Viktor is a PhD candidate in the programme group Institutions, Inequalities and Life courses (IIL) of the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He is affiliated with the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS). His PhD research focuses how differences in educational qualification impact careers on the labor market. It is part of the project From School to Career: Towards A Career Perspective on the Labor Market Returns to Education (CAREER) which is funded by an ERC grant. His research is supervised by Thijs Bol (University of Amsterdam) and Hanno Kruse (University of Bonn)

Viktor holds a Bachelor degree in Social Sciences and a Master degree in Sociology and Social Research from University of Cologne.

Decisions about which educational degree individuals pursue have consequences for their work lives. In this PhD project I study whether and to what extend vocationally trained workers have different careers than generally trained workers. Vocational education which prepares students to work in specific occupations is assumed to provide easy entrance into the labor market but lower employment prospects and lower income in the late career. In contrast, students who completed general degrees which convey broad knowledge, basic numeracy, and literacy skills tend to struggle in the first years but benefit in later career stages. Based on that finding, scholars argue that in times of rapid technological change occupation-specific skills outdate too quickly leaving vocational graduates with limited options. General education in turn equips workers with the required flexibility to operate on changing labor markets.

While research so far has found indication of a late-career penalty for vocationally trained workers in various countries, little yet is known about why these disparities between workers trained differently exist. This subproject aims to identify and examine the drivers of education-based career inequality such as labor market mobility, cumulative (dis)advantage, and differences in institutional context. To this end, I analyze employment trajectories from large panel surveys and register data from various countries.

Viktor teaches tutorials in the course Advanced Statistics (Bachelor Sociology) and has experience in teaching advanced statistics and advanced methods in social science research from University of Cologne.