Despite the ongoing debate about how much academic versus vocational upper-secondary education is favorable for a country and large differences across countries of those two types of education exist, the interplay of vocational and academic education on upper-secondary level and its consequences for the entire education system remain under-researched. Although difficult to analyze directly, we first construct a measure to capture companies’ reactions to changes in academic education rates and second analyze whether academic education rates are associated with success rates in vocational education over time and with control variables. To measure companies’ reactions, we use a cantonal average requirements profile consisting of the academic requirements profile of an occupation and the number of apprenticeships started in this occupation per year and canton. Although results of the first part of the analysis are ambiguous, combined with the second part, they suggest a non-reaction of companies (i.e., they keep offering the same occupations but have to fill their positions with lower-ability candidates). Results of the second part show that more opportunities for academic education appear to draw highly-able students away from vocational education, with negative consequences for the success rates in vocational education. Our findings have important implications for countries with vocational and academic tracks in their education systems, but also for those who plan to introduce or strengthen (dual) vocational education.

尽管一直在争论多少学术和职业高等教育对一个国家有利，并且这两种教育在各国之间存在很大差异，但高等职业教育和学术教育之间的相互作用及其对整个国家的影响教育系统仍处于研究不足状态。尽管很难直接进行分析，但我们首先构造一种措施来捕获公司对学术教育率变化的反应，其次分析随着时间的推移，学术教育率是否与职业教育的成功率以及控制变量相关联。为了衡量公司的反应，我们使用的州平均需求概况包括职业的学术需求概况以及每年每个州在该职业中开始的学徒人数。尽管分析的第一部分的结果含糊不清，但与第二部分相结合，它们表明公司没有反应（即，他们继续提供相同的职业，但必须用能力较低的候选人来填补职位）。第二部分的结果表明，更多的学术教育机会似乎使高水平的学生脱离职业教育，这对职业教育的成功率产生负面影响。我们的发现对于在其教育系统中拥有职业和学术背景的国家具有重要意义，