1. Divergent Graduates on the Single Market? Education and Work Relationship of Master’s Degree Graduates in 13 European Countries 1 − to explore the actual diversity of the higher education and work relationship in European countries − on the concrete level of graduates’ own accounts of their studies and transition to working life − a challenge for harmonizing single market policy − the graduate point of view: to have a degree would be about the same thing in each country with relation to labour markets and work − several reasons to argue for both harmonity and divergence of the higher education and work relationship − leitmotif: informal ‘non-statistical’ features of the links between higher education and local working life may be most important in practice 1 bachelor in UK

2. Vocational Enrolment Study Overlapping of Transition / background orientations study and work initial employment - vocational training - average - modes of teaching - proportion of - time point of first - study-related work enrolment age and learning part-time students employment experience - proportion of - vocational orientation - internship and - initial training in first job fast track entrants of the programme work placements - adequacy of field - proportion of - familiarity of content - study-related work and level adult students to employers experience - further education/ - study and work abroad training course of master’s degree studies w o r l d o f w o r k − analysis of 22 contact points of the world of work to the course of the master’s degree studies − sum up 1: the overall divergence of each country from the European average − sum up 2: average ‘working life proximity’ of

3. ’Vocational background’ of master’s degree students in 12 European countries: vocational secondary education and study-related work experience before higher education

4. Vocational orientation of the study programme and its familiarity to employers as assessed by master’s degree graduates (bachelor in UK)

5. Proportion of part- time students (%) Average time spent in study-related work (months) Time spent in study-related work as % of total study time (mean) Finland401216 Austria371518 Italy2544 Portugal2335 Czech Republic22711 Switzerland2046 Germany191115 Netherlands17711 Norway16810 Spain1524 France14916 United Kingdom1324 Belgium712 Overlapping of study and work: part-time study and study-related work experience of students

6. Degree as a basis for starting work and learning further on the job: average assessment by graduates (1 = to a very high extent 0 = not at all

7. Country-specific overall divergence from the European average with regard to higher education and work relationship (0 = average, 1 = highest divergence observed) − range.25 to.52 from the most average country (NL) to the most divergent one (UK) − ‘diversity of divergence’: each country average in some respects but highly divergent in others

8. ’Working life proximity’ of European master’s degrees