ETH Zurich President Joël Mesot on Swiss Dual Vocational Education and Training

ETH Zurich President Joël Mesot recently wrote a column on Swiss Dual Vocational Education and Training (VET), which was published in the Swiss newspaper Blick on Saturday August 10, 2019. Mesot mentions that many of today’s young Swiss people start dual VET programs, including 52 youngsters who work at ETH Zurich. In total, ETH has 170 trainees who do the practical part of their 3-to-4-year dual VET program at its Zurich campus. The university president highlights that both dual VET graduates and students are a fundamental part of the research activities at ETH Zurich, as they build devices and equipment for many of the experiments conducted by the university’s researchers.

When talking about the Swiss VET success story, Mesot attributes much to the close cooperation between educational institutions, the private sector, and the professional associations. This collaboration supports a finely balanced VET system. The other success factor Mesot mentions is the permeability of the Swiss education system as a whole, which enables many opportunities for development.

Mesot also mentions the 2019 CEMETS Summer Institute, during which 12 teams from eight different countries found inspiration in scientific findings and the Swiss experience regarding VET policy. He interprets the international interest in the Swiss education system as a confirmation of the fact that Swiss education policy has done a lot of things right in the past. Building on this recognition, he motivates the whole country to go on investing in the the future of its education system.

Click external page here for the link to the newspaper column (in German).