The future of the German apprenticeship system?

Via marginalrevolution.com, an article in the Financial Times on the future of the German apprenticeship system:

…in Germany, growing numbers of school leavers are choosing to go to university instead of starting an apprenticeship, triggering alarm that small businesses will struggle to fill skilled positions.

…The number of young Germans starting an apprenticeship declined 4 per cent last year to 530,700, the lowest level since German reunification in 1990. Some 33,500 apprenticeships went unfilled, the most since 1996.

…The reasons for the falling number of apprentices are hotly debated. Partly it reflects demographic trends: there are fewer young people around today than when the baby boomer generation came of age.

Studying for an undergraduate degree has become more attractive, in part because it no longer takes so long. German students can obtain a bachelor’s degree in just three years, instead of five years for the old-style diploma.

Almost 500,000 Germans began a university degree last year, compared with fewer than 360,000 a decade ago. Nevertheless, around one-quarter of German students break off their studies prematurely and do not graduate at all.

Meanwhile, trade unions accuse cost-conscious companies of offering an insufficient number of apprenticeships, and point to an increase last year in the number of young people who were unable to find one.

Jutta Rump, director of the Institute for Employment and Employability (IBE) in Ludwigshafen, said there had indeed been a “cannibalisation” of vocational training via increasing university attendance.

(I’ve copied the entire marginalrevolution excerpt of the FT.com article because the latter is behind an 8-article-a-month paywall.)

Now, having read this, I intended to do some solid research into the question of what impact the low birthrate has had on all of this — the article excerpt above even mentions that there are fewer young people but doesn’t quantify this — as well as the extent to which increase in university students is due to rising numbers of foreign students. And these would both be worthy topics to investigate, certainly before falling into a “the apprenticeship system is failing” trap.

But instead I asked my husband, and his answer was more simple: immigration. The “hauptschule” (the lowest of the three tiers of the German secondary school system) used to be a perfectly respectable path, with an apprenticeship afterwards and, ultimately, recognition as a “meister” in a skilled trade. It’s the path that many in his family took, including his own father, who worked as a carpenter for many years, before moving into a job selling, rather than making, furniture.

Now, he says, families perceive the hauptschule as dominated by Turks and other immigrant kids who don’t speak German, so are far more determined to avoid it than previous generations would have been. It’s become the school of last resort, rather than a default unless a child shows academic promise.

And it’s not as simple as saying “kids are choosing university over apprenticeships” since the system has far more rungs than that. More likely, it’s kids choosing university over technical school, kids choosing technical school over realschule (the middle level between hauptschule and gymnasium) and training at a white-collar mid-level occupation, and kids choosing realschule over hauptschule.

But if my husband’s gut reaction is correct, even if not politically correct, than it’s much the same issue as here, where the complaint is that immigrants have taken over industries such as construction and locked native-born workers out.