The Private Rate of Return to Education Analysis

The essay examines problem of differences between salaried workers in the labor market. Wide space Is given to the theory of \u201chuman capital\u201d which, in this context, assigns a prevailing value to the skills gained by the subject in his schooling period if compared to the type of activity carried out in the work. The pages are intended to answer this question: what is the weight and importance of the school with regard to worker productivity and consequently what are the economic benefits that flow from it to the subject

The School-Work Alternation, an opportunity not to be wasted

The recent decision by the Government to downsize the school-work alternation (SWA) scheme, set out in Law No. 107/2015 (so called \u201cThe Good School\u201d), by cutting the number of hours spent by students in host organizations plus the reduction of funds by more than 50%, is questionable. The point made by this article is that this proposal is a bad news, a return to the pre Good School situation, when SWA existed only in the form of optional projects, in the autonomy of individual institutions. However, beyond some weaknesses and difficulties, inevitable at an early stage, the mandatory courses of SWA, introduced by \u201cThe Good School\u201d, have produced encouraging results, helping students to more easily enter the labor market (AlmaDiploma, 2019). This papers aims at highlighting the potential benefits of the SWA which represents a real opportunity to modernize the Italian school system. Through this tool, indeed, it is the first time that in one way or another firms are directly involved in the training design, and pushed to create a true linkage between the work and education systems

Tackling the Challenge of Skill Mismatch through Apprenticeship

Skills are widely regarded as being necessary for boosting productivity, stimulating innovation, and creating new jobs, while skill mismatches are considered responsible for a lack of dynamism in the labor market. Well designed, efficient and accessible education systems and training schemes, with strong link to the labour market, are crucial for building up and maintaining the required level of skills in the labour force and to reduce skill mismatches. From this perspective, a traditional form of vocational training that seek to provide skills in need to individuals in the labour market is the apprenticeship. Recent research demonstrates that apprenticeship schemes in countries with strong dual education systems can help to better meet the skill needs of companies and improve the employment picture for young people. Hands-on work experience helps to avoid skill gaps and to provide training relevant to labour market demand. Quality apprenticeships enable employers to offer innovative training which responds to their immediate needs and is associated with higher productivity, better opportunities for sustained employment and better working conditions

The Benefits of a Linkage Between the Education and Employment Systems in the Apprenticeship

In the context of high rates of youth unemployment and NEET, giving youth a better start in the labour market is a key priority for countries. Literature gives the clue to learn that, where the collaboration between education and employment systems in providing VET is well developed; youth employment patterns tend to be better. This is particularly true in countries with developed apprenticeship systems better than in countries with an inadequate or no apprenticeship system. Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland have proven quite successful in giving young people a good start in the labour market and these countries have low youth unemployment rates. Italy has been hit hard by the economic and financial crisis. Nevertheless the Italian government\u2019s response to high youth unemployment has been a comprehensive package of measures (\u201cJobs Act\u201d and \u201cGood School\u201d) in recent years to improve vocational guidance, prevent early leaving from education and training, increase education and training offers, promote apprenticeships and traineeships, increase staff and improve teachers' professional development

Aporias of Merit

Merit is universally welcomed and promoted as a contrast to the privileges of belonging that the school is called to correct in order to prepare for a better world. Advanced societies, now largely dominated by technology that closely interacts with the economy, do not give due recognition to merit. Meritocracy, which would be responsible for enhancing skills by promoting equal opportunities, often ends up by reaffirming privileges, in a kind of heterogenesis of ends. An answer to these criticisms can only come from an ethics based on the value of the person that is combined with an idea of merit also comprehensive of moral values

Effects of Adult Education-Training on Skills

Lifelong learning is increasingly important in order to compete in a knowledge-based global economy. Adult education and Training (AET) are two possible strategies to adjust the skills of the adult population to the needs of either the changing occupational structure and aging societies. Nevertheless, despite the importance of AET, we are short of empirical evidence on the topic, particularly as regards the cross-national comparative research. In a way, this paper aims to help in this field of studies by gaining a better understanding of how AET can influence the level of skills in individual

Merit, competence and human capital

Contemporary pedagogy is called to measure itself against two categories, merit and competence, which have become central to the third millennium’s cultural debate and educational policies. If merit is considered the only weapon against privilege, education based on skills is considered the only lever of social equalization. But the concept of merit, which has now entered the common language, open to an interpretative ambiguity because the economic meaning tends to prevail over the pedagogical one. The article identifies a clarifying passage by connecting merit to competence using the theory of human capital considered in the evolution from Becker to Heckman

If feeding life we feed spirit

The text explores the concept of nourishment of human life in a holistic view, as required by the complexity of the person, as both a multidimensional reality and an integrated unit in need of material and spiritual food. The personal unity is taken as a criterion in the presence of foodstuffs exhibited in the Expo Milano 2015 to assess the potential of ethics they can enclose in view of values or non values involved in their production processes. The anthropological abstraction of the \u2bbhomo economicus\u2bc, at the basis of the economic theory of the global market, sounds as a denouncement of the ideology we continue to send out through this production model; this same ideology is penetrated into education through the concept of human capital. The hope is that the comparison with other cultures, different models of production and of exchange may be an important opportunity to seek other bases for prosperity