*Perspective Chapter: Sustaining Dual Apprenticeship Systems – Similarities and Differences... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112561*

calculation of relative indicators consistent within countries (percentages of returns and net costs/benefits in relation to gross expenditure; and relative indices between 1st to 3rd years of training), without comparing the absolute levels of expenditure. Besides measurement error, some ideas about basic patterns of different practices can be inferred from this information (**Table 2**):


**Table 3** looks from a different angle on the practices of apprenticeship training mirrored by the financial analysis:

• The productivity indicators show first how surveyed stakeholders estimate the productivity of the productive contributions of apprentices compared to a fully qualified worker, and second how the productive contributions of apprentices are performed through percentages of simple vs. qualified tasks. The productivity of apprentices is estimated in Austria at a lower level than in Germany and Switzerland (below fifty percent versus almost sixty percent), with a continuously rising tendency from training year to training year (from about thirty to forty percent to around seventy percent); however, remaining substantially below a qualified worker also in the last training year. The second indicator, the percentage of qualified tasks performed in productive work, is estimated substantially lower in Austria (below thirty percent on average) than in Germany and Switzerland (below fifty percent on average), with a stronger increase in the latter two countries from year to year. This pattern reinforces the initial comparison of Austria to Germany in the first financial research study described above with a substantially lower qualification status in the former country.


In sum, these observations underline first the difficulties of analyzing the enacted institutions and practices of dual apprenticeship. Across the board the simplistic and across the board comparatively low-qualified world of *Austrian* apprenticeship is underlined at several points of the analysis. The majority of apprentices individually perform simple work tasks without much input by trainers, being comparatively well remunerated by the yearly rising apprenticeship wage, and initially being retained in the training firm at least with a two-third probability; on the enterprise side, costs are comparatively low and returns high, with the apprenticeship wage compensating to some degree for high productive contributions and low qualifying inputs; because of the absence from the research endeavors, changes over time have not been observed, decreasing returns from the first to the third year, on the contrary to the two other compared countries, cannot be easily explained.

The two observations for *Germany* indicate substantial changes over a short time period or differences between programs of slightly different lengths (3 versus 3,5 years); because the longer programs make a small amount of highly qualified

#### *Perspective Chapter: Sustaining Dual Apprenticeship Systems – Similarities and Differences... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112561*

apprenticeships, the differences are probably structural, with the standard 3-years programs providing higher returns and lower net costs related to the gross expenditure – thus the differences might indicate higher costs of infrastructure in the longer programs. Compared to Austria, several indications are found that corroborate the above-described differences from the early comparison in the 1990s: net costs in the standard programs are double, with lower returns from productive work except for the third year, and consistently a higher proportion of qualified tasks performed and in first and second year estimated productivity nearer to fully qualified workers. The initially different worlds of a higher qualified versus a lower qualified structure of apprenticeship might have been somewhat moderated in standard programs, but still seems very marked – maybe even more marked – in the longer, higher qualified programs.

*Switzerland* discloses its unique structures in these comparisons; for this country, the crisscrossing of time differences and different program lengths also applies, with much smaller differences between the two observation points. The unique result for Switzerland is first a shift from net costs to net benefits with very high returns to more qualified productive work in the later years of apprenticeship that is much more marked in the 3-year program in the second observation point (the net costs in the first year might be attributed to the third learning site of the Swiss sometimes called "trial" instead of "dual" apprenticeship-system [32]); furthermore, the retention of completers of apprenticeship is much lower than in both the other countries of comparison, that might be compensated by the average net returns.

The analyses in this section first indicate that the apprenticeship systems in Germany and Switzerland have already drifted well to the tertiary level without being classified in this way. In Germany, this drift is indicated by the changing age structure of apprentices towards the 20-to-25-years age group related to tertiary education and by the increasing access of young people with higher level credentials and partly or full eligibility to higher education into highly qualified apprenticeship programs. In Switzerland vocational and academic education has institutionally converged most markedly among the trilogy countries by the establishment of the opportunity to take the vocational baccalaureate (Berufsmaturität) in apprenticeship and by the creation of the universities of applied science (Fachhochschule) on top of apprenticeship; despite the still formally segmented structure, the Swiss education system appears much more integrated than the other two. Only in Austria, the drift towards tertiary education was taken over by parallel five-year upper level full-time VET institutions providing double qualifying credentials with labor market value and eligibility for higher education leading to a "dualistic" structure of apprenticeship and full-time VET institutions; until recently institutional convergence was also politically blocked by building the Fachhochschule on top of the fulltime VETinstitutions and postponing a realistic opportunity for taking a vocational baccalaureate for apprentices for more than a decade – as a consequence, Austrian apprenticeship remained trapped at the lowest end of upper secondary education, unable to compete with the fulltime VET-institutions (for a more detailed description and analysis of these institutions see [21, 33]).

Second, the interrelations of education with employment and unemployment shown in the OECD transition data in addition to formal apprenticeships, particularly in the younger upper secondary related age group indicate a demand among young people for employment experience beneath school education. This demand can be met in various forms, not only by formal apprenticeship. However, well-shaped institutional solutions in favor of supporting young people's experience and careers seem not so easy to find. One frequent solution is transitional labor market policy

programs (e.g., the German *Übergangssystem* transition system [34]) that seem acrossthe-board not very successful and may stigmatize young people and lead to unstable careers. Another form of a solution that is not policy-induced but practically emerging is *precarious work* beneath education or combined with the search for more stable employment opportunities; this form of combining education and work might have – beneath acquisition of work experience – adverse effects of postponing the completion of education and broader familiarization with precarity.

Third, the analysis of the data about financing apprenticeships shows the difficulties of producing sound evidence about these complex phenomena and the potential sources of variation in these systems. One is still the issue of exploitation of apprentices through unqualified work tasks by low-level enterprises that struggle in the market for economic survival by pressing down wages, etc. that cannot be easily disclosed by these data [35]; e.g., the causal differences between training firms that reap net benefits and firms that invest net costs for apprenticeship that appear in most occupations and sectors in parallel, are not well explained so far. In the early Austrian study, the main factor that could explain this difference was capacity utilization (Auslastung, [29]); this could mean that apprentices work is used in times of peak strain on resources (and hardly for educational purposes), and this might be interpreted as a sign for exploitation, as well as the high proportion of unqualified works tasks performed by apprentices in Austria. Another source of variation that has been disclosed already by the early comparison of Austria with Germany concerns the elaboration of instructional practices and the availability of personal and material resources for instruction. Thomas Deissinger [12], in his reasoning about the sustainability of dual apprenticeship systems with a strong focus on Germany, draws a basic distinction in such systems between apprenticeship (that means the practices in the training firm) and duality (that means the cooperation and coordination between the firm's activities and the parallel part-time school). Despite the strong political branding in Germany of the Dual System Deissinger ([12], p. 304) emphasizes the apprenticeship aspect and questions the duality aspect by pointing to "the uniqueness of the German apprenticeship system, which seems to be more of a strongly occupation-based system with a specific stakeholder configuration than a dual system". In Switzerland much emphasis is laid on the issues of coordination and cooperation in the duality with the solution of creating a "third learning site" organized by various professional stakeholders beneath the training firms and the vocational school, and used flexibly in the various occupations and sectors with a focus on the early introductory instruction [32] – this solution might lead to a reduction of returns from the work of apprentices during the first year and the corresponding net costs in this time.
