Can I register with the RAV and study?

Two decisions, two offices

The question hides two separate procedures. Registration for placement is governed by Article 19 AVIV: it is done in person, either through the access platform for electronic services or by appearing at the competent office, you state your AHV number, and the date is confirmed to you in writing. Article 18 paragraph 1 AVIV puts the office of your place of residence in charge. Nothing in that procedure asks whether you are studying.

The benefit claim is the second procedure. Article 20 paragraph 1 AVIG has you file it with an unemployment fund — the Arbeitslosenkasse — that you choose freely, and once the framework period is running you may not switch. It is here that the seven cumulative conditions of Article 8 paragraph 1 AVIG are checked: wholly or partly unemployed, a countable loss of work, resident in Switzerland, compulsory schooling completed, contribution period fulfilled or exempted, capable of placement, and complying with the control rules.

For anyone who has arrived in Switzerland recently, two of those conditions bite before the studies question is even reached. Residence in Switzerland is a condition in its own right, and Article 15 paragraph 1 requires that you be "permitted" to accept work — which for non-EU and non-EFTA nationals is a permit question, not an intention question. Registering while a permit is unresolved is still worth doing; expecting a daily allowance out of it is not.

What "capable of placement" actually asks

Article 15 paragraph 1 AVIG uses three words that are examined one by one: ready, able and permitted. Ready is intention. Able is real availability in hours. Permitted is the legal right to take the job. A course of study touches the middle one, and that is where the case law sits.

BGE 120 V 385 is the leading decision, and it is more generous than most readers expect. A student counts as capable of placement if they are ready and able to hold a permanent full-time or part-time job alongside the studies. The decisive word is permanent. A student willing to work only for short periods or sporadically, in particular during semester breaks, is denied the willingness to be placed and with it the capacity. Studying does not exclude entitlement; availability that follows the academic calendar does.

The floor is low. Marginal note B247 of the Weisung AVIG ALE states that partly unemployed people count as capable of placement if they are ready and able to accept suitable work amounting to at least 20 per cent of a full-time position. So the legal bar is one day a week. The bar that actually decides the outcome is set by employers, not by the law — and in our own index of Swiss adverts, among the postings that state a workload at all, only 9.5 per cent of English-language ones would take somebody available at 50 per cent or less.

The confirmation your school has to write — and why it is not in English

Marginal note B265 is the operative rule for anyone studying at their own initiative. If an insured person attends a course during unemployment that the unemployment insurance has not approved, placement capacity may only be affirmed if it is established that the person is ready and able to interrupt the course at any time in order to take a job. Then comes the sentence that changes the procedure: the insured person's declaration is not sufficient, and a confirmation must be obtained from the person responsible for the course or the training, stating also the financial consequences of the interruption.

Two practical consequences follow. First, ask the school registry for that letter early rather than waiting to be asked, and have it name what a mid-semester withdrawal costs. Second, be aware that the cost figure works against you when it is large — an argument that is invisible until it is in the file.

There is a second thing worth knowing if you read in English: this rule has no English edition. The directive exists as Weisung AVIG ALE in German, Directive LACI IC in French and Direttiva LADI ID in Italian, and the English-language part of arbeit.swiss carries no equivalent. The English pages cover registration, insurance benefits and an FAQ, but the marginal notes that decide a case like this are only published in the three official languages. If an adviser quotes a B-number at you, that is where it comes from.

The case law shows both edges. In EVG C 136/02 of 4 February 2003 an insured person who attended a medical training course on her own initiative during unemployment was capable of placement — but she still had to make job applications and be prepared to end the training in favour of a job. In EVG C 132/04 of 11 October 2004 a four-month course in the USA failed: at no point was there any assurance that she could be reached within a day and placed within a reasonable time.

The ten-year rule that catches most foreign graduates

If you studied in Switzerland and never worked here, the route to benefit is not the contribution period but exemption from it. Article 14 paragraph 1 letter a AVIG exempts people who, within the framework period, were out of employment for more than twelve months in total and could not fulfil the contribution period because of schooling, retraining, education or continuing education — "provided they were domiciled in Switzerland for at least ten years".

