The vocationalisation of university programmes in France: its consequences for employability and mobility

In the last three decades, French Universities have offered an increasing number of vocational programmes. More recently, the introduction of vocational Bachelors in 1999 was designed to extend the 'vocationalisation' of French Universities at the Bachelor Level. Using a French follow-up survey on transition from school/ university to work, called "Génération 2004", our paper show that vocational higher education graduates from 2004 cohort entered the labour market in better conditions than their predecessors (from 2010 cohort). In addition, compared with graduates from shorter higher education courses, job opportunities for vocational Bachelor graduates tended to be more stable and better paid