With 2.49 Mio CHF the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) funds a new leading house on „Governance in Vocational and Professional Education and Training“ (GOVPET), managed at the University of St. Gallen. Leading Houses are prestigious Centers of Excellence, created to improve and consolidate research on vocational education and training in Switzerland.
 
Directors of the new Leading House on GOVPET are Prof. Dr. Patrick Emmenegger (University of St. Gallen, principal investigator), Prof. Dr. Carmen Baumeler (Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training), Prof. Dr. Giuliano Bonoli (University of Lausanne) and Prof. Dr. Christine Trampusch (University of Cologne, Cologne Center for Comparative Politics (CCCP)).
Through cross-national research projects, advanced study programs for Ph.D. students as well as network activities with companies, public authorities and associations, the new Leading House will investigate questions on how decentralized cooperation in skill formation works at the regional, sectoral and company levels. Moreover, GOVPET will scrutinize how the inclusion of disadvantaged labor market participants in the systems of (initial and continuous) vocational and professional training can be improved. The Leading House promises to generate insights that will help to improve our understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and conditions of decentralized cooperation and the inclusion of disadvantaged labor market participants.
The Leading House will be hosted at the University of St. Gallen, the University of Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (EHB) in Zollikofen. GOVPET is approved for five years and will start its work in July 2015.

We congratulate the applicants for this great success in a very competitive call for proposals. GOVPET will be the first Leading House based in the field of political science.

Further information on Leading Houses in Switzerland here.