We investigate whether vocationally and generally educated individuals differ in their on-the-job learning and how this difference evolves over the career. To this end, we exploit the European Skills and Jobs Survey dataset and rely on instrumental variable estimation. While our descriptive results suggest that workers with a vocational degree experience on average more learning, this conclusion largely changes once endogeneity is taken into account. First, we find that, immediately after graduation, workers with a vocational education are less likely to further improve their skills in their jobs. Second, while this gap in on-the-job learning gradually fades over time, it takes almost a full career to catch up in terms of further on-the-job learning with those with a general degree. Finally, the effects are driven by individuals residing in dual system countries and those with a programme involving workplace learning. We argue that these results are likely explained by a combination of compensating (because vocationally educated obtained their specific skills already during education) and complementary (because general skills lay down a foundation for further learning) effects.

中文翻译：

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贯穿生命周期的职业教育、通识教育和在职学习

我们调查受过职业教育的人和受过普通教育的人在工作中的学习是否存在差异，以及这种差异在整个职业生涯中是如何演变的。为此，我们利用欧洲技能和工作调查数据集并依赖工具变量估计。虽然我们的描述性结果表明，拥有职业学位的工人平均学习更多，但一旦考虑内生性，这一结论就会发生很大变化。首先，我们发现，刚毕业后，接受过职业教育的工人不太可能进一步提高工作技能。其次，虽然这种在职学习方面的差距会随着时间的推移逐渐消失，但几乎需要整个职业生涯才能在进一步的在职学习方面赶上那些拥有普通学位的人。最后，这种影响是由居住在双重制度国家的个人和那些有涉及工作场所学习的计划的人推动的。我们认为，这些结果可能是由补偿（因为受过职业教育的人在教育期间已经获得了他们的特定技能）和互补（因为一般技能为进一步学习奠定了基础）效应的结合来解释的。