Competition or Complementarity of Vocational Education and Training a...

Symposium: „Competition or complementarity between academic and vocational education – status quo, challenges and future perspectives“

"The massive expansion of higher education across all continents has been one of the defining features of the late 20th and early 21st centuries" (Guri-Rosenblit/Sebkova/Teichler 2007, p. 1). Even if the expansion in the individual countries takes place with a time lag and to different extents, it shows an equally universal trend worldwide (Altbach/Reisberg/De Wit 2017; Cantwell/Marginson/Smolentska 2018). Because of the expansion of higher education, the level of education in the population worldwide has changed considerably. In the 25-34 age group, the proportion with a tertiary degree has increased from 36 per cent (2009) to 45 per cent (2019) on average in the OECD (OECD 2020, p. 61). Nevertheless, there are in part considerable differences between the individual countries, which are caused by the national economic and technological development, the demographic structure, the national organisation of the education systems, in particular the school system and access to higher education as well as the alternative qualification paths.

This symposium will examine these differences focusing on Germany, Austria and Switzerland – all characterised by a strong vocational education and training system. These three countries are not pioneers of higher education expansion in an international comparison, but they fit into this worldwide convoy.

For decades there has been a debate as to whether the expansion of education was triggered more by the economic demand for labour (manpower requirement approach) or by a change in educational (decision-making) behaviour (social demand approach). In an international comparison, Scott (2009, p. 4) considers that "the rising levels of attainment (or ambition) in secondary education appear to be as much the cause as the effect of increasing skill levels in the workforce. ...this second driver of massification is perhaps even more significant than the first”. The driving force behind educational expansion is above all the subjective perception of the status distribution function of education and the economic significance of education by parents and young people, the social perception that education is a medium of position distribution and status distribution and mediates life chances through degrees, entitlements and titles (cf. Marginson 2016, p. 414 f.).

The symposium also explores the reasons for the educational expansion and how young people today make their educational decisions from a comparative perspective based on empirical data.

The significant increase in the number of university entrants suggests, based on the sheer number of academically trained entrants, that vocational and academic education can no longer be merely complementary, but also compete with each other. The debate on the relationship between academic and vocational education and training is highly influenced by the educational institutions' own educational experiences and by their interests and different power resources in maintaining or expanding their own fields of business.

Finally, the symposium discusses the constellations of actors and interests underlying the expansion of academic education in the three countries under consideration. On this basis, various education policy options for the future design of the relationship between vocational and academic education will be identified.