Happy university drop-out

Education Minister Wanka advertises for university drop-outs to directly transfer to crafts businesses. Inga, 19, is happy about her fresh start in a practical field. Her vocational training programme is even more than an apprenticeship: she is destined to become the boss.

When she had to write more and more texts, enough was enough for Inga. "I simply hate that", says the 19-year-old. "I started with pedagogics, because I thought that this would go in the direction of something social. And then we had to write texts", she tells us.

"I had to force myself to attend the examinations. The results were OK, but I realised: Inga, this is not for you." The young woman gave up her study course at the University of Würzburg and started an apprenticeship as a carpenter.

From the lecture hall to the crafts: Federal Education Minister Johanna Wanka (CDU) has raised awareness for such transitions. She now intends to compile a concept to facilitate the change to occupations in the crafts for university drop-outs. About 23 per cent of all diploma students and 28 per cent of bachelor students discontinue their university course. On the other hand, crafts associations bemoan the bad quality of their apprentices.

"Sooner or later we will face problems regarding the skilled labour supply, especially when it comes to young executive talent", says Rolf Lauer, Managing Director of the Chamber of Crafts for Lower Franconia. Since one and a half years, they have implemented a pilot project that targets university drop-outs and places them with businesses. 27 young men and women have thus obtained an apprenticeship placement like Inga has.

The chamber placed her with a medium-sized wood processing business with 34 employees and Inga's boss is very happy with her: "We never before had a young apprentice as committed and knowledge-hungry as her", says Ulrich Weber, operations manager and co-owner. "Although we did have reservations – which we may well still have in part – that she will leave us again after her apprenticeship."

So far, the programme of the Lower Franconian chamber of crafts applies only to four vocational training occupations; in future, it is aimed at training executives. The apprenticeship will be shortened, in parallel the apprentices study business and legal theory in preparation for the master craftsman examination. At first, the businesses had their reservations, for according to many businesses university drop-outs are flawed after all. Why hire somebody who has given up their university course? Some students likewise are far from considering a career in the crafts, but the mutual reservations were "very quickly dispelled", says Frank Weth, responsible for vocational education and training at the chamber of crafts.

What remains difficult is addressing the university drop-outs. Students often are very late in admitting to themselves that it does not work out any more. And the universities are not at liberty of passing on the data. "We are dependent on the young people becoming aware of us."

Representatives from the crafts have been dead against the trend to more and more students for a long time. Lauer thinks that many young people go to university without being aware of how abstract a study course can be. In the past year, the number of new students for the first time exceeded the number of new apprentices.

Yet the truth is also: whereas the crafts and industry would prefer to provide vocational training only to people with a university entrance qualification, 170,000 young people are stuck in continuing education measures without being given the chance of obtaining an apprenticeship placement. Many of these apprentices-to-be have bad grades or no school-leaving certificate at all. The latter thus meet with the same reservations that some businesses have with regards to university drop-outs: can they make it in our company?

For her part, Inga is happy to no longer sit in the lecture hall. "I did not regret it", she says, even though her student life almost seems like a luxury life given the workload in her turbo-apprenticeship. "After all, sometimes one has to do something wrong before one gets to do the right thing."