By Jennifer Craw
In Switzerland, employers contribute about 60 percent of the total cost of the entire Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. Young people apprentice in companies and are paid because they contribute to the work of the company. This is not how VET works in the United States where most firms have little or no interest in taking on responsibility for training young people. As a result, Swiss employers have access to a large pool of young professionals trained to the standards of the industry, with the skills they need to succeed at the job. Read more about Switzerland’s vocational training system in the new book, Vocational Education and Training for a Global Economy: Lessons from Four Countries, edited by Marc Tucker.
