From VET School to the Labour Market in Bosnia and Herzegovina: expected versus actual wages Nina Brankovic ´ & Nermin Oruc ˇ Introduction The transition from school to work has been a major research topic in recent deca- des (Hannan & Werquin 2001; Ryan 2001) especially with the position of young people in the labour market worsening through the negative effects of the Global Economic Crisis. Today, few young people integrate the labour market and ‘secure’ employment soon after graduation. This is particularly true in countries where youth unemployment rates are extremely high. One of the most striking examples is Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where the youth unemployment rate has persis- tently lingered around 60% over the past two decades. This article provides empiri- cal evidence of both the perceptions and experiences of young VET graduates in their transition from education to the labour market, with a focus on the analysis of differences between expected and actual wages. Although several empirical studies have covered the same topic (Wolter & Zbinden, 2002; Menon et al., 2012), they have focused on the transition experience of university graduates. A paper by Abbiati and Barone (2015), who studied upper secondary students and graduates, provides one exception to this trend. In addition, empirical evidence from the West- ern Balkans region is very scarce. The only exception is Andonova and Mojsoska- Blazeski (2015), who conducted a study of determinants of expected wages among university students in Macedonia. The empirical evidence of this article fits the wider context of the analysis of experiences of VET students in schools and their transition to the labour market. In researching students’ wage expectations versus actual salaries, many studies have tried to identify determinants of starting wages (Blau & Ferber, 1991; Heckert & Wallis, 1998; Lin & Spitzmueller, 2003; Brunello et al, 2004; Harmon & Red- mond, 2011), whilst other studies (Alonso-Borrego & Romero-Medina, 2011) have concluded that students overestimate their starting salaries. A number of studies employed students’ demographic characteristics to assess expected and realised wages. Zafar (2015) found that students formed their expec- tation about salaries before their education started, based on prior beliefs, whilst Heckert and Wallis (1998) focused on differences between older and younger stu- dents and their earning expectations. Brunello, Lucifora and Winter-Ebmer (2001) researched determinants of wage expectations within various fields of study using a sample of 6,000 college students from across Europe, based on their identifying characteristics (gender, age, etc.), whilst other scholars (Delaney et al, 2001: Fili- ppin & Ichino, 2005) focused on students’ family backgrounds. Frick and Maihaus (2015) documented differences in wage expectations and starting salaries in relation to individual characteristics using a sample of 85,000 students from across Germany. As documented by studies, there is a difference in wage expectations based on gender. A number of scholars reported that female students expected significantly European Journal of Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2016 DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12180 V C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd