As compared with other countries, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, which belong to the group of countries with “collective skill formation systems”, have traditionally provided a large proportion of their workforces with qualifications obtained through a dual training system. Educational mobility from vocational to higher education is limited and relatively few people achieve academic qualifications. A skilled workforce has always been viewed in these countries as the backbone of “diversified quality production” (Streeck 1991). Traditionally, the completion of a VET qualification did not provide eligibility for higher education entrance. One of the questions we would like to investigate, therefore, is whether the divisions between the VET and higher education sectors in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are still as rigid today.

The permeability between VET and higher education has become a widely-discussed topic – both at national level in the countries under consideration and in the European context. This paper shows how VET and higher education are integrated to varying degrees in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Both Switzerland and Austria recently introduced double-qualification certificates. The introduction of the vocational baccalaureate (Berufsmaturität) in Switzerland in 1994 and the apprenticeship with general higher education entrance qualification (Lehre mit Matura) in Austria in 2008 marked the introduction of the possibility of qualifying for higher education entrance while completing a dual training qualification. Germany opted for a different way of linking the dual training system with the higher education sector in 2009, i.e. through the consideration of occupational skills for higher education entrance.

These differences in the organization of the links between VET and higher education in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland require explanation. In this article we analyze why Germany, Austria, and Switzerland opted for different approaches to the institutional integration of the dual training and higher education systems. The varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach highlights the special significance of firms as the drivers and initiators of institutional change in the VET system (Estévez-Abe, et al. 2001, Hall and Soskice 2001: 6) and focuses particular attention on the varying interests of small and large firms (Thelen 2004, Culpepper 2007, Busemeyer 2009, Trampusch 2010a). Adopting this line of research, we take the preferences and strategies of firms and their representative associations into account when it comes to the selection of different permeability options. We reconstruct the political processes that led to the introduction of double-qualification certificates in Switzerland and Austria and the adoption of an alternative approach by Germany. As a result, we are able to demonstrate that the interests of firms and their representative bodies in a specific policy option are influenced less by the division of the employer camp into large and small businesses than by the embeddedness of the dual training system into the overall education system. Here, central parameters are, first, the educational background of the apprentices and, second, the relationship between the dual training system and upper secondary school education or full-time school-based vocational education.

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