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Quantifying the influence of vocational education and training with text embedding and similarity-based networks

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  • Hyeongjae Lee
  • Inho Hong

Abstract

Assessing the potential influence of Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses on creating job opportunities and nurturing work skills has been considered challenging due to the ambiguity in defining their complex relationships and connections with the local economy. Here, we quantify the potential influence of VET courses and explain it with future economy and specialization by constructing a network of more than 17,000 courses, jobs, and skills in Singapore’s SkillsFuture data based on their text similarities captured by a text embedding technique, Sentence Transformer. We find that VET courses associated with Singapore’s 4th Industrial Revolution economy demonstrate higher influence than those related to other future economies. The course influence varies greatly across different sectors, attributed to the level of specificity of the skills covered. Lastly, we show a notable concentration of VET supply in certain occupation sectors requiring general skills, underscoring a disproportionate distribution of education supply for the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Hyeongjae Lee & Inho Hong, 2025. "Quantifying the influence of vocational education and training with text embedding and similarity-based networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(8), pages 1-19, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0329405
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329405
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Kai Li & Feng Mai & Rui Shen & Xinyan Yan, 2021. "Measuring Corporate Culture Using Machine Learning [Machine learning methods that economists should know about]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(7), pages 3265-3315.
    3. Barbara Biasi & Song Ma, 2022. "The Education-Innovation Gap," CESifo Working Paper Series 9653, CESifo.
    4. Barbara Biasi & Song Ma, 2022. "The Education-Innovation Gap," NBER Working Papers 29853, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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