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This chapter gathers information about the highly decentralized and deregulated education system in Switzerland. After a brief introduction giving a first glimpse of an education system organized in an individualistic way, we will then introduce the compulsory schooling of the education system. We will briefly explain the sources used to write this chapter. The main body of the chapter is organized in two parts. The first classifies the education system and underscores this classification with facts from diverse documents illustrating the principle characteristics of the system. In the second part, we explore the ways in which evidence and research are used in the educational context: in schools during performance measures and quality improvement, in teacher education and further education programs, by principals and in exchange among and within schools. We will close with key lessons and the highlight that collaboration and partnership are mutual processes forcing changes on both sides.

The paper describes the Swiss Vocational Education and Training (VET) system, its crucial role and challenges with respect to the inclusion of vulnerable groups and investigates the effectiveness of the efforts undertaken to promote inclusion in VET so far.

Empirical research focusing on various indicators of inclusion (national monitoring data and own studies) is analysed.

The overall findings show that equity and inclusion of persons with a migration background or special education needs in VET have been successfully promoted but can be improved.

Long-term, in-depth longitudinal data regarding some issues are still scarce.

The paper provides information about young people having difficulties to access and complete VET or who are at-risk of exclusion and points out further courses of action.

A comprehensive and detailed account of the current state of inclusion in Swiss VET and of related systemic problems is given.

This study analyzed the effects of the visibility and evaluation of universities in news media coverage on the development of their private and public third-party funds.

The paper uses the concept of media reputation to investigate the effects of news media coverage on the outcome of funding decisions by firm managers and scientific experts. Extensive news media data from 2011 to 2017, collected with manual content analysis, were combined with economic data on Swiss universities.

The results show that a more positive evaluation in the news media leads to the positive development of private, but not public, third-party funding. Surprisingly, visibility in the news media has a negative effect on private third-party funding.

The effects of media reputation are dependent on the stakeholders under review. However, this study's design does not yield evidence on direct causal effects. Further studies could, therefore, use surveys to analyze the decision-making processes of individuals regarding their relative dependency on news media consumption.

This study demonstrates that positive evaluation in the news media represents an asset for universities when striving for more private third-party funding. Public relations (PR) activities aimed at the news media, therefore, can help universities attract additional funding.

The paper shows that in a digitized media environment, the news media still represent an important source for information about scientific organizations.

The study was the first to analyze the effects of media reputation on the third-party funding of universities.

This study investigated the reputation of Swiss universities on Twitter. It gives detailed insights on how the reputation of universities was constituted in a digitized media environment.

The reputation of universities was conceptualized as a multidimensional construct with an overarching scientific and corporate dimension. It was measured for academic and societal stakeholders as well as for the media. Tweets about Swiss universities were collected through the Twitter application programming interface (API) and analyzed with a manual content analysis.

Academic stakeholders had a stronger focus on the scientific dimension of reputation and evaluated universities more positively than societal stakeholders or the news media. The news media were the main source of negative evaluations of universities on Twitter.

The study showed a dichotomy between the scientific dimension on the one hand, and the corporate dimensions of reputation on the other hand, and thus implies a decoupling of scientific and corporate reputation. However, the findings should be explored beyond Twitter to be more generalizable.

The news media play an important role in the constitution of the scientific and corporate reputation of universities on Twitter. An orientation toward the news media, therefore, remains a promising strategy to manage reputation.

The news media are an important source of information for academic and societal stakeholders. Thus, they can contribute to integrating academic and societal stakeholder groups by producing a common base of knowledge of higher education and its organizations.

This is the first study to comprehensively measure the reputation of universities on Twitter.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. The novelty of this measurement approach consists in identifying the vertical and horizontal nature of skills mismatch, that is, a mismatch in which skills are either over/underutilized or not utilized.

Cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel survey for the years 1999 and 2004 are used to determine the true extent of educational mismatch among workers. Moroever, different versions of the Duncan and Hoffman wage equation are estimated depending on whether basic or alternative measures of educational mismatch are included.

The empirical analyses provide the following results: first, at least two-third of the statistically defined overeducated workers perceive their skills as adequate for the job they hold and are then apparently overeducated; second, overeducated workers whose skills are not related to the job do not receive any payoff to years of surplus education; and third, apparently overeducated workers have similar wage returns compared to others with the same schooling level but who are statistically matched. All in all, these findings confirm that most of those overeducated according to the statistical measure have unobserved skills that allow them to work in a job for which they are well-matched.

