The economics of apprenticeship training: Seven lessons learned from cost-benefit surveys and simulations

This text summarises the seven most important findings that have been gleaned using detailed cost-benefit surveys of apprenticeship training programmes in various countries and subsequent cost-benefit simulations for other countries over the last 20 years. The costs incurred by the firms providing training were measured, as were the benefits they can generate in the short term through the apprentices’ work in the company and the medium- term benefits obtained because apprenticeship programs help companies avoid costly recruitment from the labour market. These surveys and simulations mainly concern European countries. However, they have also been applied to non-European countries.1 Specifically, the following statements refer to cost-benefit surveys from Switzerland, Germany and Austria and cost-benefit simulations run for England, Italy and Spain. The cost-benefit measurements in the three German- speaking countries were also used for comparative studies, i.e. studies that investigated the causes and effects of the differences in the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in the three countries (see point 2). The findings we draw from the cost-benefit measurements and the corresponding simulations are summarized in seven lesson

Apprenticeship training in Italy: a cost-effective model for firms?

In times of rapid technological progress and increasing digitalisation in many areas of work and life, it is more important than ever to provide young people with the best possible skills for their entry into the world of work. It is certainly important to provide them with a solid theoretical knowledge base. However, it is also important to impart practical skills to ensure that they are able to adapt to the needs of the labour market. Post-school education in Italy, while providing good formal skills in this respect, is not sufficiently responsive to the needs of the labour market. With this in mind, dual training models have become politically more attractive in Italy and are already being implemented. But despite political support and the reforms in recent years, the popularity of dual training models has hardly increased. From an international point of view, this development is hardly surprising. On the one hand, interest in dual vocational training is increasing: learning a trade at two locations – in a company and at a part-time vocational school – means that apprentices gain valuable professional experience while they are still training, which enables a smoother transition to the labour market. As a result, there is less youth unemployment and a better supply of skilled labour for industry. On the other hand, reforms of this kind often encounter a major obstacle when it comes to practical implementation: a lack of commitment by the companies, especially in countries where an in-company apprenticeship tradition is absent. First and foremost, companies see training as an operational loss: why pay to train an apprentice when qualified employees can be recruited directly on the labour market? What businesses often fail to see is that in-house training does not merely incur costs, but that it also results in monetary benefits, and sometimes in net profits before training has even been completed. However, the question is: under which conditions? The costs and benefits of training are not invariables, they depend on a wide of variety of parameters such as the level of apprentices’ pay, the industry in question, the duration of training, recruiting costs for qualified skilled workers on the labour market – not to mention the quality of the training course. To examine the situation, this study uses simulations to investigate how these parameters would have to be designed in Italy in order to make dual training more attractive for Italian businesses. The conclusions derived in this report are intended to assist Italian policymakers and employers to make more evidence-based decisions, to ensure that Italy’s labour force investments are more likely to yield positive returns

Surface topography of viable articular cartilage measured with scanning white light interferometry

SummaryObjectiveBy means of scanning white light interferometry, develop a noncontact, nondestructive technique capable of measuring surface topography of viable cartilage.MethodsUsing full thickness cylindrical cartilage explants obtained from bovine calf knees, experiments were performed to produce a surface preparation protocol that yields highly repeatable topographical measurements while maintaining cartilage viability. To further validate the technique, a series of human talar cartilage samples, displaying varying degrees of cartilage degeneration, was then subjected to interferometric measurements and compared to their histology.ResultsA key aspect of the technique of surface topographic measurement by interferometry was the development of an optimal surface preparation process. The technique was successfully validated against standard 2-D profilometry. The intrinsic variability of the technique is less than 2%, which is much less than the average point-to-point variability of 17% observed across a cartilage specimen. The technique was hence sufficiently sensitive to readily detect differences in roughness between surfaces of healthy cartilage in different locations on the bovine knee. Thus, the average roughness of the medial explants exceeded that of the lateral explants by 0.35μmRa (P=0.003) and the roughness of the trochlear explants exceeded that of the condylar explants by 0.55μmRa (P<0.0001). Also, applying this technique to diseased human talar cartilage samples, a statistically significant increase in the average surface roughness value per unit increase in histological degeneration score was observed (≥0.2μmRa, P≤0.041), making surface roughness obtained via interferometry a useful parameter for evaluating cartilage health nondestructively.ConclusionsThe aim of developing a protocol based on white light interferometry to measure the surface topography of viable articular cartilage was achieved. This interferometric technique opens the door to monitoring the surface topography of live cartilage, as is desirable for ex vivo tests on cartilage explants