That clause is the one most foreign graduates of Swiss universities fall over. A master's degree at ETH, EPFL or a university of applied sciences typically takes two years; a bachelor plus master, five. None of that comes close to ten. Marginal note B187 softens the rule slightly — the ten years need neither immediately precede the claim nor be continuous — but it does not shorten them. Note also the contrast inside the same article: for illness, accident or maternity, letter b requires only residence during that period, with no ten-year rule at all. The long residence requirement is specific to education.

The same marginal note sets out what counts as education: any course of study that can be used on the labour market, evidenced by a certificate from the training institution showing the start, the end and the time commitment including preparation hours. One sentence rules out an entire category — continuing education completed as self-study generally cannot be recognised, because it is not sufficiently verifiable. A year of self-directed online learning is not a ground for exemption. And the end of the education is the moment you learn your final exam result, which matters because a one-year programme almost never reaches the twelve months required.

Marginal note B209 adds the harshest rule: contribution months and exemption months cannot be added together. The directive's own example is twelve months of continuing education plus eleven months of contributions inside one framework period — both conditions narrowly missed, and no entitlement at all. Two nearly-complete routes do not make one complete route.

What exemption is actually worth

Being exempt is not the same as being insured. Article 6 paragraph 1 AVIV imposes a special waiting period of 120 days on people exempted because of education, and paragraph 6 states it is served in addition to the general waiting period under Article 18 paragraph 1 AVIG. The same paragraph adds a detail that is easy to miss: only days on which you fulfil the entitlement conditions of Article 8 paragraph 1 AVIG count as waiting days. The waiting period is not elapsed time — you serve it registered, capable of placement and applying for jobs. Paragraphs 1bis and 1ter allow a motivation semester or a professional work placement during that period.

After the wait, Article 27 paragraph 4 AVIG caps the entitlement at 90 daily allowances. For comparison, twelve months of contributions buy at most 260, eighteen months at most 400, and people under 25 without children are capped at 200 under paragraph 5bis. Article 21 AVIG pays five daily allowances per week.

The amount is a flat rate rather than a salary. Article 41 paragraph 1 AVIV sets insured earnings at CHF 153 a day for a tertiary qualification, CHF 127 for an upper-secondary II qualification and CHF 102 for everyone else aged 20 or over. Paragraph 2 halves these where the exemption rests on education, the person is under 25 and has no maintenance duty towards children. A full daily allowance is 80 per cent of insured earnings under Article 22 paragraph 1 AVIG; the reduction to 70 per cent only applies where the full allowance exceeds CHF 140, which none of these rates reach. Worked through, a graduate over 25 gets CHF 122.40 a day and an otherwise identical graduate under 25 gets CHF 61.20.

If you worked alongside your degree, the arithmetic is different

The far better position is the student who held a contributory part-time job. Marginal note B211 works it through: a person has for several years held a contributory part-time job of twelve hours a week alongside a university degree, at a monthly wage of CHF 1200, and registers for benefit after graduating. Insured earnings are then calculated from both the wage and the flat rate applied to the share of the week she was prevented from working — with a normal working week of 40 hours at the employer, CHF 1200 plus 28/40 of the flat monthly rate of CHF 3320, giving insured earnings of CHF 3524.

This works because BGE 8C_318/2011 of 5 March 2012 allows the two to run in parallel: a person may fulfil the contribution period for a share of less than 100 per cent and be exempt from it for the remainder, provided the previous workload and the impediment together add up to a full-time position.

The directive also records the unwelcome end of that example. If she keeps the part-time job after graduating, compensation payments for interim earnings run until she has drawn 90 daily allowances; after that the insured earnings are reduced to CHF 1200, and with no countable loss of earnings the entitlement stops. Keeping the student job past graduation buys a window, not a solution.

What the insurance will and will not finance

Marginal note A4a of the Weisung AVIG AMM sets the principle: education, continuing education and retraining for jobseekers must always be indicated by the labour market, and the principle of proportionality applies. Where both hold, they are actively supported. So the question is not whether the insurance likes education but what it measures education against.

Marginal note A17 supplies the first criterion, and it strikes most study plans directly. If the requested measure is the realisation of a career wish held independently of the unemployment, it is to be assessed as not indicated by the labour market. If it is an adequate measure to end the unemployment or to avoid repeated unemployment — for example because it lets the jobseeker adapt to changes in the labour market and to technical progress — that speaks for the indication. A long-held wish to finally study something else is, in this framework, the opposite of an argument.

