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In this article, [the authors] evaluate the impact of social origin on the realisation of educational intentions at the time of becoming eligible for higher education in Germany. In general, [they found] high persistence of intentions and actual attendance of higher education. However, effects of parental education on the changes of educational intentions increase the existing social inequality with regard to higher education at the time of leaving secondary school. The group which is affected most are those young adults planning to study after vocational training - while the gap between different origin groups does not widen much during other stop-outs from education. This can be explained only partly by previous educational performance. The findings suggest that estimates of educational inequality are attenuated when entry into higher education is approximated by educational intentions of young adults.

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Existing studies consistently find a gap in further education between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, implying a gap in formal training between high-skilled and low-skilled classes. In this paper, we hypothesize that the most important reasons for differences between social classes in further education participation are grounded in job characteristics rather than worker characteristics. This is in line with theoretical foundations of the construction of the widely used Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP) class scheme and related classifications, such as the new European Socio-Economic Classification (ESeC) scheme that we apply in our analyses. We explore the importance of different job characteristics for the explanation of the class gap with a dataset providing detailed information about the jobs of more than 20,000 German employees. The tasks performed and the technologies used in the job are found to be of particular importance. Both are able to explain much of the variation in training activity between different class positions and different educational levels. We discuss the implications of our results for social inequality. Our conclusion is that much of the variation of training incidents between classes comes from the very simple fact that they carry out different jobs. This should always be taken into account when inequality in training between individuals is examined.

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Graduates from higher education often enter the labour market with a considerable amount of work experience. Using German data, [the authors] address the question of whether early work experience pays off upon labour market entry. [The authors] compare the labour market benefits of different types of work experience. This comparison allows [the authors] to more generally test hypotheses about different explanations of why education pays off. Results indicate that tertiary graduates do not profit from work experience that is unrelated to the field of study or was a mandatory part of the study programme. Even though field-related and voluntary work experience helps graduates to realize a fast integration into the labour market, it is not linked to higher chances for entering a favourable class position or to higher wages in the long run. These results provide evidence for the signalling explanation of educational benefits in the labour market rather than the human capital explanation.

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Mandatory internships are implemented in higher education curricula in order to ease the labour market integration of graduates. This article evaluates the utility of mandatory internships in Germany by assessing the effect on graduates' transition from higher education to work. The authors examine whether these compulsory programmes provide extra benefits for graduates from families with lower educational backgrounds. Three different outcome variables are used to characterize the labour market entry: search duration until the first significant job, employment history complexity and wages five years after graduation. The results clearly indicate that compulsory internship programmes neither have a positive effect on labour market outcomes in general, nor are they particularly beneficial for graduates from lower educational backgrounds.

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Comparative studies describing the transition from higher education to work have often simplified the complex transition processes involved. In this paper we extend previous research by taking into account several steps that comprise labor market entry, e.g., recurrent education leading to more than one instance of labor market entry. By comparing Germany and the United States we also examine how the tertiary education systems influence these transitions via the mode of stratification (parallel tracks in Germany vs. consecutive tracks in the US), the coordination mechanism (state-controlled vs. market-based) and the degree of standardization in educational programs. In our empirical analyses using large-scale longitudinal survey data we find that transitions in the US are less standardized and regulated than in Germany. Furthermore, differences between students from lower- and higher-tier institutions are less marked than expected, both within and between the two countries.

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As with earlier social disparities in educational achievement, re-enrolment in college education can depend on parental social background. [The authors] link this finding with gender differences using data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Youth 79 and ask if the decision to re-enrol in college is influenced by parental social class in a gender-specific way. The results show that adding maternal class position to the operationalisation of social origin can be beneficial and result in a better model fit. Moreover, there are gender differences on the part of the child. Working-class men are constantly disadvantaged in their chances to re-enrol in education throughout their lives compared to men with more privileged family backgrounds, while working-class women are only disadvantaged among early re-entrants. This result is reversed in later years and women with working-class parents re-enrol more often.

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Previous comparative studies describing the transition from school to work and national patterns of labor market entry have often had to simplify the complex transition processes involved. For example, the first job after education is not easy to define if a person returns to education. In addition, most of this research has concentrated on national patterns shaped by the experiences of the majority of young people. In this paper we concentrate on a particular group of school-leavers, viz. those entitled to enroll in higher education. We describe their transition patterns from school to work, including recurrent education leading to more than one instance of labor market entry after leaving education. A comparison between Germany and the United States [US] enables us to answer the question of how various features of the tertiary education systems influence these patterns, i.e. the number of people actually returning to education and the time it takes to finally enter the labor market. The systems of higher education in Germany and the US differ in several ways that we assume to be important for the transition patterns from school to work: (a) the mode of stratification (parallel tracks in Germany vs. consecutive tracks in the US) provides different labor market prospects and incentives for returning to education; (b) the coordination mechanism (state-controlled vs. market-based) is decisive for the diversity of institutions and their orientation to particular target groups; [and] (c) the degree of standardization in educational programs is important for more or less smooth transitions to the labor market. Taking into account that labor market flexibility also differs in the two countries, we derive our main hypothesis: transition patterns from higher education to the labor market in the US are less standardized and regulated than in Germany. We expect that students attending the lower-tier institutions in the US (community colleges) will display significant differences in this respect over and against their German counterparts attending a Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences). In our empirical analyses we actually find overall differences with regard to variance in the ages at which young people leave education and enter the labor market. US students gain much more labor market experience in the period between their initial and ultimate exit from education. Differences between lower- and higher-tier institutions are less marked than expected, both within and between the two countries.

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In this article, we examine social origin differences in employment patterns across different stages of higher education and compare these differences between vocational and academic fields of study. Using data from a large-scale German student survey, we study the development of inequality, according to social origins, in student employment from first-year to graduating students. We show that inequality in job quality exists and is partly attributable to the need for students from lower social origins to work in order to finance their studies. We hypothesise that initial inequalities decrease as students progress through higher education. While we find evidence for this hypothesis, we also show in multivariate models that the reduction of inequality in the student labour market is explained by prior differences between social origin groups.

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