„Higher Education and the Labour Market“ (HELM): Dropping out of Higher Education: Reasons, Selectivity, and Labour Market Outcomes

Student dropout from higher education constitutes a serious challenge: In recent years, almost 30 percent of students enrolled in bachelor’s degree programmes in Germany have left university without a degree. Moreover, dropout entails substantial costs. These include the costs of students’ (unsuccessful) stay in the higher education system as well as indirect costs due to the loss of tax and contribution payments these students would have made had they entered the labour market immediately after school. On an individual level, dropout entails a lower lifetime income as well as psychological costs, as dropouts have to cope with their academic “failure” and also need to realign the plans for their professional future. Therefore, understanding – and potentially avoiding – student dropout is a topic of high relevance, not only for researchers but also for policy makers and students themselves.

The conference aims to provide insights and different perspectives on the link between higher education and the labour market. It offers sessions with general contributions on the topic – as, for example, on returns to tertiary education, graduates’ placement on the labour market, or regional mobility of graduates – as well as sessions on this year’s focus topic, dropout from higher education.

In this framework, we are particularly interested in contributions on topics such as:

• (Labour-market) perspectives of university dropouts.
• Selectivity of dropout with respect to students’ social background.
• Reasons for student dropout, with papers on the current Covid-19 pandemic’s impacts on dropout being particularly welcome.
• Returns to alternative educational tracks (e.g., vocational education) vs. immediate entry into the labour market after dropout.
• Potential measures to reduce dropout rates.

Date

Keynote speakers

Scientific committee

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