Three further limits follow. A18 says that with young unemployed people in particular it should be avoided that they claim insurance benefits for their initial education. A19 excludes, following the case law, the practical placements required by a medical degree and the trainee period for lawyers after a law degree. A20 sets twelve months as the normal maximum for a training or employment measure and requires refusal where the same improvement in placement capacity could be reached more cheaply or more quickly. A21 allows measures abroad only exceptionally and for compelling reasons — chiefly where there is no way of reaching the goal in Switzerland.

Two judgments mark the range better than any rule. In judgment C 280/02 of 18 November 2003, financing a two-year training course as a social pedagogue for a jobseeker whose basic qualifications were as a seamstress and a beautician was neither indicated by the labour market nor proportionate. In judgment C 242/05 of 6 October 2006, obtaining a category D driving licence for a jobseeker who was clearly hard to place was a targeted measure that opened up a new field within an already familiar sector. Short, concrete and attached to a recognisable vacancy wins; long, biographical and new loses.

The one route to a complete qualification

Marginal note A4b draws the clearest line in the whole subject. Courses that constitute a complete formal qualification under the Swiss education system can be obtained exclusively through training allowances. Continuing education and retraining that do not constitute a complete formal qualification can be taken as an ordinary labour-market measure — and individual modules or courses of a formal qualification can also be taken in that frame. That last sentence is the practical way through for many people: not the whole programme, but a module of it.

The allowances themselves sit in Article 66a AVIG. The insurance may grant allowances for an education of at most three years where the insured person is at least 30 years old and has no completed or Swiss-recognised vocational qualification, or faces considerable difficulty finding a job in the occupation they trained for. Paragraph 3 excludes anyone holding a Swiss-recognised degree from a university or a higher technical college, anyone who spent three or more years at such an institution without graduating, and anyone who has passed a federal professional examination. A training contract with a training concept and a certificate at the end is required.

Article 90a AVIV supplies the numbers. The ceiling under Article 66c paragraph 2 AVIG is CHF 3500 a month, and scholarships already granted are set off against it unless they cover family maintenance costs. Applications go to the cantonal office eight weeks before the start, and the office normally notifies its decision within four weeks. Paragraph 5 carries the provision that makes the construction workable: from the start of the education the benefit framework period is extended until the education for which the allowance was granted is completed. Payment runs through the employer, who pays the allowance together with the wage and settles monthly with the fund.

When the duty to apply starts

Marginal note B319 fixes the moment at which the duty to mitigate — that is, to make documented job applications — begins for people about to finish an education, and it makes that moment depend on when you register. If you register before knowing your exam result, the duty starts from that registration. If you register after knowing the result, it starts when you learned the result. If you register on completing compulsory schooling, it starts before the end of the school year.

That is where a well-intentioned early registration creates an obligation nobody expected: register six months before your final exams and you are, from that day, required to show job applications on top of studying for them. The early registration is still worth it, because advice and placement start earlier — but ask explicitly in the first interview how many applications are expected for the months before graduation, and have the answer minuted.

The public English-language guidance points the same way without saying anything about the duty. The arbeit.swiss page for young people advises starting to look for a first job early, "ideally before you've completed your apprenticeship or degree", and to ask the training company first whether you can stay on. It is sound advice; B319 is what happens when you follow it and register at the same time.

Whatever tool you use to keep track, the applications themselves are declared the way your canton requires — on the official form or through Job-Room. A private tracker organises the work; it never replaces the declaration.

The Swiss vocabulary you will meet

Five terms recur in every conversation and none of them translates cleanly. Vermittlungsfähigkeit is placement capacity, the Article 15 test above. Arbeitsbemühungen are the documented job-search efforts you hand in each month. Pensum is the workload of a job expressed as a percentage, which is why Swiss adverts say "80 %" where an English advert would say "four days a week". Arbeitsmarktliche Massnahmen, usually shortened to AMM, are the labour-market measures — courses, work placements, practice firms. Rahmenfrist is the two-year framework period inside which entitlement is counted, under Article 9 AVIG.

One more that catches people out: the Arbeitslosenkasse is not the RAV. The RAV advises, places and instructs; the fund calculates and pays, and it is the fund that issues the formal decision you can contest. When the answer you are given about your studies is informal, ask which of the two offices is speaking.