France is an exception in Europe: only 22% of 15-29 year olds in initial training have a job there (Insee, February 2025). In Denmark and Switzerland, almost half of young people study while working.
A company where you start working at 24 and retire at 64 produces forty years of contributions. A society which allows a significant proportion of its young people to gradually enter professional life from the age of 18 can have forty-six of them.
Alternation sacrificed again
This simple reasoning changes the way we look at the problem: entering working life earlier does not only mean producing more wealth, it also means training adults earlier. However, our society still seems reluctant to take this step.
As proof, the drop in aid allocated to apprenticeships this spring 2026. Of course, many parameters must be reassessed: the amount of salaries and social charges, the cost of an apprentice in certain sectors, support from companies, etc. However, the result is there: work-study is once again sacrificed.
This decision risks slowing down the growth of work-study training, while its success rate (80% professional integration for apprentices, according to Dares) proves its effectiveness. Rather than reducing the resources allocated to work-study programs, should we not, on the contrary, make it a pillar of our social model, in the same way as retirement?
A force to be mobilized
We don’t trust young people. We protect them. We train them. We evaluate them. We guide them. We support them… but we are still hesitant to entrust them with real responsibilities, as if youth were a period to go through, and not a force to mobilize.
However, despite the progression of apprenticeships (11% of 15-29 year olds), almost one in ten young people have never set foot in a company. Our system has ingrained the idea that you must know everything before you can act. But is it realistic?
In Germany, where work-study is anchored in the educational culture, the youth unemployment rate is among the lowest in Europe. Additional argument in favor of action learning which is not a renunciation of studies, but another way of succeeding in them.
The company, a place of education
How can we explain that a society which claims to be concerned with the integration of new generations keeps them away from employment for so long? We learn by working. We work while learning. The experience is formative. The company is not only a place of production, it is also a place of education.
If we want to raise the age of entry into a meaningful active life, without sacrificing studies, then work-study is certainly one of the best levers we have. Work-study training was born from a simple intuition: we learn better when school and life interact. History has demonstrated this for almost a century, but our country still struggles to admit it.
And what can we say about this paradox: excluding from the world of work those who are in the prime of life? We are concerned about the obstacles faced by young people. We deplore their lack of confidence, their difficulty integrating, their lack of knowledge of the professions. But what answers do we provide? How could they gradually find their place if we always postpone their confrontation with reality?
Obviously, there would be more contributions, less debt… But that’s not even the most important thing.
A waiting room where we stamp our feet with impatience
What is essential is to prepare young people for the challenges of today and tomorrow. However, work-study training largely responds to this: it allows them to gain autonomy, to give meaning to knowledge, to meet relevant adults, to learn to live in society, to promote their talents, to become aware of the meaning of effort, to have a status, etc.
Alternation accelerates maturity; our current organization too often resembles a waiting room where we stamp our feet with impatience. One of my students told me one day: “When I’m at work, I feel like I exist. » This sentence alone sums up what the work-study program brings: a situation, a reason to get up in the morning, and the pride of contributing to something bigger than yourself.
I have seen thousands of young people flourish thanks to this type of training. Many did not find their way in the traditional school system. However, when we trusted them, when we allowed them to learn by doing, they revealed skills that school alone had not been able to bring out. This experience leads me to a simple conviction: our youth do not need us to lower our standards; she needs the doors to real involvement to be opened sooner. She needs more confidence.
Allow young people to work earlier
And this is the crux of our paradigm: youth do not become adults only thanks to the knowledge they acquire. She also becomes one thanks to the responsibilities entrusted to her.
So the most important reform may not be the one we think of. For twenty years, France has been looking for solutions to make the French work longer. It should start by also thinking about how to enable young people to work usefully a few years earlier, without interrupting their studies.
Some will fear exploitation of young people or a drop in the level of education. However, well-supervised work-study training does not sacrifice studies… it enriches them.
The three-step model – learn, produce, withdraw – is a legacy of the 20th century. Today, we must learn by producing, and produce by learning. Retirement itself could become a time of transmission, and no longer a simple withdrawal.
As early as 1981, Bertrand Schwartz, then interministerial delegate for the integration of young people, defended this idea: work-study is not one solution among others, but a cultural revolution. It’s time to turn the page: studies and work are not enemies, but two sides of the same coin. The societies that are able to reconcile them will be those that best prepare for their future.
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