Education in Switzerland

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The word apprentice is very common in Switzerland when describing the Swiss education system. Only about 20% of the Swiss population goes to university. Most of the population receives vocational training and takes apprenticeships or goes to 2-year college. At first, this surprised me. The Swiss have a very strong education system. Why do only 20% of the population go to university? 

 

Talking to Swiss nationals and people who went to school in Switzerland, I found out why. Education is very difficult and children are held to high standards from the start. Usually by the time children are in middle school, they make a decision about their future education and career. Students take an entrance exam to get into a university-track high school called a gymnasium. Many others go to a high school with not as rigorous academics and perhaps a shorter timeline before applying for an apprenticeship. I remember reading about apprenticeships in a European history textbook, and I had imagined an outdated system of young adults working with a blacksmith or cloth-maker. The idea was very foreign to me. I had always thought that the goal of high school was the next step in academics which would be college. The closest thing in America I could think about would be a technical college or community college. 

 

In America, however, there is a stigma against students who go to technical college or community college when they apply for jobs in the workforce. In Switzerland, the system is different. After vocational training, these apprentices often go for an internship and become well-versed in the field before taking a job. The jobs in Switzerland also pay well. Due to this system, Switzerland’s unemployment rate is very low. 

Lab photo during hike

Perhaps due to not many people going to university,  ¾ of the graduate students working in Switzerland are from other countries. The Swiss are proud of how open and international their country is. Even in the lab, members are from multiple different countries including the U.S., Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, India, etc. The language of the lab is English, which is a language everyone here speaks. It’s not only the nationalities of the lab that are diverse; the educational backgrounds of the lab members are also diverse. The head of the lab teaches in the department of microbiology, but there are people of different educational backgrounds working in the lab. There are people with physics backgrounds, evolutionary biology background, immunology background, etc. Working in this lab has been incredibly interesting in that people approach ideas and questions differently based on their backgrounds.

38 thoughts on “Education in Switzerland”

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