The paper indicates the need to consider both vertical and horizontal skill mismatches when measuring educational mismatch in the labour market. In that way, it is possible to account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the incidence and wage effects of over- and undereducation.

The quality of an education system or a comparative international assessment refers more and more to quantitative parameters, i.e. “educational indicators”. The paper aims to analyse the structure of several educational indicators and indicator systems and answer the question “What can educational indicators achieve?”

Starting with a general consideration of the term “indicator” the findings are applied to the educational area and the development of educational indicators is analysed critically.

Indicators allow for the illustration of outcomes and of system processes. Beginning in the 1950s, following the empirical turn in research methods, and the growing significance of approaches from economics of education, indicators are now applied in national and international settings. The findings show that the combination of the quantitative and qualitative approach is more successful as the isolated research.

The research is based on secondary analysis. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodology should be undertaken in following the progress of educational systems.

The findings of quantitative research based on educational indicators determine the general public and political discussion and often the discourse in the scientific community. The analysis shows that a critical distance especially when preparing political decisions is a necessary attitude.

This study aims to understand the social justice commitment and the pedagogical advantage of teachers with a migrant background in Switzerland. Through semi-directive interviews with four of them, the research team analyses how these teachers use their background as a resource in their teaching practices. Linking their personal life experiences related to migration and schooling and their professional identity, results show that their history influences their teaching practices but moreover their commitment to social justice within school.

For this study, the authors conducted four semi-directive interviews with teachers with a migrant background. The research team transcribed all the interviews and analyzed them through Nvivo software. The analytical process followed the logic of content analysis as developed by Miles and Huberman (2003). The research team used several layers of categories and codes to produce a deeper understanding of the data. On this basis, the authors refined their categories and codes and created research memoranda including all the information to establish the profile of each teacher interviewed.

This study’s data showed that “teachers with a migrant background” is a broad category of individuals, all entering the teaching profession with their own life experiences, their own relation to diversity and their own personal background. It also showed that teachers with a migrant background seem committed to social justice in different ways. This relates to Mantel’s study (2021) that established three types of teachers with a migrant background. All of them developing a different pattern of commitment to social justice.

This study aimed at understanding teachers with a migrant background’s social justice commitment and pedagogical advantage in Switzerland (Canton of Geneva). If this field has been developed in North America, it is not well studied in Switzerland. Yet, the number of teachers with a migrant background is important in some part of the country and might be increasing in the next years. Exploring their potential is therefore a matter of representation and legitimation.

Potential teacher shortage and low esteem of vocational education and training (VET) educator profession, together with the importance of attracting individuals best suited for the profession, lead to concerns about the reasons why people become VET educators as a second career. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of career choice in Swiss VET educators using an adaption of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice framework (Watt and Richardson, 2007).

With a sample of 605 VET educators undergoing initial teacher training, the authors first provide a description of the determinants of career choice at the sample level, based on a motivational model and analyze differences in these determinants between three types of VET educators. Then, the authors contrast it to the conclusions of other studies on teachers’ career choice.

There are somewhat different determinants driving this career choice depending on the type of educators. In terms of motivation, intrinsic value is the most important determinant of a career as VET teacher. VET educators value the activity of teaching more than the potential advantages it may offer.

The findings of the research provide an insight into VET teachers’ career choice and how to promote the attractiveness of the profession.

Youth unemployment is one of the major problems that the economic systems face. Given this issue, the purpose of this paper is to assess whether school-to-work transition is easier for individuals with secondary vocational education compared to general secondary education. The authors want to explore which vocational systems across Europe produce better effects.

The authors use data from a module on “Entry of young people into the labour market” from the 2009 and 2014 European Labour Survey and they estimate multinomial probit models, allowing for violation of the irrelevance of the alternative assumption.

The authors find that in countries with the dual vocational system, vocational education improves employability both in the short and medium run, whereas in countries with a school-based vocational system, results are mixed and, only in some cases, the effect of vocational studies is significantly positive.

Sample size for short-run analysis is a bit small in a few countries (Austria and Germany). Moreover, even if the authors have reason to believe that the methods adopted are mitigating the omitted heterogeneity issues and robustness checks are run on these aspects, these issues cannot be fully excluded.

The authors provide policy implications, showing that dual vocational systems can improve school-to-work transitions and that vocational structure is particularly effective in this case.

The authors provide information on which education model may offer better chance in terms of labour outcomes.

Given the relevance of youth unemployment, the authors provide valuable information on how to mitigate this problem. The use of cross-country comparisons offers great insights on which vocational systems appear to be well-suited to enhance employability.