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This paper analyses whether tertiary education of different types, i.e., academic or vocational tertiary education, leads to more or less favorable labor market outcomes. We study the problem for Switzerland, where more than two thirds of the workforce gain vocational secondary degrees and a substantial number go on to a vocational tertiary degree but only a small share gain an academic tertiary degree. As outcome variables, we examine the risk of being unemployed, monthly earnings, and variation in earnings (reflecting financial risk). We study these outcomes at career entry and later stages. Our empirical results reveal that the type of tertiary education has various effects on these outcomes. At career entry, we observe equal unemployment risk but higher average wages and lower financial risk for vocational graduates. At later career stages, we find that these higher average wages disappear and risk of unemployment becomes lower for vocational graduates. Thus, by differentiating the tertiary system into vocational and academic institutions graduates face a variety of valuable options allowing them to self-select into an educational type that best matches their individual preferences.

According to standard human capital theory, firm-financed training cannot be explained if the skills obtained are general in nature. Nevertheless, in German-speaking countries, firms invest heavily in apprenticeship training although the skills are assumed to be general. In our paper, we study the extent to which apprenticeship training is general at all and how specificity of training may be defined based on Lazear's skill-weights approach. We build occupation-specific skill-weights and find that the more specific the skill portfolio in an occupation, the higher the net costs firms have to bear for these apprenticeship training occupations and, at the same time, the smaller the probability of an occupational change during an employee's entire career. Due to the new definition of occupational specificity, we thus find that apprenticeship training--previously assessed as general training--is very heterogeneous in its specificity. (Contains 8 notes, 6 tables, and 3 figures.)

Although studies of student employment ('earning while learning') mostly find positive wage effects, they do not adequately consider the relation of the employment to the field of study. We investigate how different types of student employment during tertiary education affect short- and long-term labour market returns. Beyond examining differences between non-working and part-time working students, we distinguish between student employment related and unrelated to the field of study. Our results show significant positive labour market returns of 'earning while learning' only for student employment related to the field of study. These returns consist of a lower unemployment risk, shorter job-search duration, higher wage effects, and greater job responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to standard human capital theory, firm-financed training cannot be explained if the skills obtained are general in nature. Nevertheless, in German-speaking countries, firms invest heavily in apprenticeship training although the skills are assumed to be general. In our paper, we study the extent to which apprenticeship training is general at all and how specificity of training may be defined based on Lazear’s skill-weights approach. We build occupation-specific skill-weights and find that the more specific the skill portfolio in an occupation, the higher the net costs firms have to bear for these apprenticeship training occupations and, at the same time, the smaller the probability of an occupational change during an employee’s entire career. Due to the new definition of occupational specificity, we thus find that apprenticeship training – previously assessed as general training – is very heterogeneous in its specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]