Abstracts 2012
Abstract
The Relationship between Vocational Training and Higher Education: Enduring Division or Hybrid Innovation? A Comparison of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in an Era of Europeanization
Von:Graf, Lukas; Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), Deutschland
Session: 3
Zeit: Freitag, 06.7.2012, 09:00 - 11:00
Ort: FH Saal B
Typ: Paper
Downloads: Präsentation als PDF
Germany, Austria and Switzerland are part of the collective skill system cluster (Busemeyer and Trampusch, 2012) and renowned for their extensive dual training systems at upper secondary level. However, these dual apprenticeship systems also seem to go hand in hand with a historically evolved strong institutional divide between the vocational education and training system (VET) and the higher education system (HE). This institutional division between VET and HE, called the ‘educational schism’ and stemming from the pre-industrial era (Baethge, 2006, on the German case), has become increasingly challenged especially due to the rise in the level of average skill requirements in the service economy and knowledge society but also due to shifts in young peoples’ educational aspirations. In this context, institutional changes in the relationship between the organizational fields of VET and HE that lead to increased inter-sectorial permeability are viewed as key to enhancing social mobility and life chances (Bernhard, Graf and Powell, 2010, Powell and Solga, 2010). Beyond that, European education and training reforms, which have been gaining in strength incrementally but forcefully, demand greater mobility between VET and HE (Powell, Bernhard and Graf, 2012). However, due to national institutional legacies, educational organizations react differently to exogenous pressures stemming from ongoing internationalization processes (e.g., Graf, 2009).
Do the relatively similar systems in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland deal with such challenges in similar ways, and with what implications in terms of permeability between VET and HE? In this paper I argue that all three countries rely in part on some form of hybridization—a specific combination of institutional elements from the two organizational fields of VET and HE—to introduce gradual institutional reform within their long-established skill formation systems. The comparative-institutional analysis is based on document analysis and secondary literature but primarily on several dozen expert interviews carried out with key stakeholders in all three countries in 2010 and 2011. The theoretical framework combines historical institutionalism and new institutionalism in organizational analysis. This framework guides the process tracing (1960s-present) of the national trajectories of hybridization in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, structured along the three phases of ‘genesis’, ‘consolidation’, and ‘Europeanization’.
A key finding is that while in all three countries hybridization at the nexus of VET and HE can be observed, due to specific factors in the respective national institutional context, it takes the form of distinct organizational forms, for example Dual Study Programs in Germany, Vocational Colleges (“Berufsbildende Höhere Schulen”) in Austria (see Graf, Lassnigg and Powell, 2012), and the (sequential) combination of vocational baccalaureate and studies in universities of applied sciences in Switzerland. In tracing the historical development of these hybrids, the organizational case studies of hybridity serve to analyze the extent to which elements considered as traditionally characteristic for VET gain prominence in HE (‘the vocationalization of HE’) and vice versa (‘the academization of VET’).
References
Baethge, M. (2006) Das deutsche Bildungs-Schisma: Welche Probleme ein vorindustrielles Bildungssystem in einer nachindustriellen Gesellschaft hat. SOFI-Mitteilungen No. 34. Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut an der Universität Göttingen (SOFI), 13-27.
Bernhard, N., Graf, L. & Powell, J.J.W. (2010) Wenn sich Bologna und Kopenhagen treffen - Erhöhte Durchlässigkeit zwischen Berufs- und Hochschulbildung? WZB Mitteilungen, (130): 26-29.
Busemeyer, M.R. & Trampusch, C. (Eds.) (2012) The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Graf, L. (2009) Applying the Varieties of Capitalism Approach to Higher Education: Comparing the Internationalization of German and British Universities. European Journal of Education, 44(4): 569-585.
Graf, L., Lassnigg, L. & Powell, J.J.W. (2012) Austrian Corporatism and Gradual Institutional Change in the Relationship between Apprenticeship Training and School-based VET. In Busemeyer, M.R. & Trampusch, C. (Eds.) The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 150-178.
Powell, J.J.W., Bernhard, N. & Graf, L. (2012) The Emerging European Model in Skill Formation: Comparing Higher Education and Vocational Training in the Bologna and Copenhagen Processes. Sociology of Education, OnlineFirst, published on January 3, 2012 as doi: 10.1177/0038040711427313.
Powell, J.J.W. & Solga, H. (2010) Analyzing the Nexus of Higher Education and Vocational Training in Europe: A Comparative-Institutional Framework. Studies in Higher Education, 35(6): 705-721.
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