M. Somers

Melline Somers is a researcher and project leader at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA). She joined ROA in 2019.

Her research focuses on vocational education and training (VET) and how it prepares students for the labour market. Together with colleagues, she examines how updates in VET curricula and skill content relate to graduates’ labour market outcomes. She also participated in the Embassy Science Fellowship programme, in collaboration with the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, where she analysed what the Netherlands can learn from the German dual system. In addition, she is involved in the development of the MBO Monitor and HBO Monitor, two graduate surveys that provide insight into the labour market transitions of recent graduates from Dutch VET and universities of applied sciences.

Over the past years, she has worked on several research projects. One project focused on the flexibility of education systems and social inequality in educational outcomes (funded by NRO). Another project examined the effects of technological change on social inequalities (funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe programme). Together with MUMC+, she also acquired funding from Instituut Gak to study solutions to labour shortages in healthcare and education.

From 2015 to 2018, Melline was a PhD candidate at the Top Institute for Evidence-Based Education Research (TIER) at Maastricht University. During her PhD, she conducted research on the mismatch between education and the labour market. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics in 2012 and her Master’s degree in Management of Learning (cum laude) in 2014 at Maastricht University.

Expertise

  • Education Economics
  • Labour Economics
  • Vocational Education and Training

Key publications

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