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"Higher education"

This paper reports on an evaluation of competence-based vocational education practice in Scotland, with particular reference to higher level professional awards. Students (n=236) who registered for level 4 and 5 Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs) returned questionnaires providing data on their experience of the programmes, the criterion-based assessment methodology and the quality of learning. It was found that participation in the ‘new vocationalism’ was highly gender patterned, had little impact on education and training targets and was skewed in favour of particular awards and occupational groups. The criterion-based assessment methodology proved more time-consuming for the students than the staff, with the emphasis on producing paper-based portfolios of evidence. A particular concern emerging from the research was the superficial nature oflearning taking place on competence-based vocational education programmes. These findings are discussed in the context of the growth in ‘outcome-based’ approaches to education adopted by policy makers in Scotland. It is argued that the narrow instrumentalist employer-led standards used to underpin education practice are ill-suited to developing a highly skilled professional workforce for the next century. © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

In the twenty-first century, knowledge-based economies require planned management of knowledge and, therefore, partnerships between the world of work and education will take on qualitatively different emphases. The United Kingdom Government has recognised this through various initiatives including the new Foundation degree. The authors place the concept of educational partnership at the heart of work-based learning, but as both the driver and the definer, rather than as a taken-for-granted assumption. Quality partnerships are seen as an important dimension in the development of learning organisations and of lifelong learning in higher education (HE). The article discusses the concept of quality in partnership, and considers educational principles and criteria that are important in identifying successful work-based learning as opposed to work-based learning per se. Quality work-based partnerships increase ‘value added’ and are therefore important in shifting the predominant culture in business, from one of learning as a cost to one of learning as an investment in the future. © 2000 Journal of Vocational education and Training All rights reserved.

Universities are at a pivotal point in their history and are undergoing dramatic changes. One of the more significant of these changes is the move towards instrumental programmes of learning, as manifest for instance in workplace and work-based learning. This paper argues that this trend threatens the existence of the liberal university, where knowledge is pursued predominantly for its own sake. The paper identifies four dominant discourses in higher education and suggests that these discourses co-exist with one another, and are sometimes dominant, at other times recessive. It argues that the trend to a post-industrialised labour market has seen the emergence of a vocationalised discourse in higher education, which stresses the instrumental at the expense of the liberal.

Compares labour market transitions of young people in Germany and Italy using panel data from the GSOKP and the SHIW. The aim is to investigate whether there are significant cross-country differences in the patterns of labour market entrance and whether explanatory factors can be identified. The analysis shows that Germans have a significantly higher probability of moving from school to work and from unemployment to employment. They are also more likely to move back to studies if already in the labour force. Further investigation suggests that cross-country differences in the educational and labour market systems are responsible for the differences found.

Many Canadian provinces have introduced youth apprenticeship initiatives to facilitate transitions into the labour market. As the German dual system is often considered a model for such initiatives, this paper attempts to introduce a critical perspective on issues affecting the system's future. Economic restructuring, work reorganization, changing hiring practices, and young people's increasing preference toward higher education form the main challenges for the dual system. The review of recent debates about the German dual system suggests that youth apprenticeship initiatives in Canada need to provide students with career options that are more transparent while at the same time maintaining or increasing flexibility in the transition process.

The main focus of this paper is a case study of the progression links onto a new undergraduate business programme (Business Enterprise) that have been established for modern apprentices between Coventry Business School and Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, Training and Enterprise. The context of the relationship between the two is initially established and this leads to an overview of the findings generated by a research study designed to highlight the views and expectations of major stakeholders in the apprenticeship scheme. In turn, this subsequently leads to an exploration of the implications for the design of higher education programmes targeted at apprentices. © 1999, MCB UP Limited

Puts forward the author's view of key issues affecting hospitality education into the new millennium. Issues identified as particularly impacting on UK centres are graduate standards, quality and quality assessment, research assessment, key skills and learning and teaching including the impact of information technology. Amongst these issues, information technology is identified as having the greatest potential impact to bring about radical change. It is suggested that there is now the capability to develop global hospitality education brands. This capability is not confined to existing education suppliers. Corporations, business schools and commercial management development organisations may also be attracted by this opportunity. © 1999, MCB UP Limited

education systems can be characterized on the basis of whether the academic and occupational/vocational education and training they provide is compartmentalized (tracked systems), systematically connected (linked systems) or fully integrated (unified systems). This paper describes how such a typology might be used to model strategic change at the higher levels of the UK system for education and training. Successive governments have pursued a number of separate agendas (e.g. massification of HE, public accountability, standards in HE, key/employability skills, lifelong learning…) the net result of which is leading to a more unified system. © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The Maine Technical College System (MTCS) has a 50 – year history of preparing skilled workers for an occupationally diverse and geographically dispersed region. Established as a vocational training institute under the “GI Bill” to help returning servicemen, the System now includes seven colleges and provides education, training, and retraining in the state’s most advanced technological fields. The System increasingly provides a vital bridge between schools and work, offering career awareness and internship programs to secondary school students and widening access to higher education for a population that traditionally has not sought further education or training. Four innovative programs serve as the foundation of this bridge: (1) Maine Quality Centers, resources that help expanding employers identify workforce needs and provide workers with skills tailored to those specific needs; (2) Maine Tech Prep, an applied high school curricula and academic guidance philosophy that initiates career and skills development; (3) articulation agreements, the genesis of a seamless educational experience from high school through two-and four-year college; and (4) Maine Career Advantage, a nationally recognized school - to - career internship program. Individually and collectively, these programs position MTCS, Maine's most affordable postsecondary option, as a viable avenue toward education and training in a state where college attainment levels are among the lowest in the nation. The system is experiencing steadily increasing enrollment and high graduate placements. © 1999 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Post-compulsory teacher training in England has been under review, and standards developed by the Further education Staff Development Forum were to be launched in January 1999 as a precursor to a mandatory qualification for teachers in further education in England and Wales. Until now, many further education colleges have worked in partnership with higher education institutions to run Certificate in education programmes, which aim to develop both practical teaching skills and critical knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning in a post-compulsory context. A review of one such programme is outlined here. In a context where further education teachers must help to widen participation and promote lifelong learning, it is argued that any new arrangements for initial teacher training and continuing professional development need to include ‘competence’ in the practical skills involved in teaching and learning, but must also go beyond this, and aim to develop critical knowledge and understanding of the changing context in which staff work. It is argued that turning the new Further education National Training Organisation standards for further education teachers in England and Wales into a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) is inadequate to this task. A strengthened partnership between further and higher education providers to develop more robust and coherent approaches to professional capability is advocated. © 1999, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.