Session Information
02 SES 02 B, International Perspectives on VET I: Skills
Paper Session
Contribution
Most lifelong learning policies targeting young people’s education to work transitions are aimed at improving youth’s employability and ability to fit labour market needs. These policies have traditionally adopted a Human Capital Theory perspective, assuming that an individual’s good foundation of knowledge and skills will translate into a full utilisation of these skills in the labour market. Contrary to this assumption, workers’ skills are not always fully utilised in the labour market. Skill mismatch such as skills shortages – which materialise in hard to fill vacancies - and skills surpluses – producing over-qualification and unemployment – serve as vivid examples of skills underutilisation (Lauder et al., 2012). In turn, these skill mismatch affect largely socially disadvantaged groups (e.g. young people, women, ethnic minorities).
The article combines the skill ecosystem (Buchanan et al., 2017; Dalziel, 2017) with the skill formation regimes approach (Busemeyer and Trampusch, 2012) in the comparative analysis of skill mismatch across 18 regions in nine European countries. The skill ecosystem approach has two fundamental advantages over previous approaches to the study of skill mismatch. Firstly, by considering the interaction between supply (education) and demand (labour markets) explanatory factors, it overcomes the ‘supply side fundamentalism’ that has prevailed in Human Capital Theory research. Secondly, by focusing on sub-national levels of analysis, it avoids the ‘methodological nationalism’ of comparative research on skill formation regimes.
Skill formation regimes and skill ecosystems are both relatively novel analytical contributions to the study of skill mismatch. In the case of the skill formation regimes literature, most of the comparative studies still take the nation-state as primary unit of analysis. While education and training systems tend to be designed and monitored at the national level, these are usually enacted and implemented across socioeconomically diverse regions with very different employment opportunities. Therefore, the relationship between skill formation and utilisation, as well as the resulting skill mismatch , are likely to vary largely between regions within countries. In the case of the skill ecosystem approach, the idea has received more attention among policy circles and applied research than from critical scholars. In terms of empirical studies, this approach has been used for the analysis of regions or sectors in Australia (Buchanan et al., 2001, 2017), New Zealand (Dalziel, 2015), the United Kingdom (Hodgson and Spours, 2013, 2015; Payne, 2008, 2009) and the United States (Finegold, 1999), but there is a clear gap at comparing regions across countries.
Our article aims to address these gaps and to make a twofold contribution to the literature. Firstly, and in contrast to Human Capital Theory, our paper shows the importance of demand side factors (i.e. local labour market) to explain skill shortage and skill surplus across European regions. It also shows that low and high-skill equilibria coexist in highly segmented labour markets, pointing out the need of local skill strategies to go beyond the policy aim of raising skill levels and primarily focusing on tackling social inequalities among young people. Secondly, and in contrast to national approaches, our paper provides a better understanding of the institutional and socioeconomic factors that shape the relationship between skill formation and skill mismatch at sub-national. National institutional arrangements certainly explain skill formation patterns between countries but they need to incorporate the analysis of regional labour markets and socioeconomic conditions to explain the divergent effects of these institutional structures on skill mismatch across regions. Combining both approaches will facilitate a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue over an issue that remains under-researched in comparative education scholarship.
Method
In our empirical analysis, we draw on quantitative and qualitative data from a comparative H2020 European Commission funded project on lifelong learning policies for young adults. Using aggregate quantitative data, we first map the nine European countries under study against the typology of skill formation regimes. We also provide a comparative description of relevant socioeconomic differences at the regional level (NUTS 2) affecting young adults across the 18 regions under study. While for the quantitative data we are forced to use the NUTS 2 classification due to data availability, in the qualitative analysis our units of analysis are Functional Regions (FRs). The employment of the FR approach for the qualitative analysis allows us to go beyond the geographical, historical and administrative boundaries (static) that usually characterise statistical data, emphasising the organisation of social and economic activities (functional) in a territory and the interactions among actors interviewed. We adopt an analytical qualitative perspective to identify the main regional skill mismatch and challenges affecting young adults across skill ecosystems. We use three methods to address this objective: desk research, semi-structured interviews with key regional actors (i.e. policymakers, employers’ representatives, trade unions, skills agencies) involved in the regional skill ecosystem, and a review of the relevant grey literature (i.e. reports, articles) in the selected regions. In total, we base our analysis in 81 semi-structured interviews – four to five on average per region – and 129 documents – seven on average per region. Semi-structured interviews aimed at identifying the main regional challenges concerning LLL policies for youth in vulnerable situations. The main areas covered in the interviews were: 1) the main regional challenges in terms of skill formation; 2) the policy orientations of LLL policies; 3) the governance arrangements between policy actors; 4) and the implications of skill mismatches for young people living conditions in the region. A qualitative content analysis of the texts (i.e. interview transcriptions and documents) has been applied using thematic coding to identify the main topics related to the regional enactment of the skill formation regimes and their effects on skill mismatch. Thirteen research teams across the nine countries under study replicated this exercise following the same analytical framework, data collection and analysis tools, and reporting guidelines. The interviews were conducted between March and July 2017.
