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This article analyses whether graduates in university vocational courses benefited from better labour market outcomes in France than those in academic courses. We focus on bachelor degrees in France, comparing 'general' or 'academic' degrees with 'vocational' degrees. The vocational bachelor degree was created in 1999 in the continuity of the education policy of expanding the number of vocational courses in French universities and in the framework of the Bologna Process. It aimed to lead to a new qualification at the intermediate level between the qualified technicians' diplomas and the engineering or senior management diplomas. We use a French survey on higher education leavers in 2001 who were interviewed in 2004. In order to take into account the selection in the vocational track, we applied statistical methods which allow us to compare graduates with similar characteristics. Our results show that education mismatch is less great for vocational bachelor graduates, which is coherent with the idea that the vocational track better responds to employers' needs. In addition, we find empirical evidence that vocational bachelors tend to be associated with higher pay even after accounting for the heterogeneity of students. Our last findings suggest that the university-employer link specifically developed for the vocational bachelor course influences the way vocational graduates find their job: they are significantly more likely to use university-based contacts to obtain their first jobs.

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The aim of this paper is to analyse the school-to-work transition of young people in France, focusing specifically on those who are not in employment, education or training (so-called NEETs), in order to understand their risk of becoming and remaining NEET. Using longitudinal data from a representative national cohort of French young people leaving the educational system in 2010, this study shows how NEET status fits in more or less long-lasting ways in their career pathways. We indicate that 70 per cent of young people experienced a NEET status at least once over the three-year period, if we retain a static and conventional definition of NEET. For most of them, NEET is a temporary situation that spans all educational attainment groups. However, a quarter of the cohort is still in a NEET status 3 years after leaving the education system. The lack of educational and social capital, as well as geographical economic conditions, are decisive factors in remaining in long-term NEET trajectories.

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Professional and vocational courses requiring five years' post-secondary study are supposed to meet specific needs for competences in a given area of employment. Young graduates believe they have acquired the specific competences they think their employers require. In their view, the shortfall lies in their general competences. Is this a reason to question the increasingly vocational nature of university courses?

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This report deals with the dynamics of the balance between the supply of and the demand for skills in the labour market in developed countries, especially those of the European Union. In a context of radical changes in the demand for labour, which have resulted primarily from the development of international trade and technological progress, the transformation of the nature and content of work is forcing the productive system to adapt to new skills within a very short period of time, which often bears no relation to the traditional timescale for the acquisition of qualifications. At the same time, as the average number of years of study per head of population in Europe continues to rise, generations of increasingly highly qualified young people are finding it no easier to obtain employment. On the basis of this twofold observation, the aim of our research is to examine the way in which adjustments are made in the skills market and the role of initial and further-training systems in the regulation of that market.

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The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 66.507. Volumes two and three are indexed at TD/TNC 66.508 and TD/TNC 66.509. Individual chapters from the three volume set are indexed from TD/TNC 66.510 to TD/TNC 66.540.

The first background report, published in two volumes, is indexed at TD/IRD 88.38 and TD/INT 58.286. Show less

‘Training & employment’ is a quarterly English-language newsletter aimed at informing the international community about research and other activities undertaken by the Centre for Research on Education, Training and Employment (CEREQ) in France. The article featured in this issue reports on a 2001 survey entitled ‘Generation ‘98’, which surveyed 55,000 students or apprentices who left the education system in 1998 to enter the labour market. The results of this survey were compared with those of the earlier ‘Generation 92’ survey, and revealed that the young people of 1998 gained more rapid and lasting access to employment than their 1992 counterparts, and had fewer numbers facing persistent unemployment. The 1998 survey also focused on the paths taken by young people in their school to work transition, in terms of whether they gained immediate access to long-term employment or whether they experienced periods of unemployment or engaged in further training. Show less