Publications

This article deals with governance structures and practices in the field of vocational education and training. Based on the focus chapter of the National Education Report 2024, the field of vocational education and training is initially interpreted broadly, including vocational orientation, vocational training, higher education and continuing vocational education and training. Following an outline of the international governance debate, the governance structures and practices in the field of vocational education and training are presented. The paper concludes by outlining how the conceptual instruments of governance research could be used to empirically assess the functionality of the governance of vocational education and training.

Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children — the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly subsidized child care (N = 607), we offer treated families information and personal assistance for applications. We find substantial, equity-enhancing effects of the treatment, closing half of the large SES gap in child care enrollment. Increased enrollment for lower-SES families is likely driven by altered application knowledge and behavior. We discuss scalability of our intervention and derive policy implications for the design of universal child..

Place is an important factor influencing international student mobility (ISM). However, few studies have comprehensively examined the role of place in ISM. This special issue intends to narrow this gap by considering the role of place in ISM from different perspectives. The articles contributing to the special issue discuss three dimensions of place, namely the physical characteristics of place, the meanings and valuations of place, and social inequalities associated with place. The special issue highlights several theoretical, methodological, and empirical avenues to further advance research on the role of place in ISM.

We contribute to research on social inequalities in educational attainment by examining the role of institutional contexts for students’ study abroad (SA) intent and participation. To do so, we extend the individual-level rational choice model predicting SA intent and participation depending on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) into a multi-level model emphasizing the importance of context effects. We test our model based on unique micro-level student data, which we supplement with context data. Examining 18,510 students nested in 69 universities, we provide the first in-depth multi-level analyses of SA intent and participation of students from Japan.

This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of student well-being, taking into account both individual and study-related conditions and distinguishing between requirements and resources. Two data sources from the EUROSTUDENT 8 project are used: the aggregated data and the microdata. The aggregated data includes information from 22 countries within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), while the microdata includes information from 11 countries within the EHEA.