Does Updating Education Curricula Accelerate Technology Adoption in the Workplace? Evidence from Dual Vocational Education and Training Curricula in Switzerland

Tobias Schultheiss and Uschi Backes-Gellner
Additional contact information
Tobias Schultheiss: University of Zurich

No 15689, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In an environment of accelerating technological change and increasing digitalization, firms need to adopt new technologies faster than ever before to stay competitive. This paper examines whether updates of education curricula help to bring new technologies faster into firms' workplaces. We study technology changes and curriculum updates from an early wave of digitalization (i.e., computernumerically controlled machinery, computer-aided design, and desktop publishing software). We take a text-as-data approach and tap into two novel data sources to measure change in educational content and the use of technology at the workplace: first, vocational education curricula and, second, firms' job advertisements. To examine the causal effects of adding new technology skills to curricula on the diffusion of these technologies in firms' workplaces (measured by job advertisements), we use an event study design. Our results show that curriculum updates substantially shorten the time it takes for new technologies to arrive in firms' workplaces, especially for mainstream firms.

Keywords: curricula updates; digitalization; technological change; technology diffusion; text-as-data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-lma and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Technology Transfer , 2024, 49, 191–235

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15689.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does updating education curricula accelerate technology adoption in the workplace? Evidence from dual vocational education and training curricula in Switzerland (2024)
Working Paper: Does updating education curricula accelerate technology adoption in the workplace? Evidence from dual vocational education and training curricula in Switzerland (2022)
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:iza:izadps:dp15689

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().