Why is vocational education stigmatised? Evidence from Europe

Robbie Maris (), Jake Anders (), Tammy Campbell () and Gill Wyness ()
Additional contact information
Robbie Maris: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities
Jake Anders: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities
Tammy Campbell: Education Policy Institute
Gill Wyness: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities

No 26-07, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: It is a widely recognised problem that vocational education and training (VET) is stigmatised around the world. This stigma affects student choices, life satisfaction and the provision of skills, and is of growing concern to policymakers and researchers. Prior work suggests these attitudes are determined, in-part, by four closely related mechanisms: perceptions of quality, information and awareness of VET, direct and indirect experience and social class. Drawing on theories of institutional skill formation and educational stratification, we examine how these mechanisms are associated with negative attitudes towards VET and how their associations vary across European systems. We show that perceptions of quality explain a large amount of the variation in attitudes towards VET. We find significant variation in stigma by social class, even after accounting for differences in the perceived quality of VET. Individuals from the upper and middle classes are significantly more likely to stigmatise VET than respondents from the working class. There is considerable heterogeneity across countries and this is driven in-part by the type of VET system they have. Countries with stronger links between VET and employers tend to have more positive attitudes and exposure to these types of systems (through experience and other information sources) could improve perceptions. These results have important implications for policy and future research, pointing to key areas of focus for improving the social perceptions of VET around the world.

Keywords: stigma; social norms; vocational education; survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I21 I23 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2026-07, Revised 2026-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp26-07.pdf Initial version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Anders ().