How European are Europe's Work and Learning Policies?

Update: you can view the slides from James Wickham's keynote online. See the 'download' links above for other versions.

To fully understand European vocational education and training (VET) policies, one has to place them in the context of wider European employment, social and economic policies. Professor James Wickham of Trinity College Dublin, who has led a number of research projects and written widely about European social policies will give the keynote speech to launch discussion on this topic

Opening: Ludger Deitmer, Convenor VETNET, Bremen

Chair: Barry Nyhan, Cedefop, Greece

Keynote Speech by: James Wickham, Trinity College Dublin

What’s European about education and training in Europe?

Discussants:

Gerald Heidegger, University of Flensburg, Germany

Massimo Tomassini, ISFOL, Rome

Outline of talk :: What's European about education and training in Europe, by James Wickham

Introduction

We are all aware of the current contrast between the USA and Europe, between the 'dynamic' and job-creating US and stagnant and high unemployment 'Old Europe'. For many of our masters, including increasingly it seems the European Commission, the US is a model for the rest of us. More sophisticated arguments of course point out that countries as different as Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden also have low unemployment; others point out that American job growth involves jobs of a quality that up to now would not be tolerated in countries such as France or Germany. Ultimately this 'war of the worlds' or at least war of the models is about the nature and future of the European social model.

This paper develops the discussion in relation to education and training. I ask to what extent we can identify features of education and training that appear 'European', especially the diversity of education and training systems within Europe, even within pre-enlargement Europe. I identify some problems with the US model that is increasingly being exported, not least to the new member states of the EU, and I tentatively suggest some ways forward.

Models of training in Europe

Within Europe there is a wide variety of education and training systems, although this has not produced the extensive literature that the 'welfare state modelling' literature has produced. There are however a few available typologies (e.g. Marsden) and some attempts to link different training and education systems to the wider society (e.g. Lane, 1989; Hall and Soskice, 2001; Brown, Green & Lauder, 2001).

Within Europe the German training system has long had an exemplary role. What is important for our concerns is that most accounts link it directly to the 'corporatist' involvement of organised employers, to some lesser extent of trade unions, and public bodies. It can also be linked, if less directly, to the peculiar economic structure of (West) Germany with the key role of export-oriented manufacturing industry; it also 'fits' with other features of the German education system, such as highly streamed secondary school system, relatively low level university participation. Hall and Soskice in particular see the German training system as an integral part of a 'co-ordinated market economy' and thus linked to a particular financial system and a very particular role for large banking capital. The point is that all these features are now changing. It is arguable that the onslaught of 'shareholder value imperialism' is now knocking away the key institutional structures on which the training system has been based. These changes in the institutional background of the system are far more serious that the well known (and partly solved) problems of inflexible and/or inappropriate curricula.

Historically the UK has provided the polar opposite model, with low levels of basic education, weak vocational training (apart from a narrow range of 'trades') and with vocational education effectively located within third level education. Once famously described as a 'low skill equilibrium', there is now evidence that this now does also deliver the high skills that are needed for the very particular UK economy. Both in education and labour market policy New Labour has continued the focus on 'skilling' which began under the Thatcher government, but it seems that these policies are continually undermined by the conflation of employers' immediate needs with the wider needs of upskilling strategy for the economy as a whole. At best, the UK is an example of an effective model of skill polarisation. The key question now for the UK model is therefore whether it is possible to lift the 'floor' of low skills, or whether the two extremes of the skill distribution are actually two sides of the same coin.

Models of HRD and learning organisations

The literature on training systems is not usually linked to the literature on 'learning organisations' and 'human resource development'. Again we can pose two extreme versions. One model, derived largely from Scandinavia, focuses on the processes of learning internal to organisations; it links to notions of participation and to discussions of tacit and/or social knowledge, 'work process knowledge', etc. Implicit in this literature is the understanding of the enterprise as providing - at least for core (and learning) employees - relatively long-term and secure employment. By contrast, the alternative model focuses on 'employability' and stresses the role - or even the duty - of the individual in acquiring knowledge for use on the external labour market. Paradoxically, at the same time there is also a stress on 'corporate culture' and 'commitment', creating the company as an island of social cohesion in a sea of individualised anomie.

The American mirage and the European model?

• the role of organised interest groups (trade unions, business associations etc) in the development of training systems, thus restricting the free rider problem;
• the importance of relatively broad qualifications as opposed to 'just in time' learning, thus enhancing the individual employee's labour market position and potential for further development;
• the acceptance of non-utilitarian educational elements that contribute to citizenship within the vocational curriculum.
• the understanding of participation and learning at work as a right rather than simply something which depends on a 'business case'.

No single European country fully develops all these features, but what is significant is that they are hardly found at all in the USA. Indeed the increasing marketisation of education in the USA suggests that education there is becoming like health - a system that consumes vast resources for very mediocre overall outcomes, but which remains attractive simply because of what it can deliver to the richest customers and the most elite practitioners. At third level we can contrast the development of a global market, dominated by US universities, with the growth of intra-European student exchanges (Socrates). Just as European universities need to develop a European response to a market in which the rules are not theirs, so too do European training systems.

Chair: Teresa Oliveira, ITB, University of Lisbon

Contributors:

Chair: M'Hamed Dif, University L. Pasteur of Strasbourg

Contributors: