Divergent Graduates on the Single Market? Education and Work Relationship of Master’s Degree Graduates in 13 European Countries 1 − to explore the actual diversity of the higher education and work relationship in European countries − on the concrete level of graduates’ own accounts of their studies and transition to working life − a challenge for harmonizing single market policy − the graduate point of view: to have a degree would be about the same thing in each country with relation to labour markets and work − several reasons to argue for both harmonity and divergence of the higher education and work relationship − leitmotif: informal ‘non-statistical’ features of the links between higher education and local working life may be most important in practice 1 bachelor in UK

Vocational Enrolment Study Overlapping of Transition / background orientations study and work initial employment - vocational training - average - modes of teaching - proportion of - time point of first - study-related work enrolment age and learning part-time students employment experience - proportion of - vocational orientation - internship and - initial training in first job fast track entrants of the programme work placements - adequacy of field - proportion of - familiarity of content - study-related work and level adult students to employers experience - further education/ - study and work abroad training course of master’s degree studies w o r l d o f w o r k − analysis of 22 contact points of the world of work to the course of the master’s degree studies − sum up 1: the overall divergence of each country from the European average − sum up 2: average ‘working life proximity’ of

’Vocational background’ of master’s degree students in 12 European countries: vocational secondary education and study-related work experience before higher education

Vocational orientation of the study programme and its familiarity to employers as assessed by master’s degree graduates (bachelor in UK)

Proportion of part- time students (%) Average time spent in study-related work (months) Time spent in study-related work as % of total study time (mean) Finland Austria Italy2544 Portugal2335 Czech Republic22711 Switzerland2046 Germany Netherlands17711 Norway16810 Spain1524 France14916 United Kingdom1324 Belgium712 Overlapping of study and work: part-time study and study-related work experience of students

Degree as a basis for starting work and learning further on the job: average assessment by graduates (1 = to a very high extent 0 = not at all

Country-specific overall divergence from the European average with regard to higher education and work relationship (0 = average, 1 = highest divergence observed) − range.25 to.52 from the most average country (NL) to the most divergent one (UK) − ‘diversity of divergence’: each country average in some respects but highly divergent in others

’Working life proximity’ of European master’s degrees