Educação dual

Is it true that in Switzerland only 20-25% of people go to college?

It's in relation to this answer found in another question: Ricardo Pereira's answer to What are some remarkable facts about Switzerland?

Could someone expand on this? What's the education system like? Is there any balance disturbance between technical and professional work?

Reto Fuchs, Born and raised in Switzerland

500 Views • Upvoted by Camille Fankhauser, 27 year-old Swiss citizen, born and raised in Switzerland.

The Swiss education system is very different from most other countries (similar systems are in place in Germany and Austria). As you would expect, there is pre-school/kindergarten, primary (6 years) and lower secondary (3 years); this is the mandatory part. Afterwards, there are basically two options:

(1) you go to a 3-4 year apprenticeship - Switzerland has the the highest percentage of people in apprenticeships; about 70% of Swiss teenagers are trained and educated in this model. The apprenticeship includes a significant amount of formal education; an apprentice spends about half his time at the company he works for and half at school. Apprentices get paid a monthly salary of about CHF 800 - 1000. This is often referred to as the 'dual education system', see also 

stanford.edu

Dual Education: Europe's Secret Recipe? . The apprenticeship is the one piece in the education system which is most often misunderstood and underestimated. It offers a lot of advantages as compared to a purely academic education:
- applicable know-how through on the job training
- strong work ethic
- real life problem solving skill
- much lower youth unemployment rate in Switzerland compared to other countries
Many of the apprenticeship-qualified professionals will later attend a university of applied sciences or another type of higher vocational education.

(2) you go to a 'Matura' school. Matura is a Latin term for the high-school exit exam ('maturity diploma') which is the entry ticket for universities.

The major difference is really on the upper secondary level where it's basically either Matura school or apprenticeship, as well as on the tertiary level (ranging from no tertiary education at all  to Ph.D.).

So, to answer your title question, we would need to answer another question: in the Swiss system, what is really the equivalent to 'college education'? As stated above, about 70% of young people go on an apprenticeship. The rest pursues a purely academic education path - which is probably where the number of 20-25% of college education is coming from.

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