The New East European Model of Education, Training and Youth Employment

This paper outlines, in ideal typical terms, a new model of education, training and youth employment which has become visible, albeit to varying extents and always alongside other features, in the ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The new model has three definitive characteristics: (i) The size and shape of vocational education are determined by labour demand, and, in turn, determine the size and shape of the rest of education; (ii) academic/general education is deemed suitable for all ability levels; and (iii) the privatisation of responsibility, and a greatly enlarged role for private finance within education. The model is most likely to prove specific to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is path dependent, having developed from the Communist system of education, but it is equally a product of: rapid and radical economic and political reconstruction; the delegitimisation of all aspects of the old system; sudden exposure to turn-of-millennium global market and cultural conditions; sharp increases in demand for full secondary and continuing education; enforced cutbacks in state funding. The new model offers businesses some definite competitive advantages: well-educated supplies of youth labour, and vocational courses customised to employers' requirements, combined with low taxes on corporate and executive earnings. Needless to say, these advantages conferred by education may be insufficient to outweigh all the obstacles to economic development in the relevant countries.