The Danish Council for Strategic Research has granted funding of DKK 16 million to a project seeking to explain the high drop-out rates from vocational colleges.

Almost one in three young people who embark on a vocational education and training course drops out within the first year. Speculation is rife as to the reasons for the high drop-out rates, but now a group of researchers from Aarhus University and other institutions will try to establish more convincingly what is behind this trend – and not least how society can contribute to the retention of young people at the colleges.

Collaboration between researchers from six institutions
Just before Christmas, the Danish Council for Strategic Research granted DKK 15,875,000 to the research project ‘Retention of Vocational Students in the Danish VET System’. Project coordinator is Associate Professor Klaus Nielsen from the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at Aarhus University.

The research project is an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional project involving researchers from a number of research institutions: Peter Koudahl, Danish School of Education; Lene Tanggaard, Aalborg University; Christian Helms Jørgensen, Roskilde University; Torben Pilegaard and Lars Skipper, Danish Institute of Governmental Research (SKF) and Martin Munk, SFI, The Danish National Centre for Social Research.

Project funding is provided under the Danish Council for Strategic Research’s programme on strategic research in the fields of education and vocational education and training (Danish title ”Strategisk forskning inden for uddannelsesforskning og professionsuddannelsernes arbejdsfelt”), while the participating institutions contribute approx. DKK 8 million towards the total project budget of DKK 24 million.

“So far, not a lot of light has been shed on this field of research, and the project is actually the first large-scale research project within vocational education,” explains project coordinator, Associate Professor Klaus Nielsen from the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences.

95% to complete higher secondary education
An educated labour force is decisive to securing the future of the Danish welfare society. The Danish government aims for a higher secondary education completion rate of 95% for a youth cohort, and the high drop-out rates at the vocational colleges is a major stumbling block to achieving this target.

“We know that almost one in three students drops out, but we do not know what then happens to the young people. Do they end up in the group of young people who never complete an education, or have they been critical and decided to do a different programme? The project will be monitoring a group of young people for some time to see what happens after they drop out,” says Klaus Nielsen.

Many possible explanations
Young people may drop out of their vocational education and training for a whole host of reasons: The researchers will look at factors such as cultural capital in the form of parental support, peer influences, the culture and teaching philosophy of the vocational colleges, gender, ethnicity and language barriers. With a view to studying the drop-out risk for different types, the researchers will be using data from the PISA Longitudinal database, selecting students from colleges with high, low and medium drop-out rates.

Huge interest in research findings
The project is naturally attracting a lot of political attention, while many vocational colleges are also impatient to hear about to the research findings.

However, Associate Professor Klaus Nielsen emphasises that even though the researchers will be publishing articles and papers regularly, it may be a while before any final conclusions may be drawn. In fact, the project runs until the end of March 2012. However, the researchers plan to set up a website where they will gather existing knowledge about the field of vocational education and training, especially from abroad.

“But comparing Danish and foreign vocational colleges can be notoriously difficult. The upper secondary and grammar school tradition with its academic focus has influenced vocational education and training in Denmark, which has in recent years become increasingly academicised. In other countries, there is a stronger focus on more classical artisan virtues which often attract young people who are practically minded,” says Klaus Nielsen.

The design of the research project is new in that a large number of different statistical analyses are combined with questionnaires and qualitative interviews with vocational college students. The project also involves a statistical quasi-experiment to further substantiate the patterns identified as the project progresses.

Strengthening research field in Denmark
As the field of vocational education and training has not been the subject of much research in Denmark, one of the purposes of the project is also to develop this research field. Some of the funding will therefore go towards employing a PhD student, and the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences hopes that two PhD students will be affiliated with the project.

Moreover, Klaus Nielsen is pleased that the project means that the researchers will be able to make the most of all their various competencies within qualitative and quantitative methods and educational, didactic and sociological research.

“It will be incredibly interesting to follow your own group of young people in parallel with other researchers and based on the same design and analysis keys. Based on our shared optics, we will be able to discuss any differences which we come across,” says Klaus Nielsen.

Further information:
Klaus Nielsen
Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences
Aarhus University, klausn@psy.au.dk