Titelaufnahme

To increase the popularity of the apprenticeship programs as well as to create benefits for individuals and the state, and for the firms providing apprenticeships, it is important to provide reliable information to firms about the circumstances where apprenticeship models are a potential win-win situation. Therefore, Samuel Mühlemann and Stefan Wolter have summarised seven important findings from cost-benefit-surveys of apprenticeship training programmes in this paper. These findings have been gleaned using detailed cost-benefit surveys in various countries and by compiling 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 resulting from 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 like Singapore. The following statements refer to cost-benefit surveys from Switzerland, Germany and Austria and cost-benefit simulations that have been 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 variation in costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in those three countries.