Expected Outcomes
The statistical characterisation of the cases showed that countries that combine higher public commitment and private involvement in VET present lower levels of youth unemployment, but it also revealed large variation between regions within countries in terms of education and employment indicators. Regional stakeholders and documental data reported skill shortages in sectors that demand high-skills (e.g. ICT) but also in low-skills sectors with high seasonal demand (e.g. tourism, agriculture). Skill surplus was a concern mainly for regions where the job opportunities available to higher education graduates were very limited. Skill polarisation between segmented labour markets was the norm in urban settings, resulting in large inequality of opportunity among young people, particularly in highly-stratified education systems. Across the study regions, young people from immigrant backgrounds, ethnic minorities and refugees were the most affected by unemployment and over-qualification in low-skilled jobs. The interviews with regional stakeholders also showed that the institutional effects of skill formation regimes on skill mismatch varied largely according to labour market and socioeconomic characteristics of regions. While the collective skill regime was associated with an adequate match of skills in regions with high demand of intermediate skills, it suffered from shortages of high skills in the most dynamic urban concentrations. The low involvement of employers in the statist and liberal regimes was seen by key actors as a major institutional obstacle to match the demand and supply of skills in many regions, but this was not the case in regions with a predominant position of one single industry in the local economy. Finally, the impact of the recession had negative effects on inequalities in the access to post-compulsory education and training, on the offer of apprenticeships and on the jobs available to those participating in employability training courses.
References
Buchanan, J., Anderson, P. and Power, G. (2017), “Skill Ecosystems”, in Buchanan, J., Finegold, D., Mayhew, K. and Warhurst, C. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training, Oxford University Press, pp. 1–26. Buchanan, J., Schofield, K., Briggs, C., Considine, G., Hager, P., Hawke, G., Kitay, J., et al. (2001), “Beyond Flexibility: Skills and Work in the Future”, NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training, Vol. October, available at:https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2013.867525. Busemeyer, M.R. and Trampusch, C. (2012), “The Comparative Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation”, in Busemeyer, M.R. and Trampusch, C. (Eds.), The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 1–44. Dalziel, P. (2015), “Regional skill ecosystems to assist young people making education employment linkages in transition from school to work”, Local Economy, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 53–66. Dalziel, P. (2017), “Education and Qualifications as Skills”, in Buchanan, J., Finegold, D., Mayhew, K. and Warhurst, C. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training, Oxford University Press, pp. 15–21. Finegold, D. (1999), “Creating self-sustaining, high-skill ecosystems”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 60–81. Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (2013), “Tackling the crisis facing young people: Building ‘high opportunity progression eco-systems’”, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 211–228. Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (2015), “An ecological analysis of the dynamics of localities: a 14+ low opportunity progression equilibrium in action”, Journal of Education and Work, Routledge, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 24–43. Lauder, H., Young, M., Daniels, H., Balarin, M. and Lowe, J. (2012), Educating for the Knowledge Economy? Critical Perspectives, edited by Lauder, H., Young, M., Daniels, H., Balarin, M. and Lowe, J., Routledge. Payne, J. (2008), “Skills in context: what can the UK learn from Australia ’ s skill ecosystem projects ?”, Policy & Politics, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 307–23. Payne, J. (2009), “Divergent skills policy trajectories in England and Scotland after Leitch”, Policy Studies, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 473–494.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.