Work based learning
“Will US universities be made redundant by the employability agenda?’, asks the Times Higher Education. It is a bit of a curious article. THE says that student debt and doubts by companies that college graduates are “job-ready” is leading to “increasing numbers of companies are taking the training of their workers in-house.”
Companies provide classroom and on-the-job training, ‘students’ get paid. But this just seems to be an apprenticeship to me, albeit an unregulated version. And in most European countries higher level (i.e. degree equivalent) apprenticeships are fast growing – Spain and the UK being two examples. In Germany there is also a growing tendency for young people to undertake an apprenticeship before or after going to university.
It should be noted that in none of the European countries has apprenticeship led to universities becoming redundant. however there are problems with the so called “employability agenda”. Is the definition of ’employability’ a broad curriculum designed to equip people for employment in the future or is it a narrow training programme to slot workers into the role requirerd by the company who has hired them. In European countries, wider social partners are involved in the planning and regulations of apprenticeship programmes, in order to ensure that a broader curriculum is followed. Indeed, repeated studies have pointed to the short termism of companies when designing their own training programmes.
Hello Graham,
If you use the category ‘workinglearning’, you will publish your post on my blog. I think you already have a well-read blog of your own. So you probably do not need to start blogsquatting on your own website? 🙂
With best wishes from Pekka