Vocational Education and Bachelor: How Swiss Education Is Balancing the Tension Between Academic and Vocational Needs and Credentials

• In Event: Competition or Complementarity Between Academic and Vocational Education? Status Quo, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Focus and Framework

The focus of this contribution depicts the challenges for adapting the (Swiss) Education towards a changing work situation. There is a strong consensus in Switzerland, that Vocational Education and Training (VET) is good for the country and economy. The apprenticeship-based model of VET has a quantitative and qualitative unchallenged position, which is however questioned by the dynamic of the education system itself. Parents, students but also firm recruitment officers expect high qualifications, which seem to be linked to school-based credentials and academic achievements. Demand and supply for more academic skills and titles are pushing the VET system towards a more flexible and permeable model which is more and more integrated in the education system. Thus, VET gets more part of an educational and academic world. Apprenticeships today are also justified by offering career paths not only in the world of work but also in the academic spheres.
The discourse in Switzerland aims therefore at two different strands: on the one hand primary school, and even more baccalaureate schools (and universities) should be more relevant for work. This means more subjects like informatics, but also mathematics and natural sciences. Another approach is a more didactical one and is directed towards competencies and competence-based learning. The role model of such an approach is vocational learning, which is based in practice and interaction in workplaces (see Deissinger & Gonon 2021).
On the other hand VET pathways should be permeable towards the higher educational system.
To specify this overall trend for Switzerland we will focus on the development of VET in the last years. The Bachelor degree is in a longer perspective the asset of a lot of youngsters who have started with an apprenticeship. More youngsters in Switzerland do an apprenticeship and get further lessons in general subjects like mathematics, languages, economy and history in order to acquire a professional baccalaureate. The regular degree for such a 3 year study is a bachelor. Thus more and more former apprentices continued their education at university-level and got a bachelor. Young persons with such an education or double qualification are highly regarded and seem to be better qualified than people with “only” a traditional academic degree (Hippach-Schneider et al. 2013). This pathway, established since the 1990s is nowadays a pillar in the Swiss education system.

Justification: Establishing the apprenticeship-based Way of Education and Lifelong Learning

This paper is analyzing these developments in the light of a justification approach (Boltanski & Thévenot 2006). The reference to economic, statist, domestic and public values undertaken by different actors like policy makers and interest groups is decisive to justify reforms (Gonon 2017). The balance of diverse interests and the consensus of different actors is crucial in order to transform and develop education and VET (Bonoli & Gonon).

Author

• Philipp Christian Gonon, University of Zurich