Rageth is a postdoctoral researcher in the research center for Comparative Education Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Zurich and both her master’s and PhD theses center around the sociology of education. She applies diverse social science methods to her research interests including comparative research on vocational education and training and its outcomes on the youth labor market. Moreover, she is currently investigating the social status of vocational education and training in Switzerland.

Ursula Renold

Dr. Ursula Renold is head of the research center for Comparative Education Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich. She is director of the Center on the Economics and Management of Education and Training Systems (CEMETS).  As part of the CEMETS reform lab for vocational education and training systems, Renold and her team support more than 20 countries with technical advice and research to develop evidence-based policy. Renold's research focuses on the reengineering of education systems that are geared to the labor market, specifically institutional issues, governance, and labor market outcomes.