Abstract
This article addresses the question of how great are higher education students’ incentives to change study programs or institutions to improve one’s personal employability in the course of the higher education-to-work transition process. The posed question is addressed at a system level. Students’ mobility between programs and institutions is referred to as ‘student mobility’ and graduates’ mobility between jobs is referred to as ‘early career mobility.’ The relationship between these two separate components of mobility is discussed in three different institutional frames: German/Finnish, Italian, and British. When depicting the relationship between the two components of mobility, the article also considers parallel phenomena such as prolongation of the degree-earning process and participation in work-life with student status. Indicator level analysis concerning graduates of the year 2000 reveals important differences between the three institutional frames: in Germany and Finland, there is a high level of student mobility at the basic degree level combined with a low level of career mobility after graduation; in the UK the opposite transition logic than that of Germany and Finland occurs, and in Italy students demonstrate prolonged transitions with little student mobility and early career mobility.
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Notes
Studies which are concerned with the administration/institution side of the issue often apply the concept of ‘transfer of students’ within and between institutions.
See the descriptions of the European HE systems on the Eurybase information database <http://www.eurydice.org/portal/page/portal/Eurydice> and on Eurydice (1999a).
Due to the creation of a common European Higher Education Arena by 2010 and the harmonisation of degree systems within the framework of the Bologna process, national HE systems are adopting two main cycles: undergraduate and graduate. Completing the first cycle successfully is a necessary requirement for access to the second cycle, and the first cycle studies last a minimum of 3 years. It is important to notice, though, that the Bologna process has in some cases led to the introduction of bachelor’s programmes into the national degree system but not of adopting two cycles in the student selection. Finnish university students, for instance, now have the option to pursue a bachelor’s degree, but the system de facto comprises only one cycle at the first degree level: this is because all new students are still tracked directly to master’s level programmes. Neither in Italy nor Germany has the Bologna process led to assuming the same type of two-cycle student selection procedure as that of the British system (see Eurydice 2005).
In the data used for this study (i.e., the REFLEX), a share of graduates of all the graduates, who graduated from an institution included in the ‘Top 500 World Universities 2004’ table compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is the greatest of the four countries in Italy, 71.8%. In the UK and Finland, this share is 44.1 and 31.1%, respectively. The German data set does not break down with respect to the names of the institutions, and thus the German institutions cannot be assigned their Shanghai-rankings.
Although Finland and Germany resemble each other to a great extent in structure of the HE system and degree of labour market regulation, it is important to note that in some other respects Finland is more similar to the UK than Germany. This is the case, for example, regarding the importance of market signals to the education/training system (see Hannan et al. 1996, Fig 2).
The average scores with EPL-index for the late 1990s assigned to Germany, Finland, Italy, and the UK are in respective order: 2.5, 2.1, 2.7, and 0.6 (OECD 2004b, Table 2.A2.4). When it comes to countries with strict EPL, the trend has been loosening regulations; the year 2003 scores with the EPL-index are in respective order: 2.2, 2.0, 1.9 and 0.7 (ibid.).
Relative graduation ratios in the hard sciences and engineering (including life sciences, physical sciences and agriculture; mathematics and computer science; and engineering, manufacturing and construction) are greater in Germany and Finland, although the difference in graduation rates from the UK and Italy is very small (OECD 2004a, b, Chart A4.1). The proportions of graduates from the hard sciences and engineering relative to general and soft programs does not give a complete picture about the occupation specificity of the training provided by a national HE system. The vocational thrust of a HE system is mainly reflected in the separation between academic and vocational HE and less in the repertoire of programs within the university sector.
More information on the REFLEX data can be found on the University of Maastricht’s webpage http://www.fdewb.unimaas.nl/roa/reflex/.
It is important to note that students who are going to do a master’s as their first degree have more room to take courses from other fields than that of their actual degree programme (i.e., to study an additional or minor subject), when compared to students completing only a bachelor’s. However, it would probably not be a very feasible approach to try to incorporate the courses taken in minor subjects under the concept of the student mobility, as they do not reflect an actual mobility pattern.
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Lindberg, M.E. Student and early career mobility patterns among highly educated people in Germany, Finland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. High Educ 58, 339–358 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9198-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9198-9