Do media play a role in promoting vocational education and training? The case of MasterChef

ABSTRACT

It is often suggested that vocational education and training (VET) could be key to cut youth unemployment. VET programmes may provide young people with specific professional qualifications that enable them to successfully compete in the labour market. However, despite the great emphasis placed by governments and other institutions on these programmes, VET appears to be far from reaching its full potential in many countries. One barrier preventing students from pursuing this type of education is the stigma associated with VET. This paper looks at the role of media in changing the negative social perceptions of VET. Specifically, it examines whether in Italy the growing popularity of the cooking television reality show MasterChef has led to an increase in the number of students willing to study for a vocational qualification in hospitality and catering. The empirical results show that an increase in the number of MasterChef's viewers is associated with a higher proportion of students willing to attend hospitality and catering schools. This finding suggests that popular television cooking series like MasterChef may be a vehicle through which the image and the attractiveness of VET can be improved.

KEYWORDS:

• MasterChef
• vocational education and training
• hospitality and catering
• panel data
• television

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. He is solely responsible for any omissions or errors.

Notes on contributor

Giorgio Di Pietro is a Reader in the Economics of Education at the Westminster Business School and an IZA Research Fellow. His main research interests are empirical issues in the field of the economics of Education.

Notes

1 The number of viewers of a television programme during an average minute (i.e. average minute rating or AMR) is a well-known audience measure. However, one should note that this indicator underestimates the number of MasterChef viewers as people may also turn to internet to watch it or may record the show and watch it at a later date.

2 There is evidence that in Italy the upper secondary school choice is affected by parental education (Checchi and Flabbi 2006), lower secondary school final marks (Contini, Scagni, and Riehl 2008) and teachers’ advice (Argentin, Barbieri, and Barone 2017).

3 Two regions (i.e. Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d’Aosta) are excluded from the analysis as in these regions the process through which students choose the upper secondary school they want to attend is different from that used in the rest of Italy.

4 In 2012 students selected their preferred upper secondary school about one month and half after the end of season 1 of MasterChef. As regards seasons 2, 3 and 4, this decision was taken when MasterChef was still being broadcast (approximately 2 months after the start of the series).

5 While this study uses a multiple regression analysis, an alternative methodology consists in conducting a survey where hospitality and catering students are asked to indicate the main factors that had driven their educational choice, including the influence exerted by television programmes such as MasterChef. However, given the difficulty of obtaining a sample that is nationally representative of the relevant student population, a disadvantage of this approach is that results cannot be generalized. Another problem is that respondents are unlikely to be a random sample of all hospitality and catering students.

6 Although it would have been more appropriate to use a measure of MasterChef's audience specifically among adolescents, this information is unavailable at regional level. On the other hand, as already observed, one advantage of employing an aggregate audience indicator is that one may capture an important channel through which MasterChef may increase enrolment in hospitality and catering schools. Some parents watching this programme may encourage their children to become chefs. Parents may exert a significant influence on their children's educational choices, especially when these choices are required to be made relatively early in school life (Schnabel et al. 2002).

7 The total viewing audience is made up by individuals aged 4 or over.

8 Unfortunately, it has not been possible to include any earnings measure among the indicators for labour market prospects for chefs and food service professionals as, to the best of the author's knowledge, there are no available data. Data on wages are available for people recently completing the three different types of upper secondary schools. A survey conducted by Almadiploma (https://www.almadiploma.it) shows that in 2014 in Italy the average monthly wage of individuals with Vocational qualifications one year after completing their studies was 1022 euro. The corresponding figures for individuals with Technical qualifications and Academic-oriented School leavers were 954 euro and 920 euro, respectively. However, as observed by Pizzigolotto (2017), the earnings premium associated with VET qualifications is only found for young people. The early advantage in wages turns into a later disadvantage with respect to individuals with general/academic education.

9 ; and , that is zero mean, constant variance and zero covariance. In light of these assumptions, it is well-known that the OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) estimator is the best linear unbiased estimator.

10 The Excelsior database is maintained by Unioncamere Nazionale, which is the Union of the Italian Chambers of Commerce. It can be accessed at http://excelsior.unioncamere.net/xt/geoChooser/scegli-archivio.php.