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Abstract
Upgrading skill formation has become an increasingly urgent task for societies facing the challenges of rapid technological change and globalization. However, reform of systems of vocational education and training (VET) poses severe challenges for aligning the interests of schools, firms, households, and governments, even in societies with relatively efficient markets for labor and education. Where market institutions are poorly developed, these challenges are particularly acute, resulting in endemic mismatches between the supply and demand of skill. Currently governments in many countries, including the United States, Russia, and China, are seeking to adopt elements of the German dual education model. The Russian federal government has undertaken several initiatives designed to upgrade VET by encouraging closer cooperation of vocational schools and firms at the regional level, including the adoption of dual education programs. This paper focuses on one such project: a 2013 pilot program administered by the Russian Agency for Strategic Initiatives, to foster the development of new models of dual education. The paper compares the 13 pilot regions with regions that submitted proposals but were not selected and with all other regions along multiple economic, social, demographic, and institutional dimensions. The findings suggest hypotheses about the conditions that enabled the pilot regions to take advantage of federal policies encouraging the adoption of dual education. More generally, the paper sheds light on institutional solutions to collective action dilemmas in skill formation in transitional and developing societies.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express appreciation to Israel Marques, Po Yang, Fedor Dudyrev, Andrei Yakovlev, Tim Frye, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments. This paper is part of a larger collaborative project between the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development of the Higher School of Economics and the Center for Educational Finance Research of the Graduate School of Education, Beijing University.
Notes
1. Crouch, Finegold, and Sako point out that from the standpoint of society, the collective sum of skill in the work force has the characteristic of a public good that is non-excludable but is rivalrous (Citation2001, 25). Such a good is technically a “common pool resource.” That is, users cannot be prevented from consuming it, but overuse will deplete the supply. Thus users are rivals.
2. This is a simplified description of patterns described in Swenson (Citation2002), Thelen (Citation2001, 71–104), Iversen and Soskice (Citation2001), Iversen and Stephens (Citation2008), and Culpepper (Citation2000).
3. Crouch, Finegold, and Sako (Citation2001, 158–179) discusses Great Britain.
4. Polyvalent skills, in Streeck’s view, are not only the “key” to acquiring more skill (hence the term Schluesselqualifikationen), but also imply attitudinal and behavioral skills such as diligence, attention to detail, and willingness to take responsibility in group settings.
5. Personal observation and interviews at VW Academy, a joint project of Chattanooga State Community College and the Volkswagen Group of America (2 May 2016).
6. Government directive (razporyazhenie), RF 349-r. March 3, 2015 (from Pravitel’stvo. Razporyazheniya, No. 349, 2015; http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/43309898).
7. Discussions of compensation under the Soviet system may be found in Clarke (Citation1996), Gimpelson and Kapeliushnikov (Citation2011), and Remington (Citation2011).
8. Nastavniki (mentors or master trainers) were senior, experienced workers who were assigned to take young workers under their wing and help them adapt to the environment of the firm. The institution was called nastavnichestvo.
9. Poussenkova and Nikitina (Citation2016, 7) surveyed MBA students at three technical institutes serving the oil and gas industry, asking students to check which of a list of activities they thought were included in the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).” The three most commonly cited were “protecting the health of the company’s employees,” “training and development of the company’s employees,” and “promoting job creation and small business development in the regions of operations.” After that followed “environmentally sound activities” and “support of sports in the regions of operations.”
10. Some students finance their training through the tselevoi nabor (target recruitment) system. Under this system, certain students are selected by a regional government or a firm to receive training. A firm, or the regional government on behalf of the firm, pays the tuition fees. Upon successful completion of the course of study, graduates automatically receive jobs at the sponsoring firm.
11. These surveys, known as the “Business Environment and Economic Competitiveness Surveys,” were conducted by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Higher School of Economics, and the Levada Center in 2005 and 2009.
12. Formally, the Tripartite Commission for the Regulation of Social-Labor Relations. Besides the FITUR, the government and the main employer associations are the other partners. The tripartite commission was created in 1992 to establish a framework of “social partnership” between business and labor. Subnational branches of the Tripartite Commission exist in nearly every region and major city. Russian and foreign experts agree that, for the most part, the work of the tripartite commissions is largely formal. See Ashwin and Clarke (Citation2003) and Clarke (Citation1999, 2007).
13. Interview with A.A. Klimov, Deputy Minister of Education, 1 August 2016.
14. See the website http://asi.ru/staffing/dualeducation/.
15. The World Bank was involved only as a consultant.
16. Interview with a senior ASI executive in Moscow, 24 June 2016.
17. The scores may be found on the ASI website: http://asi.ru/staffing/dualeducation/docs/table.pdf.
18. Evidence about the reform of VET in particular regions is drawn from local press sources and websites. For more information, see Remington and Marques (Citation2014).
19. Note that the figures represent the median region in each category for each variable and the standard deviation of the range of values for the regions in that category. I report the median rather than mean in order to reduce the effect of extreme values. The ANOVA test, however, is based on a comparison of means and distributions for each of the three categories of regions.
20. Note that the components of the index are closely correlated. Cronbach’s alpha is 0.8986. Therefore, the measure is highly reliable.
22. See http://www.asi.ru/news/16618.
23. Personal observation and interviews at the Automotive Technology Instructional Center, Kaluga, Russia, 23 June 2016.