BEYOND THE GRADE THRESHOLD: A TRIADIC INCENTIVE-ALIGNMENT FRAMEWORK FOR STATE-FINANCED STIPENDS IN DUAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, WITH EVIDENCE FROM UZBEKISTAN’S 2026 REFORM

Abstract

Governments expanding dual vocational education and training (VET) systems face a design problem that has received surprisingly little conceptual attention: how should a state structure a stipend so that it simultaneously protects a trainee’s livelihood, re-wards effort, and gives an employer a credible channel to signal performance, without collapsing into either blanket welfare or narrow piece-rate pay? This paper develops the Triadic Incentive-Alignment Model (TIAM), a conceptual framework that decom-poses conditional-stipend design into five interacting layers — baseline security, per-formance escalation, third-party (employer) evaluation, platform-mediated condition-ality, and reversible sanctioning. The framework is applied to a 2026 Uzbek govern-ment resolution that introduces digitally administered, performance-tiered stipends for technicum students in dual education. The case shows how the five layers can be combined in practice, but also exposes three structural tensions that the literature on apprenticeship financing and conditional transfers has not resolved: grade-based escalation invites grade inflation; employer-scored evaluation imports firm-level bias into a public entitlement; and full-budget financing from a single ministry creates fis-cal fragility once state co-financing commitments expire. The paper proposes four testable design amendments — a composite performance index, graduated state–employer co-financing, a procedural-justice appeal channel for suspended stipends, and sector-weighted multipliers — that convert the Uzbek case from a descriptive example into a transferable policy instrument for other transition economies scaling up dual VET.