Mainly due to its important role in ensuring skilled labour, vocational education has long been regarded as a vital part in the overall educational system in Germany, co-existing separately but on an equal footing with higher education. However, the boundaries between the two sub-systems have become increasingly blurred. Clear indications for this are the changing participation patterns in the two sectors. On the one hand, vocational qualifications are an important stepping stone to higher education. An increasing number of students enrolled in higher education institutions in Germany hold a full, state-recognised initial vocational qualification, accounting for about 22 per cent of all higher education students. In universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen), around a third of students hold a vocational qualification (Middendorf et al. 2016). On the other hand, a substantive part of higher education students who do not finish their degree aim at gaining access to vocational qualifications at different levels. For them the question is whether their learning experience in higher education can be accredited in vocational programmes (Graf 2013). Drawing on quantitative data compiled by the integrated training and education statistics (Illiger & Dionisius 2022), on data generated by the national educational panel study (Siembab 2022), as well as on studies focussed on the labour market outcomes of different educational pathways(Hayward et al. 2022), this paper aims at answering the following questions: • How well prepared are students for making these changes? • How prepared are receiving institutions to make use of the students’ prior learning and experiences? • To what extent does the German education systems allow for recognition of competences? • Does the fact that for both intersections numbers are growing result in HE and VET “growing together”? The paper will also discuss how employers assess different educational pathways when making recruitment decisions and how combination of different types of qualifications are used in developing professional careers (Annen & Maier 2022), given the current shortage of skilled labour in the German context.

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