Conference Agenda

Currently, education policies are trying to address the changes that artificial intelligence is bringing to labour markets (OECD 2023; Unesco, 2022). The threat of automation is challenging the purpose and value of different educational pathways. While policy discourse emphasises upskilling and retraining as responses to technological change (Schiff, 2022), little attention is paid to understanding how education actually functions in middle-skill occupations already undergoing transformation.

Middle occupations, administrative, secretarial, and skilled trade roles, employ around one-fifth of the UK workforce yet have experienced significant decline. Economists have long attributed this to technological change, particularly routine-based technological change (RBTC), which predicts that routine cognitive tasks concentrated in middle occupations will be automated, leading to an "hourglass" labour market with growth at both ends but "hollowing out" in the middle (Goos and Manning 2007; Autor et al 2006). This framework has become central to understanding labour market shifts across developed economies.

Yet alongside this decline, middle occupations have undergone dramatic "graduatisation": university graduates in administrative roles rose from 3.8% in 1991 to 32.5% in 2021. This simultaneous decline and educational upgrading presents a puzzle that challenges both RBTC theory and education policy assumptions. This raises critical questions: What role does education play in these evolving occupations? How do formal qualifications relate to actual skill demands? What are the implications for vocational/higher education and lifelong learning?

Our theoretical framework draws on literature challenging some of the RBTC theory's core assumptions (e.g. Brown et al 2020). We examine whether middle-skill work is genuinely "routine" and thus automatable, or whether this characterisation oversimplifies occupational realities. We also engage with literatures on credential inflation (Araki, 2020; Tholen 2020) and skill formation (Sung and Ashton) , asking whether increasing educational requirements reflect genuine skill demands or serve primarily as screening mechanisms.

This study examines administrative roles, legal, medical, and HR, as a critical case for understanding education's evolving role in middle-skill work. These occupations are particularly instructive because they span multiple sectors, show variation in growth patterns, and are central to automation debates given their assumed "routine" character. The UK provides a valuable case: it combines mass higher education expansion with vocational education challenges faced across Europe, making findings relevant to broader European debates about education system reform in the AI era.

Understanding the actual relationship between education and middle-skill work, rather than assumed relationships, becomes crucial as policymakers consider how to prepare workers for technological change.

Across advanced economies, technological change is continuously reshaping occupational task structures, increasing the need for skill updating beyond initial education and within ongoing employment relationships. In response, workers predominantly rely on short-format, job-specific forms of non-formal further education, delivered both in face-to-face settings and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, through online formats. In policy debates on lifelong learning, micro-credentials have therefore emerged as a key instrument to enhance the transparency, portability, and recognition of these learning activities (European Commission, 2021). However, participation in non-formal further education and the acquisition of micro-credentials are unequally distributed and strongly structured by occupational and organisational contexts. Moreover, the labour market returns to such training, measured in income gains or improved employment prospects, vary substantially across these same structures (Ehlert, 2017; Haupt, 2012).

One influential explanation for these patterns is derived from social closure theory (Bills, 2003; Bol & Weeden, 2015; Weber, 1925; Weeden, 2002). From this perspective, occupations differ in the extent to which access is regulated through formal credentials. In occupationally closed labour markets, entry is restricted by legally or institutionally required certificates, whereas in open occupations formal entry barriers are weak or absent. Where access is tightly regulated, formal qualifications should already provide a sufficient and credible signal of occupational competence. Consequently, additional non-formal training certificates are expected to yield lower (or even no) returns, as they convey limited incremental information to employers (Haupt, 2012). In contrast, in open occupations, where formal credentials provide weaker signals, additional certificates may play a more substantial role in recruitment decisions.

Empirical studies have provided support for these theoretical expectations, for example by demonstrating heterogeneous income returns to further education across occupational segments (Ehlert, 2017). However, direct tests of closure-theoretical predictions at the level of hiring decisions remain scarce. In particular, little is known about how employers evaluate non-formal training certificates during recruitment (Schimke, 2023) and whether their signalling value systematically differs between open and closed occupational labour markets. This gap is particularly salient in light of the growing policy emphasis on lifelong learning and the proliferation of short-cycle and micro credentials (European Commission, 2021).

