State to the Rescue: Bern Picks Up the Bill for Failed Private Education

When private enterprise stumbles in Switzerland, the state is rarely far behind with a soft landing pad. The impending closure of BiCT AG, a private Bernese vocational training company, left 120 young tech apprentices stranded mid-education. Naturally, the local administration stepped in to clear up the mess, organizing a bail-out of sorts for the vast majority of those affected.

The Canton of Bern arranged a transition to transfer 80 mediamatics trainees to the state-funded Technische Fachschule Bern after the upcoming autumn break. To keep things stable, the public institution is not just taking on the students; it is also hiring eight coaches from the insolvent firm. The public school, which already houses 650 apprentices across 13 trades, is absorbing the sudden surge with typical Swiss administrative optimism. Director Matthias Zurbuchen signaled that the institution possesses the necessary scale and expertise to manage the influx smoothly.

BiCT’s collapse offers a textbook lesson in flawed corporate assumptions. The private center operated on a fragile model: initial in-house training for two years, followed by placing students into partner firms for their final two years, relying on those companies to pay fees. As demand for IT apprentices cooled and repayments on outstanding pandemic-era loans came due, the financial arithmetic fell apart completely. What raises eyebrows is that the company was still issuing fresh apprenticeship contracts as late as August, knowing full well that bankruptcy was knocking on the door.

The canton’s education director, Reto Müller, expressed satisfaction with the quick resolution, noting officially: I am glad that we were able to find viable solutions within such a short time, after two round tables. Yet, the price tag for taxpayers remains unquantified. The state-backed school plans to replicate the exact same model of outsourcing upper-year apprentices to industry partners—the very setup that brought down its private predecessor. Whether a public umbrella makes a broken commercial concept viable remains to be tested, but for now, the state has comfortably socialized the risk.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com