The underestimated relevance and value of vocational education in tertiary education – making the invisible visible

Abstract

Increasing the number of tertiary graduates has been a priority on the political agenda of the EU for some years. The focus has mainly been on academic courses though, with less emphasis on the role of vocational education and training. International educational statistics indeed show a clear increase in the number of persons completing tertiary education programmes in recent years. In overall terms, this development is referred to as ‘academisation’. The present paper provides a critical analysis and uses examples from Germany, Austria and France to show that this interpretation is neglecting two crucial facts. One is that various academic programmes in fact are combining academic with vocational learning. The other is that there are vocational programmes in the tertiary education sector that are not adequately visible in international education statistics. This understanding is important in relation to future policy-making as well as individual decision-making.

Keywords:

• Tertiary education
• work-based learning
• vocational drift
• international comparison
• ISCED

Notes

1. A discussion of different understandings of ‘tertiary education’ is included later in the paper.

2. The focus of this paper is on ISCED-2011 levels 5 and 6/European Qualifications Framework (EQF) levels 5 and 6, so programmes like medicine or law, that in the case-study countries are at level 7, are not considered.

3. Almost 80% of young people in a cohort pass through school-based or company-based education and training at this level. This leads to a vocational qualification and enables direct entry to the labour market. The majority of young people enter professional life directly after completing training.

4. The establishment of Universities of Applied Sciences (from the mid-1990s) and of colleges of education has also had little effect on the dichotomous way in which goals and responsibility are ascribed in education and training. Both institutions have a vocational focus, but are classified at the academic higher education level both formally (classification in the ISCED) and in the public perception.

5. At the start of the 1970s, when the BTS (1962) and the DUT (1966) where launched, 50,000 students were registered on these programmes; in 1980 the figure was 120,000 students, and 235,000 students were registered in 2002 (Givord and Goux 2007, 224), while in 2014/15 the figure was 341,600 (MEN-RSS 2015).

6. Courses in 2014: Universities of Applied Sciences 1014, DHBW 204, Universities of Cooperative Education 188, and universities 71.

7. The dual courses of higher education study offered at Universities of Applied Sciences comprise a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Voralberg University of Applied Sciences (http://www.fhv.at/studium/technik/elektrotechnik-dual), a Bachelor course in Smart Engineering at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (https://www.fhstp.ac.at/de/studium-weiterbildung/medien-digitale-technologien/smart-engineering), a Bachelor course in ‘Production Technology and Organisation’ (http://www.fh-joanneum.at/aw/home/Studienangebot_Uebersicht/department_engineering/~cyz/pto/?lan=de) and a Master’s course in ‘Engineering and Production Management’, (http://www.fh-joanneum.at/aw/home/Studienangebot_Uebersicht/department_engineering/~cnrh/enp/?lan=de), both of the last two being offered at the Joanneum University of Applied Sciences in Graz.

8. These vocational qualifications are not counted in level 6 of the ISCED-classification, see Section 4.

9. Additionally there are examination regulations developed by individual chambers.

10. In most cases the chambers.

11. In the context of the NQF, qualifications which have no legal basis with regard to their curricula and examination standards are described as ‘non-formal qualifications’.

12. The intention is to classify these qualifications under the NQF in line with the classification of the formal qualifications (probably from 2017 onwards).

13. Agreed descriptors of the Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area.