This paper addresses this research gap by examining whether occupational closure moderates the signalling value of non-formal training certificates in hiring. The central research question is: Do structural differences in the signal value of further training certificates emerge between occupationally open and closed labour markets? Building on social closure theory and signalling approaches, we argue that the evaluation of additional certificates depends not only on their content but also on the institutional context of the target occupation.

By focusing explicitly on employers’ hiring decisions, this study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it provides a direct test of closure-theoretical assumptions in a recruitment context. Second, it offers experimental evidence on how different types of non-formal credentials are valued relative to formal education and work experience. Third, it sheds light on the conditions under which micro credentials may enhance employability. The analysis is based on a preregistered experimental study (https://osf.io/5z4ky) conducted among recruiters in Germany, covering a broad range of occupational fields with varying degrees of formal regulation.

Recently, higher vocational education has been championed as a means to develop higher and more complex skills as solutions for facing problems of climate change and rapidly evolving technologies effect on work. In order to understand the nature of higher vocational education, we undertook at meta-review of technical reports and peer-reviewed publications on higher vocational education in diverse countries (Germany, Spain, UK, Norway, Costa Rica, China and Brazil). Our findings reflected varieties of learning programmes that were identified as higher vocational education, there were 3 notable and potentially problematic insights. Firstly, most of higher vocational education programmes were at a level 5 (higher certificate) and rarely had clear progression either in qualification or career into higher skilled occupations, for example in the UK and Norway. Secondly, there is some difficulty in identifying how higher vocational education and higher tertiary education were different, for example in Spain. Thirdly, and most problematically - the definition for higher skills development in most context was poor defined. The presentation unpacks what is needed for a clearer definition of higher skills development in higher vocational education by using occupations as an enclosure for training for practice that reflect real-world career progression routes.

The current UK government has identified 8 key sectors for growth in the economy, including Advanced Manufacturing, and Defence (Department of Business and Trade, 2025a). At the same time, policy on apprenticeships has ensured that, they are employer-led (Winch et al., 2025), appropriate for adults (Pullen, 2024), and increasingly aligned to those key sectors (Pullen, 2025). These policies have moved the UK closer to Europe in policy terms, through the development of higher technical qualifications, but also in terms of public investment in key sectors like clean energy (Department of Business and Trade, 2025b) and defence (Department of Business and Trade, 2025c). The call for employers to be a key partner in the skills system aligns with the German dual-system, but the lack of social partners leaves a gap in advocacy on the side of workers. The UK Prime Minister recently announced a desire for 60% of young people to obtain a ‘higher level qualification’, but not specifically a degree (Starmer, 2025). This increasing recognition of higher technical qualifications suggests that the UK could be moving closer to European models of vocational education and training.

Our research focuses on the development of accelerated degree apprenticeships in England. These apprenticeships exist for individuals who have completed a Level 5 qualification or previous apprenticeship and want to complete a stand-alone Level 6 apprenticeship and be awarded a Bachelors’ Degree. ‘Levels’ relate to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) levels, (UNESCO, 2011). We ask whether the existence of these programmes reflects England’s long-standing reluctance to adopt higher level technical education more common in European countries like Austria and Denmark (OECD, 2024). On the one hand, the existence of these programmes reflects a desire to enable individuals to achieve a degree level qualification, even after obtaining a Level 5 technical qualification. Yet, the relative scarcity of accelerated degree apprenticeships suggests that perhaps England is finally embracing higher technical education.

When assessing higher vocational education in England, we recognise human capital theory (Becker, 1993), which finds that returns, in terms of income, are higher for specific learning than for general education, particularly at higher levels. We also consider the rise of higher level vocational and technical education across Europe (e.g. Biemens et al., 2024) as a mitigation to graduate unemployment and skills mismatches (Pouliakas and Santangelo, 2026). In these circumstances, we might expect an increase in demand for Level 4 and 5 technical qualifications in England, despite only recently being widely available, as they allow individuals to learn specific skills to use in the workplace. A push by the UK government (Department for Education, 2019) to ensure that these higher technical qualifications are employer-led, means there is increasing recognition of these qualifications in the labour market. The increase in automation and Generative AI has impacted income returns in particular areas of education in recent years (Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2022). Moreover, the rise in academic higher education has arguably failed in the promise of professional work and higher wages (Brown, Lauder and Cheung, 2020). In these circumstances, enabling individuals to gain a degree through an accelerated degree apprenticeship route should ensure their qualifications are most appropriate to meet labour market demand.