The GOVPET Leading House was launched in July 2015 and is jointly hosted by the University of St. Gallen, the University of Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training in Zollikofen, and the University of Cologne. The GOVPET research program focuses on the governance of vocational and professional education and training in Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. More concretely, it focuses on two central research questions that are, however, strongly connected. First, we analyze how decentralized cooperation in skill formation is made possible given the ever-present threat of cooperation breakdown, and ask what stakeholders can do to get private actors to cooperate. Second, we examine how public policies can get private actors to consider societal goals in decentralized cooperation that are not necessarily in the interest of these private actors using the case of the inclusion of disadvantaged labor market participants in the systems of (initial and continuous) vocational and professional training.

The Leading House on Governance in Vocational and Professional Education and Training (GOVPET) is a Centre of Excellence funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

For more information on our research program, please visit GOVPET research program.