Challenges for adult skill formation in the globalising learning economy – a European perspective

Abstract

The globalising learning economy driven by more intense competition and the wide use of information and communication technologies is characterised by rapid change in technologies and markets. At the level of labour markets and within enterprises, this is reflected in continuous change in skill requirements for employees. This is true for all parts of the world economy. In this paper, the focus is on Europe and developments in the first decade of the new millennium. The major challenge for Europe is to counter the inherent trend, reinforced by the crisis, towards unequal access to learning both in work and in education. Without a new new deal that gives privileged access to vocational education and training for those with little education, the economic performance of Europe will be undermined. Such a new new deal must be a fundamental element in the effort to lift Europe out of its current crisis.

Keywords:

• Skills
• globalisation
• learning
• quality of work
• Europe

Notes

1. http://www.eurofound.europa.eu

2. Lorenz and Valeyre (2005) use logit regression analysis in order to control for differences in sector, occupation and establishment size when estimating the impact of nation on the likelihood of employees being grouped in the various forms of work organisation. The results show statistically significant ‘national effect’ also when controlling for the structural variables, thus pointing to considerable latitude in how work is organised for the same occupation or within the same industrial sector.

3. It is also worth observing that there are fairly strong positive correlations between the frequency of leading innovators and the two measures of vocational training, R-squared = .47 and .45, respectively.

4. Behind neoliberal governments’ unwillingness to give attention to the quality of jobs has been their assumption that there is a trade-off between more jobs and better jobs. Reducing the quality of jobs and giving employers more freedom to set standards has been seen as a way to create more jobs. When we use the proportion of discretionary learning jobs as quality indicator, we find the opposite. The data drawn on here do not indicate any trade-off between quality and volume of employment – rather they indicate that high-quality jobs go hand in hand with high employment rates. Among the EU-15, only the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Germany have reached the target rate of employment (70%) and these are also the economies where the share of jobs offering workers discretionary learning is highest. The pattern observed in Table 2 also supports the idea of a positive relation between the quantity and quality of jobs rather than a trade-off. The share of the discretionary learning forms increased during period up to 2005 characterised by an increase in the average employment rate for the EU-15, while it declined during the latter part of the period when employment was falling.