Going Up-Skill: Exploring the Transformation of the German Skill Formation System

Abstract

The German skill formation system has been undergoing significant changes over the last two decades and most recently we observed massive expansion of higher education vis-à-vis the ‘traditional’ dual vocational training, which stands in contrast with the notion of equilibrium that has accompanied the German skill formation system in the literature. Yet, while the institutional underpinnings of the traditional model have been subject to comprehensive scrutiny and theorisation – including analyses of recent patterns of change – it remains unclear what arrangements have become institutionalised as skill formation ‘moves up’ from the dual vocational training to the university system. The article suggests that a (dominant) pattern of state coordination co-exists with a segmentalist pattern: the state mobilised resources and coordinated the provision of high skills to the benefit of all companies and in particular of small and medium sized enterprises that have relatively fewer resources and capacity to train; in parallel, large firms, with more resources and a large internal labour market, met their high skill needs also without state-mediation, by establishing direct relationships with higher education institutions through dual study programmes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For most insightful comments, the authors would like to thank the Special Issue editors, Sidney Rothstein and Tobias Schulze-Cleven, participants to the panel ‘Imbalanced at the Core: Rethinking the “German Model”’ that took place at the CES conference 2018, and two anonymous reviewers.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Niccolo Durazzi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on institutional change in advanced capitalist countries, with an interest on education, skills and labour market policy. His work appeared in Social Policy & Administration and Politics & Society.

Chiara Benassi is Lecturer in Human Resources Management at King’s Business School. Her research is in the area of comparative employment relations and her work was published in, among others, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Socio-Economic Review and Politics & Society.

ORCID

Niccolo Durazzi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7581-5595

Chiara Benassi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7038-3084

Notes

1. Bavaria and Lower Saxony implemented this change in 2011, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin in 2012.

2. Moreover, government policy strengthened the research profile of Fachhochschulen through funding programmes targeting specifically applied research, such as the programme ‘Innovative Hochschule’ which promotes research interactions in particular between universities of applied sciences and SMEs (BMBF n.d.).

3. MINT is the German acronym for STEM.

Additional information

Funding

Niccolo Durazzi is grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for a Short Term Research Grant 2016 (57214227). Chiara Benassi gratefully acknowledges the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ‘Managing human capital in different institutional contexts’ (Grant number: ES/N01605X/1).