Pathways to higher education in France and Switzerland : Do vocational tracks facilitate access to higher education for immigrant students?

In this chapter we wish to clarify through which institutional pathways higher education is accessed by immigrant group students in Switzerland and France. We have chosen these two countries because they differ from each other both in their educational systems and in the ways new routes to higher education have been set up through vocationally orientated programmes. The educational landscape in France is characterised by a more school-based system and has a greater tradition of prestigious tertiary education institutions (Duru-Bellat et al., 2008). Moreover, traditional vocational education and training (VET) does not have very high status and therefore fails to attract a large proportion of well-performing students. However, France has witnessed a vocationalisation of the academic route to higher education through the implementation of the specifically vocationally orientated track (particularly the baccalauréat professionnel). The situation in Switzerland is more or less reversed. Less people pursue academic education and over two thirds of students enrol in a variety of VET programmes. In the Swiss case, a new route to higher education has been created through the academisation of VET with the setting up of the Federal Vocational Baccalaureate diploma that grants access to universities of applied science. Using youth panel data from France (DEPP panel d'élèves) and Switzerland (Transitions from Education to Employment, TREE), we will analyse the pathways to higher education in both countries in more detail, looking specifically at the access of higher education through different educational tracks while taking in account the different characteristics of the students, e.g. immigrant backgrounds, gender and aspirations.