Purpose

With this program we explore how Western countries can best prepare today’s youth and workers for tomorrow’s labour market and society. We study how the complex interplay of social background, cognitive and non-cognitive abilities, skills, capabilities, culture, and health explains observed inequalities in education and on the labour market. We assess how current societal and economic trends and technological innovations help to shape the labour markets of the future, study what the implications of these trends are for social inequalities, and assess how individuals, firms, and governments can best respond. We especially focus on some of the most vulnerable groups in Western societies: marginalized adolescents, NEETs, kids from socially disadvantaged families and neighbourhoods, low-skilled workers, older workers, unhealthy children, teens, immigrants.

Important questions are:

1. Which skills and capacities are essential for successful participation in society and on the labour market?
2. To what extent do current technological revolutions affect social inequalities in successful participation in society and on the labour market, how, and why?
3. How, at what time and under which circumstances are the relevant skills best learned?
4. Which circumstances, capabilities, and lifestyle choices influence our capacity to learn, grow, and flourish?

Research themes

• Automation of work and future inequalities.
• Acquisition of cognitive and non-cognitive skills.
• Health, lifestyles, and social inequalities.
• Vulnerable groups.

The Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) is a research institute of the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, established in 1986. The overarching research theme of ROA relates to the changing demand for skills, the acquisition of skills over the life course and the utilization of skills. This focus is elaborated upon in ROA’s Research and Policy Plan.

ROA’s mission is to conduct high quality research that has a strong societal impact. Building on a strong position in academia, ROA aims to inform and inspire policymakers and academics, and thereby to contribute to both scientific research and public and organizations’ skills policies. ROA’s research programme is organised in four themes:

1. Education and Transition to Work

2. Health, Skills, and Inequality

3. Labour Market and Training

4. Human Capital in the Region

The first two themes focus on education and skills as point of departure and study the drivers and outcomes at the individual, organizational and societal level. The last two programs study the developments in skill supply and demand on the labor market and the interactions between the two at the national and regional level.

ROA is also the home base for Education Lab Netherlands, a research network working to improve education by ensuring that educational policy and practice is informed by scientific evidence (for more information, see https://education-lab.nl).

Purpose

The Education and Transition to Work programme aims to provide a better knowledge about the Dutch education system and the transition to the labour market after that. The focus lies on optimising the development of students and optimising choices during the school career and towards the transition to the labour market.
 
We look at education from several different angles: First and foremost as the institution in which skills are gathered and in which students learn. We look at how different choices of students or schools, such as using educational technology, developing policies to prevent grade retention, or offering flexible trajectories, or external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, influence student learning. But education also marks the moment in which selection and allocation for example into specialisations take place. And is has a socialising role, of which inequality in education is the largest topic in our programme. We look at the performance of education at different levels: the macro level (national education systems), the meso level (schools / classes), the micro level (students), as well as the relationships between these levels. In doing so, we consider the complete educational chain as well as all levels, from primary education to (higher) vocational and university education. 

Important questions are:

1.    What (policy) factors influence student performance?
2.    What is the role of technology and AI in education?
3.    How do school careers develop and how successful is the transition to work?
4.    How do changes in the labour market affect the optimal functioning of education?

Research themes

•    Educational performance
•    School careers, school performance and school quality
•    Transition to work
•    Educational technology/AI
•    Topical studies, e.g. grade retention, the transition from primary to secondary education, gender
      differences, creativity
•    (In)equality of education