First vocational education and training, then a study course. The old model once again gains in popularity. Increasingly, an apprenticeship even becomes the key to the lecture room.
Many curricula vitae of now comparatively high-ranking individuals reflect their initial efforts to gain also practical professional experience and attempts at avoiding complete absorption in the swamps of academic teaching. Jürgen Fitschen, Co-Chairman of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bank, is such an individual. He first completed an apprenticeship as a merchant in wholesale and foreign trade before studying economics.
Likewise, many heads of savings and co-operative banks started their career with an apprenticeship as a bank clerk. Other industries provide similar examples, for instance, Philip von dem Bussche, Chairman of the Executive Board of KWS, one of the worldwide largest plant breeding companies: after graduating with a university entrance qualification, he completed an apprenticeship as an agriculturalist.
These days, pupils graduating from school with a university entrance qualification choose the "classical" sequence of apprenticeship prior to a study course less frequently than a few decades ago. Even so, in many fields of application an apprenticeship continues to be popular and promising. And considering how many dual study courses have been introduced in the past few years, combining an apprenticeship and academic teaching, the opposite trend can be observed: never before was the degree of practical application prior to or during a study course larger than it is now.
No outdated model
The latest data likewise reveal that an apprenticeship prior to studying is by no means an outdated model. According to an evaluation by the Higher Education Information System Hanover (HIS), 27 per cent of first-time students enrolling in the winter semester 2009/2010 had completed a vocational education and training course. However, this high share can be explained by the fact that many university of applied sciences students - in particular those without a university entrance qualification - (have to) complete an apprenticeship prior to enrolling at university.
Even so, every tenth first-time student carrying a university entrance qualification had likewise first completed a vocational education and training course. On the whole, the share of former apprentices amongst first-year students is once again increasing.
Latest statistics reveal that, as regards university of applied sciences students, about every second student had first completed an apprenticeship. Amongst university students, this share is 14 per cent - tendency once again rising after a declining trend over many years previously.
Students with prior occupational experience are described to be more determined and disciplined. One example is Florian Nebel, who chose not to reveal his real name in a newspaper. Prior to studying economics, he completed an apprenticeship as a fully trained hotel clerk. He had to work weekends, set up the breakfast buffet in the mornings, deal with querulous guests at the reception desk and work overtime until late at night. "The elementary studies, which many experience as a torture, I perceived as harmless", he recalls. "One has learned to appreciate the freedom offered by the university system and no longer has a problem with self-organisation." Today he is a junior professor of economics.
High numbers of former apprentices enrolling in a study course in certain fields
Economists and engineers in particular tend to complete an apprenticeship prior to enrolling at university. The narrow majority of all engineering students first trained in a technical or production occupation. Likewise, the HIS data show that, prior to studying, more than 50 per cent of economists (at universities and universities of applied sciences) completed vocational training in the fields of retail, banking, insurance or in the fields of administration or office management.
The number of former apprentices enrolling in a study course in medicine has also significantly increased. The latest figure is 51 per cent; ten years ago it was only 17 per cent. The reasons for this are the long waiting periods prospective medical students have to endure, if they do not fulfil the numerus clausus requirements. They often fill this waiting period with an apprenticeship, for instance, in a nursing profession. Conversely, the model of apprenticeship first is rarely encountered amongst students of law or the humanities.
There are hardly any studies regarding the question whether an apprenticeship has an influence on the successful outcome of a study course. "Professional experience has a constant positive effect", states a study by the educational sociologist Margret Bülow-Schramm from the Zentrum für Hochschul- und Weiterbildung (Centre for University and Continuing Education) at the University of Hamburg. However, she did not measure the effect on duration of study or grades, but the degree of "competence-building". "Practical occupational experience or, indeed, practical life experience as such" lead to successful studying, she says.
"Seminar papers were peanuts"
Data from the HIS suggest the opposite. The HIS study evaluated for the F.A.Z. newspaper the correlation between a prior apprenticeship and the study course grades and duration of study. The result: there are no significant differences amongst university of applied sciences graduates and amongst university graduates, those with previous vocational education and training even were somewhat slower and achieved less good grades. Yet "the differences are not very big", says education researcher Kolja Briedis. The grade average of former apprentices was less by 0.15, the average duration of study was half a semester longer.
One reason for this can be the fact that students with prior professional experience tend to work more alongside their university course. This was true for Eva Winter's fellow students, who, like her, first completed an apprenticeship as a tailor and then went on to study set design for the theatre. Those who had previously worked in their profession had contacts to the theatre and were asked to take on jobs. Eva Winter says that she found studying not difficult at all after the hard, three-year apprenticeship, which, in contrast to the study course, one cannot complete without punctuality and discipline. "Compared to that, seminar papers were peanuts."
It may well be that the old model once again gains in popularity also because it has become much easier to earn a university entrance qualification via the detour of vocational education and training - even without university entrance qualification earned upon graduating from school. Since a resolution passed by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal States in the Federal Republic of Germany in 2009, this has become much easier in Germany. Master craftsmen have free access to universities and, given certain requirements differing from one federal state to the other, people with previous professional experience may enrol in a study course that is in a field similar to the one they passed their apprenticeship in.
According to data from the Centre for Higher Education (CHE), there was a "jump" in recent years in the number of first-time students without A-level university entrance qualification to 2.3 per cent (1997: 0.6 per cent). Practice-oriented professionals from small and medium-sized enterprises in particular recommend either this model or a dual study course.